How To Leave a Toxic Relationship: Trauma Bonds, Codependency, & Narcissistic Abuse
Adult Child
Andrea
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
💨Breathe to Heal: A Somatic Journey to Reclaim Your Inner Child: 6-week course combining breathwork, somatic practices & part work
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Leaving a toxic relationship isn’t just hard — it can feel impossible when trauma bonds, guilt, and confusion are running the show. This episode breaks down exactly why that happens and how to finally break free.
Darlene Lancer is a licensed marriage and family therapist and the author of Conquering Shame and Codependency and Dating, Loving, and Leaving a Narcissist. After surviving her own painful relationship with a narcissist, Darlene spent decades researching, writing, and guiding others through the complex terrain of codependency and narcissistic abuse.
Key Takeaways:
🔹 The Trauma Bond Trap: Understand how the cycle of intermittent reinforcement keeps you stuck — and why leaving often feels more terrifying than staying.
🔹 How Narcissists Erode Reality: Explore the tactics narcissists use to distort your perception, make you doubt yourself, and slowly dismantle your sense of identity.’
🔹 The Hidden Cost of Codependency: Why self-sacrifice isn’t selflessness — and how chronic people-pleasing becomes a survival strategy rooted in early attachment wounds.
🔹 Rebuilding Self-Trust After Narcissistic Abuse: Learn the slow, powerful process of reconnecting with your inner voice and learning to trust your perceptions again.
🔹 Breaking the Addiction to Dysfunction: Why toxic love can feel like a high — and what it really takes to break free from the compulsive pull of unhealthy relationships.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So you've done inner child work, but have you really? I thought I did until my abandonment |
| 0:04.1 | wounds came back and completely kicked my ass. So shit shows, I want to hit you with three |
| 0:09.2 | quick truth bombs about inner child work that I've come to learn the hard way. Okay, so number one, |
| 0:14.1 | you can't reparent yourself from the neck up. You can't think your way into safety. If your |
| 0:18.7 | body still feels tense, reactive or numb, that's your inner |
| 0:21.9 | child telling you the work hasn't reached them yet. Number two, talking to your inner child isn't |
| 0:26.6 | enough. You have to feel what they felt. And number three, reparenting has to be somatic to actually |
| 0:32.2 | work. Safety isn't something you say. It's something you practice. And that is what |
| 0:36.7 | breathwork gives us a felt |
| 0:38.3 | sense of safety. The younger you never got to experience. And that is exactly why I'm offering |
| 0:44.4 | breathe to heal a somatic journey to reclaim your inner child. It is a six-week course starting on |
| 0:50.4 | August 13th run by fellow shit show and somatic and breathwork practitioner, |
| 0:54.9 | Teresa, where we are combining breathwork, somatic practices, parts work, and community healing. |
| 1:00.7 | At the steal of the cost of most somatic courses, let me add, spots are limited, don't sleep on this shit. |
| 1:06.0 | Head to adultchildpodcast.com slash breed the heel. |
| 1:08.9 | That is adultchildpodcast.com slash breathe to heal. That is adult child podcast.com slash breed to heal. |
| 1:11.8 | Trust me, this is the work that actually works. |
| 1:16.5 | You lose nothing when you walk away from someone who treats you like you're worth nothing. |
| 1:22.5 | My name is Andrea and this is adult child. |
| 1:24.7 | I'm a old child. |
| 1:47.7 | Welcome back to an old child, where we took a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family. |
| 1:50.6 | Ahoi, my dear shit shows. |
... |
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