Adult Child 207: The Messy Road of Long-Term Recovery — Codependency, Shame & Nervous System Triggers w/ Dr. Sarah Michaud
✨ Join Breathe to Heal: A 7-week Somatic Journey to Release & Receive
Long-term recovery doesn’t mean you stop getting triggered — it means you finally see how deep the wiring goes. This episode explores how to navigate those ongoing invitations for growth without turning every setback into proof that you’re failing.
Dr. Sarah Michaud is a clinical psychologist, author of Co-Crazy: One Psychologist’s Recovery from Codependency and Addiction, with decades of personal and professional experience in addiction and codependency recovery.
She shares what it was like to be decades sober and still have her life upended by her husband’s relapse — and how that season forced her to confront layers of shame she thought she’d already outgrown. She also opens up about body-based triggers in a new relationship, the impact of covert childhood trauma, and the journey of self-forgiveness.
✨ What this episode explores:
▪️Long-Term Recovery Is Not the Finish Line — Why deeper layers of childhood trauma, CPTSD and codependent patterns can surface decades into sobriety and suddenly make you feel back at square one.
▪️When Insight Doesn’t Equal Healing — How you can understand your trauma, teach this stuff to others, and still repeat old behaviors until your nervous system and body are actually part of the work.
▪️Codependency as “I Can’t Be Myself” — What it really means to chronically over-help, manage or shrink around others and how that pattern keeps adult children of dysfunctional families from feeling safe.
▪️When the Body Remembers Before the Brain — How sleep issues, anxiety spikes and body tension with safe people can be clues that covert emotional or sexual trauma is still stored in the nervous system.
▪️Navigating Triggers With Self-Compassion — How naming activations, regulating before you react and reframing setbacks as invitations for deeper healing can shift you out of “I’m failing at recovery.”
▪️Parenting After Addiction and Neglect — How guilt can turn sober parents into over-givers and why reclaiming boundaries with your kids becomes part of breaking generational trauma and codependency.
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