234 - Wired for Abandonment: How Somatic Work Heals What Talk Therapy Can't w/ Valerie Rubin234 - Wired for Abandonment: How Somatic Work Heals What Talk Therapy Can't w/ Valerie Rubin
Adult Child
Andrea and somatic coach Valerie Rubin talk about how abandonment wounds, chronic pain and anxious attachment can be rooted in childhood trauma and stored in the body. They share personal stories and practical somatic tools aimed at building nervous system safety where talk therapy has fallen short.
1:01:31•10 Jun 2026
Wired for Abandonment: Somatic Healing, Chronic Pain and Nervous System Truths
Episode Overview
- Talk therapy and insight may ease understanding, but abandonment wounds and anxiety often need body-based work to truly shift.
- Somatic tools like body scanning, pendulation, shaking, breathwork and self-holds can help the nervous system feel safer and less hypervigilant.
- Inner child work, especially when combined with hypnosis and guided imagery, can start to rewrite long-held beliefs like "I’m not good enough".
- Trauma bonds and toxic relationships can feel magnetising because your nervous system is familiar with chaos; healing makes healthy partners feel less "boring" and more genuinely safe.
- Dysregulation isn’t always something to shut down; it can be a signal that a relationship, friendship or situation is no longer in alignment with you.
“Trauma lives in your body, not the calendar.”
Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of how childhood chaos shows up in your adult body. Host Andrea brings her usual "total and complete shitshow" honesty as she chats with trauma-informed somatic coach and Anxiety Recovery Podcast host, Valerie Rubin, about why talk therapy can only take you so far.
Valerie shares how, in her early 20s, she felt like she was "living in a 90-year-old's body" with chronic pain, IBS, cystic acne and relentless anxiety that no doctor, chiropractor or diet change could touch. Years of talk therapy hadn’t cracked it either. Things only shifted when hypnotherapy helped her connect the dots: "This is all to do with my upbringing." From there, somatic work became the missing piece.
Across their conversation, you’ll hear about abandonment wounds, anxious attachment, and what happens when your nervous system decides that love means waiting to be left. Valerie explains why "we can't talk our way out of our anxiety, out of our trauma" and breaks down how somatic tools like body scanning, pendulation, vagus nerve exercises and inner child work slowly teach your body that it’s safe.
The episode also touches on narcissistic dads, the pain of waking up to the "safer" parent’s role, and the heartbreak of a trauma-bonded relationship where moving in together flips the switch from love bombing to criticism. Valerie’s brutal-but-helpful line – "If you have to see a couples therapist after a year, that’s probably not a good sign" – lands hard.
Andrea adds her own story of a rough hypnotherapy experience that left her spiralling, using it to highlight how crucial trauma-informed practice and nervous system safety really are. If you’ve been in therapy for years, still feel stuck in hypervigilance, or can’t get your body on board with what your mind "knows", this conversation might be exactly the kind of messy, honest hope you’ve been waiting for. What if your body has been right about you all along?
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