How Triggers Reveal Childhood Survival Responses

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 perception
• The impact on self-worth, identity, and intimacy
• Hypervigilance, projection, and feeling “in trouble” for existing
• Three powerful recovery tools:
  • Protecting your inner child
  • Writing a truth statement
  • Giving back what was never yours to carry

You’ll walk away with practical exercises to shift perception, stop living in fear, and reclaim a sense of self that was always yours.

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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

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