215 - Repeat or Recover w/ Dr. Tian Dayton: The Cost of Relational Trauma
Adult Child
Andrea Ashley
4.9 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2026
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Tian Dayton is a clinical psychologist, Senior Fellow at The Meadows, and author of 15 books, including the upcoming Growing Up With Addiction: How Adult Children of Addicts Can Heal Family Trauma, CPTSD, and Codependency. In this conversation, Tian draws on her 40+ years as a professional in trauma and addiction, alongside her own lived experience growing up with alcoholism, to paint a deeply human portrait of breaking the cycle of generational trauma.
✨ What this episode explores:
▪️ Why ACA trauma is different from other childhood trauma — How growing up with alcoholic parents creates relational wounds that get passed down unless we interrupt the cycle
▪️ Healing complex trauma requires nervous system work, not just talk therapy — Why intellectual understanding keeps us stuck; how stored survival energy shows up in your body
▪️ Perfectionism is killing your recovery (and what to do instead) — Learning to live in the messy middle instead of crisis-to-crisis; why repair matters more than getting it right
▪️ Internal Family Systems (IFS) for adult children — Understanding your many "parts" (not just one inner child) and how they show up in relationships and healing
▪️ Process addictions and dissociation in ACAs — How phone addiction, food, and other behaviors help us check out; when coping crosses into something more serious
▪️ The difference between being victimized and staying in victimhood — How to honor what happened without getting stuck in victim identity that blocks your path forward
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fall. |
| 0:06.8 | My name is Andrea, and this is an old child. |
| 0:20.8 | Welcome back to deep dive into. Let's just let it all go. |
| 0:30.5 | Welcome back to adult child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family. |
| 0:33.6 | Ahoy, my dear shit shows. |
| 0:36.1 | For any new listeners, my name is Andrea. |
| 0:39.3 | I am a total incomplete shit show. I'm an adult child of an alcoholic family. I'm a recovering alcoholic myself. And today is my birthday, y'all. |
| 0:43.7 | Today is my 37th birthday. What the fuck? We curse here. You've been warned. |
| 0:53.2 | Yes, 37 years old today. |
| 0:55.0 | And just very honored and grateful to have spent another year around the sun as the host of this podcast and the captain of this shit show ship. Very grateful and appreciative for each and every one of you |
| 1:14.9 | out there listening, especially those who have been there since the beginning. |
| 1:18.7 | You guys mean the world to me. |
| 1:21.3 | So here's to 37. |
| 1:23.2 | We're getting a little too close to 40, folks. |
| 1:26.0 | We're getting a little, a little too close to 40 folks we're getting a little a little too close to 40 okay |
| 1:30.6 | how old do you guys feel like I feel like I am uh well I mean let's be honest like there's some days |
| 1:41.5 | that you feel like you're like 12 right but I would say I feel like I'm 27. I think that's how I feel. I feel like when I think of myself in my head, I think of myself as like 27. What about you guys? So welcome board this hot mess of a ship. As I already said, we curse here. You've been warned. I'm an acquired |
| 2:00.8 | taste. You've been warned. And today, folks, we are diving deep with returning guests. I think |
| 2:07.3 | she's actually been on the podcast more than any other guest. And rightly so, as she is one of the |
| 2:13.4 | pioneers of the adult child movement, Miss T. N. Dayton. We all should be so damn grateful to this |
| 2:19.3 | woman because she put words to the experience that so many of us have had. She was calling this |
| 2:25.7 | shit trauma before anyone else was. She's granted us the gift, the opportunity of healing, |
... |
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