232 - Healing Together: A Couple's Journey Through Repressed Trauma w/ Tarah & EJ Kerwin232 - Healing Together: A Couple's Journey Through Repressed Trauma w/ Tarah & EJ Kerwin
Adult Child
Marriage therapists Tarah and EJ Kerwin talk candidly about how repressed childhood trauma erupted in their relationship and what it took to stay together. The conversation focuses on body-based trauma work, attachment patterns and rebuilding intimacy after abuse.
1:14:10•27 May 2026
Healing Repressed Trauma as a Couple: Tarah & EJ’s Raw Marriage Story
Episode Overview
- Abandonment and complex trauma often stay hidden until relationships and breakups trigger emotional flashbacks that feel life-or-death.
- Repressed childhood sexual abuse can surface through body-based work such as ketamine-assisted therapy, EMDR and Deep Brain Reorienting.
- Partners who see reactions as trauma responses rather than personality defects can create the emotional safety needed for real healing.
- Dropping pressure and entitlement around sex and intimacy, and genuinely accepting "what we have now", can unblock stuck healing for both partners.
- Owning mistakes, circling back with sincere apologies and committing to ongoing personal therapy are key to building secure attachment in a couple.
“"If this is all I ever have with her, I'm grateful to have this."”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol and start facing buried childhood pain? Adult Child host Andrea brings Tarah and EJ Kerwin on to share a marriage story that’s equal parts love, chaos and serious trauma work. Tarah and EJ are both marriage therapists who thought they knew relationships inside out… right up until twins, a blended family and repressed trauma blew their lives wide open.
Tarah talks openly about abandonment wounds, emotional flashbacks and the moment she realised, shaking in an office car park, that her childhood had affected her far more than she’d admitted. EJ, meanwhile, owns that he hid behind a “cool and Buddhist” persona while actually being deeply avoidant and angry. Things escalate when Tarah’s repressed childhood sexual abuse surfaces during ketamine-assisted sessions. She describes screaming, vomiting and reliving scenes her body remembered long before her mind did.
EJ’s perspective is equally raw: he shares the grief of watching someone he loves relive horror, and the shift from judging her reactions to seeing them as trauma responses rather than character flaws. You’ll hear how somatic therapies like EMDR and Deep Brain Reorienting, plus Internal Family Systems, helped Tarah process shock, reduce startle responses and soften shame and disgust.
The couple also talk about the brutal impact on intimacy and how EJ reached the point of saying, “If this is all I ever have with her, I’m grateful to have this,” which finally took the pressure off and allowed healing between them. This conversation is blunt, sweary, frequently funny and deeply honest, aimed at adults from dysfunctional families, trauma survivors and couples trying to heal together rather than apart.
It’s a powerful reminder that some wounds only surface in the safety of a relationship that stays. If your past is leaking into your partnership, could you be ready to start facing it together?
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