From Eating Disorder and Addiction to Healing and Community: Karina Chandler on Trauma, Recovery, and Redefining Her LifeFrom Eating Disorder and Addiction to Healing and Community: Karina Chandler on Trauma, Recovery, and Redefining Her Life
Recovery On-Air
Karina Chandler shares her journey from childhood trauma, eating disorders and addiction to building a new sober life grounded in community, therapy and self-compassion. The conversation touches on alternative recovery paths, codependency, parenting and redefining identity beyond being the "helper".
53:47•10 Jul 2026
From Secrets to Sobriety: Karina Chandler on Trauma, Eating Disorders and Finding Community
Episode Overview
- Community is central to lasting recovery; build a life and network you would never want to give up for substances.
- Therapy can help with trauma, but it’s important to "shop around" and find a therapist and approach that genuinely fit your needs.
- Recovery paths differ; 12-step, Recovery Dharma, somatic work and sober active communities can all support healing in different ways.
- Codependency isn’t just about romantic relationships; it can show up as a need to control others, distance, or work and leadership roles.
- Self-compassion and inner child work are crucial for those with deep shame from childhood abuse and long-term secrecy.
“"The thing about community and recovery is you build a life that you want to live in, that you don’t want to run from."”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol after years of trauma and secrecy? This conversation between host Kristen Day and guest Karina Chandler gives you a front-row seat to that complex shift from survival mode to genuine healing.
Karina grew up in a tiny farm town in Oregon, in a house literally built from three patched-together trailers, pressure to "save face" for her struggling family, and intense childhood sexual abuse that left her with complex PTSD and dissociative symptoms. She explains how she learned to keep secrets, build her identity around helping others, and stay silent about her pain for decades. As she puts it, "Keeping secrets was like my MO".
You’ll hear how high achievement, binge drinking, and a long-term eating disorder sat underneath a shiny professional identity as a couples and family therapist and clinical director. Karina describes losing her marriage, home, licence, freedom and custody in just one year after meth was introduced into her own house, and how she carried deep shame about falling apart while working in the helping professions.
Instead of traditional 12-step recovery, Karina found connection through The Phoenix sober active community and Recovery Dharma, where meditation and Buddhist principles helped her build self-compassion, not just self-criticism. She talks about inner child work, somatic therapy, codependency (especially with work and control), and the difference between getting sober for others versus "finally doing it for myself".
The episode also touches on parenting, co-parenting with her ex-husband and his new wife, supporting her children’s identities, and redefining her career into landscape design while still seeing therapy clients. Karina’s story may resonate if you’ve ever felt like the "strong one" who secretly can’t cope, or if you’re wondering whether community, therapy and small daily practices can really change a life.
What might it look like for you to build a life you’d never trade back for a drink or a drug?
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