Our Whole Childhood with Patrick Teahan

By Patrick Teahan

This is "Our Whole Childhood" - hosted by Patrick Teahan - where we discuss everything childhood trauma, from the issues that we experience, to the stuff that comes up in our families, and to the h

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How many episodes does Our Whole Childhood with Patrick Teahan have?

The podcast currently has 54 episodes available.

Best of Our Whole Childhood with Patrick Teahan

The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

Number 1: Overcoming Childhood Guilt & Reparenting Your Inner Child
In this episode, Patrick Teahan, MSW explores the heavy burden of guilt carried by childhood trauma survivors. When growing up in a toxic or dysfunctional family, children are often trapped in no-win situations, blamed for things entirely out of their control, and expected to manage adult problems. This creates a deeply rooted sense of guilt that persists into adulthood, fueled by underlying, internalized shame. Patrick breaks down the crucial difference between guilt and shame. Guilt focuses on the actions we feel we are failing to do, while shame provides the painful internal narrative that we are inherently selfish or bad for failing. This combination often leads survivors to cave in, self-sacrifice, and abandon their own boundaries to avoid making others uncomfortable. To help break this cycle, this episode features two detailed reparenting roleplays that demonstrate how to communicate effectively with a wounded inner child. Key TakeawaysUnderstanding the Guilt Trap: How early experiences of being helpless to fix a parent create lifelong patterns of over-responsibility and caving to external pressure.Guilt Versus Shame: The distinct but connected ways guilt dictates our actions while shame attacks our core identity.The Unchallenging Inner Adult: A look at how an underdeveloped inner adult agrees with the inner child's fears and fails to set boundaries with toxic family members.The Empowered Inner Adult: Strategies for advocating for yourself, setting firm boundaries, and showing the inner child that it is safe to prioritize your own well-being over a toxic parent's comfort.Protecting Your Peace: Why letting a narcissistic parent experience their own disappointment is a necessary step in protecting your present relationships and mental health. Join the Healing Community! Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership
August 12, 202626min
Number 2: Breaking Free From a Narcissistic Parent
This episode explores how growing up with a narcissistic or emotionally immature parent can distort your perception of yourself, others, and your worth, and how to reclaim it. Instead of fixating on the parent, we look at the damage that lingers and the path to undo it. Learn why triggers around work, relationships, and self-doubt aren’t personality flaws—they're leftover survival responses from childhood. Patrick shares vulnerable personal stories about being cast as “the dumb one” and how those old narratives showed up in adulthood, even during success. Topics include:How narcissistic parents damage a child’s perceptionThe impact on self-worth, identity, and intimacyHypervigilance, projection, and feeling “in trouble” for existingThree powerful recovery tools:Protecting your inner childWriting a truth statementGiving back what was never yours to carryYou’ll walk away with practical exercises to shift perception, stop living in fear, and reclaim a sense of self that was always yours. ----------------------------- Workbook Chapters 1 — How to Get Your Inner Adult in Place … 12 2 — The Built-In Forgetter (Codependency) … 27 3 — Honoring Our Trauma Responses & Coping Strategies … 38 4 — Overcoming Magical Thinking … 51 5 — The Feeling of Being "In Trouble"… 63 6 — How to Stop Anticipating Criticism … 74 7 — Childhood Trauma & Physical Energy Issues … 84 8 — Depression Related to Childhood Trauma … 97 9 — Processing Childhood Emotional Neglect (The Things That Didn’t Happen)… 107 10 - Processing Childhood Enmeshment with an Emotionally Immature Parent …118 11 - Processing Childhood Trauma-Related Grief … 131 12 - Processing Guilt: Recognizing the Family History Before Low or No Contact … 143 13 - How to Recover from a Narcissistic Parent … 153 Journal Prompts Journal Prompt #1: How did self-worth get twisted? How did your narcissistic parent create damage around your self-worth and how you perceive yourself? Write a list of ten experiences about lost self-worth due to that parent. Examples That Christmas when my mother made me stand up in front of the entire extended family while she berated me about why I didn’t get any gifts. My father would take any achievement I had and one-up me. I gave up on having self-worth because he was the focus. Journal Prompt #2: Who did they say you are? Write several paragraphs about your struggle with a healthy sense of self and how the narcissistic parent contributed to a poor sense of self. Who did your parents say you were, either through protection, neglect, or supply? Example I’ve always guessed at what I like or who I am. My mother had these twisted ideas, or fantasies, that I was going to become an entrepreneur and live a fabulous life in support of her. Did I want that? What even is that? What I know now is if she had a child who was a rich genius, she could have supply and validation—she could tell her friends she raised an entrepreneur. Of course I don’t know who I am. Access the workbook here Patrickteahan.com/workbook Keywords: narcissistic parent recovery, childhood trauma, perception wounds, inner child healing, self-worth repair, intimacy triggers, emotional abuse healing, trauma recovery tools Join the Healing Community! Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership
October 15, 202530min
Number 3: 4 Tools to Fix Triggers
This episode dives into the ways childhood trauma shows up in daily triggers—and how to break free from them faster. Learn how your past shapes present reactions and discover practical tools to release the emotional charge that keeps you stuck. Topics include:Understanding how triggers connect past and presentFour actionable tools for regulating emotional triggersHealing practices for body and mindReclaiming your time, energy, and creativity from traumaJoin us for an empowering conversation on building resilience, calming your nervous system, and supporting your inner child. Keywords: Childhood trauma, emotional triggers, healing tools, inner child work, trauma recovery, nervous system regulation Join the Healing Community! Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership
September 22, 202527min
Number 4: 4 Reasons It Feels Like Failure
In this episode, Patrick Teahan, MSW, explores the hidden psychological barriers that prevent childhood trauma survivors from reaching their personal and professional goals. While often labeled simply as imposter syndrome, this struggle is rarely just a lack of confidence. Instead, it is a complex intersection of survival mechanisms, unresolved grief, and toxic family system dynamics. Patrick breaks down four specific patterns that keep survivors anchored in familiar dysfunction rather than risking the vulnerability required for success. What You Will Learn: The Suffering Trap: Understanding the paradox of having a high tolerance for familiar pain but a low tolerance for the new discomfort necessary for growth and change. Perfectly Incapable: How toxic family branding and assigned roles (such as the scapegoat or the laborer) disconnect survivors from their true capabilities and establish invisible ceilings. Can I Keep Up the Facade?: The pervasive anxiety that success is fragile and the distorted belief that anything less than perfect, unwavering effort makes you an imposter. Why Bother?: How the heartbreak of not being seen or celebrated by an apathetic or abusive family of origin neutralizes the drive to achieve major life milestones. Personal success is highly subjective, whether it means getting out of debt, pursuing an advanced degree, or simply living with more calmness instead of operating in messy survival mode. By recognizing how a wounded inner child confuses new discomfort with a literal threat to survival, survivors can begin to rewrite these outdated narratives. Healing involves seeking safe, external mirroring to build a grounded sense of self and reconnecting with your inherent capabilities. Join the Healing Community! Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership
July 15, 202621min
Number 5: When Therapy is Actually GOOD
In this episode, Patrick Teahan, MSW, steps away from the teleprompter to share real testimonials from his community about the life-changing impact of good therapy. While discussions around mental health often focus on poor fits or damaging experiences, Patrick highlights what it looks and feels like to find a safe and competent practitioner. He introduces a lighthearted analogy comparing a great therapist to a trusted mechanic, someone who understands the complex machinery of your history, manages your emotions with compassion, and is honest about the repairs needed to keep you moving forward. By exploring stories of profound healing, Patrick unpacks how effective therapy directly counters the anti-process environment of a toxic family system. Listeners will learn:The Power of Pacing: How somatic experiencing helps trauma survivors slow down and realize that processing intense flashbacks is manageable and safe.Autonomy Through Silence: Why a therapist who listens without judgment and pauses before responding builds client autonomy far better than one who immediately offers unsolicited advice.Recalibrating the Nervous System: How childhood gaslighting miscalibrates bodily sensations and why effective therapy focuses on reconnecting with the physical body to disarm triggers.Unlearning Toxic Narratives: The importance of an active therapist who challenges normalized family abuse, such as clearly identifying constant yelling as verbal abuse.The Inner Circle Boundary: How to establish mental boundaries by reserving conflict and emotional bandwidth only for those in your deepest, most trusted inner circle.Releasing the Burden of Fixing: Why realizing that you had nothing to work with regarding your family of origin removes the deep guilt and shame of not being able to save or change them.Patrick also reflects on his own transformative experiences with his clinical mentor and details how finding a therapist who acts as a safe home base can radically alter your recovery trajectory. For those not yet ready for individual therapy or those seeking additional structured support, Patrick shares information about his healing membership and his recently published clinical assessment designed to measure toxic family environments. Keywords: childhood trauma, trauma therapy, somatic experiencing, nervous system regulation, toxic family systems, inner child work, mental boundaries, family estrangement, trauma recovery, meaning making, boundary setting. Join the Healing Community! Join the Monthly Healing Community Membership
July 08, 202632min