SHITSHOW SATURDAY #225 – Attachment BlindnessSHITSHOW SATURDAY #225 – Attachment Blindness
Adult Child
Members of the Adult Child community talk about attachment blindness, betrayal trauma and how childhood conditioning shapes their relationships in sobriety. The conversation focuses on recognising harmful patterns, questioning emotional reactions and learning to build safer, more balanced connections.
35:08•10 Oct 2026
Attachment Blindness, Betrayal Trauma and Seeing Relationships Clearly
Episode Overview
- Early family dynamics can create an "attachment lens" that shapes how harm and safety are perceived in adult relationships.
- Betrayal blindness includes both missing ongoing mistreatment and treating repeated hurts as isolated incidents.
- Transference, black‑and‑white thinking and emotional reasoning are common ways attachment blindness shows up in sobriety and relationships.
- Healing involves noticing patterns, questioning the stories built on strong feelings, and gradually choosing safer people and boundaries.
- Letting go of defence mechanisms and fear responses is personal work that no partner, therapist or community can do on someone’s behalf.
“"No one else can release this for you… I told my partner, my therapist, you guys – none of you can do this work for me."”
How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober? This Shitshow Saturday chat zooms in on "attachment blindness" – the way early family dynamics can warp how someone sees harm, safety and connection in adult relationships. Andrea and members of the Adult Child community talk through two painful directions this can go: missing harm that’s actually there, and seeing harm where there isn’t any.
One speaker describes staying in an 18‑year marriage full of yelling because, as she puts it, childhood had taught her that "that was what relationships were like" and that if someone was shouting, it must be her fault. Another shares staying blind to a neighbour’s deception and a coworker’s cruelty until the fallout "blew my whole world up" and forced a major life change.
Attachment blindness is broken down into three common patterns: transference (reacting to a partner as if they’re a parent), black‑and‑white thinking (someone is either perfect or a monster), and emotional reasoning ("I feel unwanted, so they must not want me").
One member names emotional reasoning as a major theme in both her mother’s behaviour and her own, while another admits, "I write stories in my head where, in the end, I’m screwed" and shares how quickly imagined rejection can take over their nervous system. You’ll hear raw reflections on mother wounds, narcissistic parents, scapegoating, and the way betrayal blindness keeps people stuck in unhealthy relationships and workplaces.
There’s also hard‑won wisdom about hypervigilance, learning to spot patterns instead of one‑off incidents, and the uncomfortable truth that "no one else can release this for you" – the work of letting go and building safer attachments has to come from within. If you’ve ever asked yourself, "Am I overreacting, or am I not seeing what’s really happening?", this conversation might give you language, solidarity and a few questions to sit with as you shape a different future.
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