Shitshow Saturday #208 - Wanting to Be ChosenShitshow Saturday #208 - Wanting to Be Chosen
Adult Child
A group of adult children of dysfunction share how the ache to be chosen shows up in love, work, friendships, family and body image. Through honest stories and reflection, they talk about grieving what they never got as kids and slowly learning what it means to choose themselves instead.
33:46•6 Jun 2026
Wanting to Be Chosen: How Adult Children Stop Auditioning and Start Choosing Themselves
Episode Overview
- The drive to be chosen often repeats the original childhood wound rather than reflecting the reality of current relationships or situations.
- Adult children may perform, people-please, or over-function in romance, work, and friendships as a way to chase the feeling of finally being picked.
- Healing asks for genuine grieving of the love and protection that were never given, instead of trying to earn them retroactively through partners, promotions or appearance.
- Choosing yourself means building internal validation, tolerating uncomfortable feelings in the body, and slowly letting go of the need to perform for approval.
- Safe community and honest sharing help break isolation, reduce shame, and support the shift from chasing external applause to living more peacefully in your own skin.
“Because the only undoing of I was never chosen is I am choosing me now and I will keep choosing me and I will not abandon me the way they did.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety and healing from family dysfunction? This Shitshow Saturday conversation from Adult Child zooms in on one raw theme: the lifelong ache of wanting to be chosen. Host Andrea Ashley reads about how this wound shows up everywhere – in romance, work, friendships, family, even with pets and social media.
Adult children might chase unavailable partners, over-function at work, or obsess over being someone’s “favourite”, all in an attempt to fix the original hurt of not being truly picked as kids. As the reading puts it, "Because the only undoing of I was never chosen is I am choosing me now and I will keep choosing me and I will not abandon me the way they did." From there, the group shares take it to a very personal level.
One speaker talks about the terror of ageing and feeling like looks have been the only "currency" for being chosen. Another describes the sting of seeing friends meet without her and feeling like a child who didn’t get invited to the party. Andrew links being chosen to basic safety: no one protected him, so he now consciously "chooses" the frightened little boy he once was instead of abandoning him.
Joe talks about being used for emotional needs by his mother, then dropped, and how that turned into a lifetime of performing for external validation – comparing giving up performance to kicking a hard drug. Mike Jones recalls being the high school social butterfly who needed every group to like him, then explains how recovery and sobriety let him build real depth instead of constant performance.
Nance adds a candid take on people-pleasing, getting chosen, then resenting it and "burning that shit down." Anyone who’s ever felt invisible, passed over, or only conditionally loved may see themselves here – and might leave wondering: where am I still auditioning, and what would it look like to finally choose myself?
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