People in therapy are often in therapy to deal with the people in their lives who won't go to therapy.

My name is Andrea and this is adult child. Let it all go. What's making you slow now?

Let it all go.

Welcome back to adult child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family.

And today, y'all are in for a real damn treat,

as I am diving deep with my former therapist, Dr. Melissa Fenton.

You know, I feel incredibly blessed for the therapist I've had the pleasure of working with

who have just had an insurmountable impact to my life, both my current

therapist and Melissa. So I started working with Melissa at 24 years old and four years sober.

It was right after the demise of my relationship

with Mr. Looks Perfect on Paper,

which I talked about in episode five which was the first episode that I did on BPS

Broken Picker Syndrome but just for a little refresh so I met Mr. Looks Perfect on paper. I think I called him George. I met George at a 12 step

meeting. He was from New York City, but he was living in Jacksonville

temporarily for work and as his nickname suggests, he was perfect on paper. He was

quite the upgrade from the guys I had previously dated in sobriety.

He was well educated, he had a great job. He came from good pedigree. He was 10 years

sober. He was tall. He was attractive. But unfortunately for me, the six months that we dated was quite a miserable, emotionally

disregulated hellhole.

I would say, I don't know, 10 to 15% of the time was pure bliss and the rest of the time I was in a

hypervigilant, painful trauma response, not having any idea that I was having a trauma response,

but just thinking that I was a pathetic loser.

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