Patrick Teahan
Welcome!
I provide education on childhood trauma, conduct research, and advocate for healing from childhood trauma.
**PLEASE READ** My videos are for educational purposes only. Information provided on this channel is not intended to be a substitute for in-person professional medical advice. It is not intended to replace the services of a therapist, physician, or other qualified professional, nor does it constitute a therapist-client physician or quasi-physician relationship. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call a local emergency telephone number or go to the nearest emergency room immediately.
Learn more about Patrick Teahan, at linktr.ee/patrickteahan
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Patrick Teahan
This is about power. As children, we had none.
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Adults can love, abuse, guide, assert, dominate, create space, or take it all way. They make all the choices.
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When we grow up in abuse where we are hit, shamed, overwhelmed, screamed at, blamed, and dominated, we have no choices. It's happening until it's over. And waiting was the right survival strategy.
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We survived by not fighting back. It wasn't even something we'd think to do or argue. We hated it internally. Our feelings go underground, and so does our birthright to speak our minds and advocate for decency and respect. This carries into adulthood.
Doing childhood trauma work and speaking the truth about our perpetrators, who were supposed to be caretakers, helps to reclaim the ability to "talk back" or simply speak our minds. We're wired, for now, just to go along and not make waves. F that forever. ⠀
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For "hitting back" - in our adulthood, we have the right to flex our personhood. Again, I'm not advocating hitting, which I hope is obvious, but I am advocating for childhood trauma survivors to assert themselves. That's a simple human right that we don't even think is an option due to what happened to us.
Some examples of "hitting back" in the present. (action)⠀
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*Leaving the toxic relationship.
*Refusing to go to a toxic family gathering.
*Cut-offs.
*Having a difficult conversation.
*Setting the boundary (again).
*Responding vs. reacting
What do you think?⠀
52 minutes ago | [YT] | 261
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Patrick Teahan
Many childhood trauma survivors compare themselves to others they feel had it worse. Unfortunately, this invalidates their own story.
Whether you come from a blatantly abusive or tricky family, trauma is trauma, and the two types of families have the same symptoms, such as depression and attachment wounds.
For those who come from tricky families, where things look good on paper, and the abuse isn't loud, there is often daily neglect of emotional needs. As a result, the attachments are not strong.
Children can have daily contact with such a parent, but they're not the safe home base every child needs. They're just there; perhaps they are shut down, indifferent, or hate being a parent.
For the child growing up in this, there's no energy or life to family. It's usually a heartbreaking wait for the parent to wake up and enjoy their children.
This type of disconnection, which is what childhood trauma is all about, results in adults who don't feel connected to themselves and struggle to connect with others and trust that others are interested.
Those from tricky families can have a harder time in therapy because, like their family, it doesn't feel like much is wrong when everything is wrong.
1 day ago | [YT] | 2,921
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Patrick Teahan
What makes one's family toxic is usually aggressive denial or minimization of problems, abuse, and dysfunction.
The hills they will die on are actually choices they make between their relationship with their children and how they look to the outside when it comes to their part.
"I never said that."
"That never happened."
"We remember it differently, I guess."
"You were fine; we were a normal family,
what is your problem?"
"You've always been the problem, and mom
was right about you from the get-go."
"I'm happy to lose a sister who just wants
to trash-talk her family and tell everyone
the family business."
"So what if I hit you?...you were rotten."
And the damage comes from how easily and quickly they take their high ground.
In our healing journeys, we have to ask what is at stake for them and what are they choosing.
While it would be hard for anyone to hear and process abuse they are responsible for, no one is going to die if they acknowledge, ask about, or admit failings.
What would it mean to the survivor if they heard:
"I've been hiding from that, and I'm proud of you for bringing it up."
"I wasn't in my right mind, and I know you suffered because of my choices."
"I want to hear more and not be defensive and make this about me."
Those would be coming from someone valuing a relationship with their children over the shame and reality of their parenting.
It's a choice, and while the healthy examples seem idealistic, they do happen in families that recognize they could lose us.
2 days ago | [YT] | 2,345
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Patrick Teahan
Hello all,
As we approach the holiday season and the close of the year,
I wanted to create something that helps us take stock in a grounded, real way.
Healing from childhood trauma doesn’t follow a straight line. It moves in circles, spirals, and pauses. Sometimes, we’re unaware of the old pain still shaping our lives.
Other times, we feel “stuck,” when in truth, we’re right in the middle of the process.
The holidays, for many, can stir up a lot—grief, longing, or family dynamics that remind us how far we’ve come, or how far we still want to go. Yet they can also offer space to reflect and reorient.
That’s what this live workshop is about.
I’m calling it “The Roadmap of Recovery: Identifying Your Stage of Healing.”
Together, we’ll explore:
Why healing has distinct phases, not a single destination
The three stages survivors often move through — waking up, doing the deeper work, and learning to live more freely in the present
Why those frustrating plateaus are often signs of progress
How to recognize what kind of support you need right now
This isn’t about rushing to the finish line — it’s about understanding your current season of healing so you can meet yourself with more compassion and direction.
Everyone who attends will also receive a Healing Worksheet PDF — a simple, reflective guide you can take with you after the session to deepen what we cover together.
If you’d like to join, it’s free and open to everyone (until we run out of space).
We’ll meet live on Zoom, and there will be time for interaction and questions.
Reserve Your Spot Now
patrickteahan.com/live
Warmly,
-Patrick and the team
3 days ago (edited) | [YT] | 527
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Patrick Teahan
This is true for everyone - our families, that difficult partner or friend, and ourselves. As adults in our present lives, we are often highly reactive and can engage in any of the following examples of triggered trauma patterns:
-Impulsively clean from a place of anxiety and get upset with those around us -feeling unsupported and possibly martyred.
-Pick fights with partners when something else is going on or bothering us -feeling justified in the mess that unfolds for not wanting to lose validity.
-Have big reactions at work where we have a reputation of being high energy or difficult and feel singled out and self-righteous.
-Not bring things up from a place of fear and codependency, and then it bursts confusing you and those around you.
-Make big expressions socially and over share & go to shame after.
What is the charge of energy behind being overly vocal at work (even if you're right)? What is the charge of energy feeling an impulse to clean and then feeling taken advantage of? What is the energy or charge behind needing to point out a fault in your partner because you have to say it, and it comes out of nowhere? If you feel overly called out, I've done all these. You're in good company.
So why?
Childhood trauma survivors often grow up in a vacuum, where we don't have any impact on affecting our family of origin. As much as you try to be good, freak out, or tell the truth nothing happens, nothing changes. Many trauma survivors feel they need to go big in order to be heard, which creates tension and mess for them - especially in intimacy. You may actually be surprised that people respond/react to you being triggered.
So, what to do?
Explore your upset. Write about it. What does the situation take you back to? How do you want to be in this moment. It takes work to know that your rage cleaning because your inner child is back there feeling disconnected and unsafe, and it was a good coping strategy to engage in, but it takes you away from being present and makes you hard to deal with.
4 days ago | [YT] | 2,608
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Patrick Teahan
For those with childhood trauma, their past is living within them and usually, they want nothing to do with it, but there it is.
Survivors don't spend time dwelling on or living in abuse. Ironically, we put a lot of energy, if not all, into suppressing and forgetting as best we can.
It should be thought of more like the abuse won't let the survivor go, rather than the survivor making a big decision to move on from it.
That phrase or idea doesn't work. And survivors don't long for body memories, flashbacks or breakdowns at work. They're just trying to get through their week.
Until our past is witnessed, shared, processed and healed, which takes time, money and energy, it will manifest in most of our daily lives. It will pop up in everything, from our thoughts about ourselves in the morning, to how we engage with others.
The phrase "You're living in the past." implies choice to which the survivor didn't have in childhood and doesn't have in the present. It also dismisses horrifying things that children go through and then are later blamed for. It's a very shaming phrase, usually said while the survivor is trying to process.
Snapping fingers or clicking our heels and telling ourselves that we dismiss or forgive what our family systems did, and we'll be different from now on and stop being affected by the emotional, physical and sexual abuse is bullshit.
They would have done so if it worked like that.
5 days ago | [YT] | 3,020
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Patrick Teahan
For childhood trauma survivors, we often can be wired for extremes in many things, including conflict. This is true, especially before we do any work on ourselves. We were set up to not know how to do conflict and intimacy.
Some of us have inner children that can't tolerate being wrong, so we argue, defend, get the last word, get nasty or superior. This is aggressive.
Some of us have inner children that take in all the responsibility of conflict and never defend ourselves because it's probably us. Even if we are right, we'll still take blame. This is sneaky.
Both are strategies from growing up in abuse that are rooted in shame.
It's interesting how shame causes various defensive behaviors, as one would only think of it as the constant "I'm bad and always wrong" response to life but shame is just about trying NOT to be seen a certain way.
I wonder if "always wrongs" are just trying to not be like the "never wrongs" that they were abused by, and the reverse can be true as well.
In conflict - always and never - isn't real. It's not human. It's a mess to be doing intimacy with either strategy, and also immature and ineffective.
Healing these conflict strategies involve being willing to be more vulnerable to not go there always or never, and working with our inner child to become more secure.
Here are healing goals for both strategies:
(Never) Realize that you're not in danger if you're wrong or having a part (you probably do just by having this thing going on), and recognizing the damage you do in your relationships (disconnection and difficulty). What's so threatening about being the problem? (Shame)
(Always) Realize that you're not in danger if you push back because owning everything is a way to sabotage intimacy because you're forcing the issues away. What's so threatening to you if you seem a little unlikable in the moment? (Shame)
Working on these will be messy and not graceful, but practice anyway.
6 days ago | [YT] | 1,872
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Patrick Teahan
When we grow up in childhood trauma, we get through it via magical thinking, hope, and not thinking about a perpetrator's behavior.
This crucial survival strategy keeps a child going through the impossible, such as having a narcissistic parent.
That strategy was a dream that the abusive person would change and see us, and thinking that things getting safer was just around the corner.
As adults, we are often still stuck in similar hopeful thinking, which was a setup from childhood.
It takes a lot of re-parenting work for our inner adult to take over and make decisions on behalf of the inner child, who survived by thinking of the potential versus the reality. So it's a battle.
But it is very healing for our inner child to see the inner adult take a big risk and get out of something for their benefit.
1 week ago | [YT] | 3,923
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Patrick Teahan
Hello!
I just released a new video: “5 Types of Lost Childhood Personalities ”
Watch Here: https://youtu.be/WWWOFUAfnrI
I hope the message resonates with you, and as always,
leave your thoughts in the comments!
1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,046
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Patrick Teahan
Being stuck will always be a part of the process.
As we work towards healing childhood trauma, the work can be so difficult that part of us almost longs to return to the stuck phase—simply because it felt safer or more familiar than the pain of change.
Keep going.
We just have to go through it.
Being stuck, much like many of our trauma reactions, is not a choice.
People become ready when they are ready.
I am not saying we are choosing to be stuck nor is it healthy.
It's just part of a long process.
Look towards the moments where you said 'enough' and somehow shifted. Those moments are golden. Often, a crisis is the catalyst that finally forces us out of that stagnation.
Another way to frame stuckness is a bit dark: it’s almost like the tax we have to pay on top of our childhood trauma for the relief that eventually comes with healing.
For me, looking back, the stuck place is actually the hardest because it is so much like childhood. We didn’t have any help, resources, or connection. Being stuck felt like forever.
Today, I’ll take the messy pain of the active healing part over the helpless waiting any day.
What has been your experience?
1 week ago | [YT] | 2,731
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