The Messy Road of Long-Term Recovery: Codependency, Shame & Nervous System Triggers w/ Dr. Sarah Michaud
Adult Child
Andrea Ashley
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2025
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How's the business going? |
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| 0:22.7 | Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. you at the job center. We've hired some great people and Job Center Plus really took the hassle |
| 0:21.1 | out of it and there was no fee. Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. Find out more at |
| 0:25.9 | business.gov.com. U.K. slash recruit. Eligibility criteria apply. It's not uncommon to feel like I |
| 0:33.3 | should be over this by now, but healing never follows the schedule. My name is Andrea, and this is |
| 0:39.3 | Adult Child. Welcome back to Adult Child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family. |
| 1:00.7 | Ahoi, my dear shit shows. |
| 1:02.9 | For any new listeners, my name is Andrea. |
| 1:05.5 | I'm a total incomplete shit show. |
| 1:07.3 | I'm a recovering alcoholic. |
| 1:08.9 | I'm a mom of two cats. |
| 1:15.6 | I am a condiment lover. I am a cilantro hater. And I am the captain of this hot mess of a ship where we talk about what to do when |
| 1:21.0 | you realize that the problems in your life are actually a result of your unresolved childhood wounds. |
| 1:27.3 | So welcome aboard. and happy early Thanksgiving, |
| 1:31.6 | guys. I did just want to give you a little tiny pep talk for Thanksgiving, remind you of a few |
| 1:36.9 | things. As we know, the holidays are not the happiest time of the year for all of us. Okay. |
| 1:42.1 | So I just want to let you know that it is okay if you're not |
| 1:45.7 | looking forward to Thanksgiving. It is okay if you're not feeling thankful right now. |
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| 2:04.5 | You can skip it entirely. Please remember that no is a complete sentence. If you were going into a |
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