Still Hoping Your Parents Will Change? Perfectionism, Codependency & Enmeshment w/ Alana Carvalho
Adult Child
Andrea Ashley
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if the apology, the change, the parent you always wanted… never comes? This episode dives into the painful hope that keeps so many adult children of dysfunctional families stuck.
Alana Carvalho is a licensed mental health counselor, author, and speaker specializing in codependency, perfectionism, and relationships. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family herself, Alana knows firsthand the toll enmeshment and unhealthy dynamics can take — and she’s turned that lived experience into a mission to help others untangle from toxic patterns and build healthier, more authentic connections.
🔑 Key Takeaways
- The Cost of Waiting for Parents to Change – Why holding onto the hope of an apology or transformation from a dysfunctional parent can keep adult children stuck in cycles of pain and disappointment.
- Perfectionism as Survival Mode – How growing up in chaos wires us to believe love and safety are earned through achievement, control, and being “good enough.”
- Codependency Isn’t Compassion – The difference between true empathy and the compulsive caretaking that comes from enmeshment, blurred boundaries, and survival conditioning.
- The Fantasy of Repair in Therapy – Why bringing abusive or narcissistic parents into therapy often backfires, and what true healing requires instead.
- Healthy Love After Dysfunction – How breaking free from family enmeshment creates space for authentic selfhood, intimacy, and relationships rooted in freedom rather than fear.
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Transcript
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| 0:55.9 | Terms and Conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. |
| 1:01.0 | Stop asking why they keep doing it and start asking why you keep allowing it. |
| 1:07.0 | My name is Andrea and this is Adult Child. |
| 1:32.7 | Welcome back to Adult Child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family. |
| 1:35.4 | Ahoy, my dear shit shows. |
| 1:38.1 | For any new listeners, my name is Andrea. I am a total and complete shit show. |
| 1:40.5 | And shit show is a term of endearment around here. |
| 1:44.9 | When I say that I'm a shit show, that means that we fully embrace ourselves for exactly who we are, |
| 1:53.3 | which includes our fucked up childhoods and the messy ways that this has showed up in our |
| 1:58.3 | lives as adults and that we embrace that this |
| 2:02.4 | healing journey is also quite fucking messy. And yes, we curse around here. You've been warned. |
| 2:10.9 | And this is the podcast where we talk about all of that. Screwed up childhood, screwed up |
| 2:15.5 | coping mechanisms in adulthood, and messy as hell healing |
... |
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