Andrea
Andrea Ashley
Shitshow Saturday #197 - Wendy N.
Shitshow Saturday #197 - Wendy N.
Shitshow Saturday #197 - Wendy N.
Saturday 28th March 2026
Wendy N. shares how growing up with an alcoholic dad shaped her voice, boundaries, work anxiety and healing as an adult child.
Explicit
40 minutes
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Honest
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Author:
Andrea
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Categories:
Healing Relationships
Healing from Sexual Trauma
Recovery from Trauma
Sobriety Toolkit
Understanding Addiction & Recovery
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Get the buttons here!Finding Your Voice After Growing Up in Chaos: Wendy N.’s Story
Episode Overview
- Childhood in an alcoholic, emotionally shut-down home can create a deep fear of asking questions or needing anything.
- Not asking for help often shows up at work as freezing with authority figures and avoiding clarifying information, even when the stakes are high.
- Boundaries can include asking for clarity and support so you can do your job well, not just saying no or pushing people away.
- Therapy, EMDR, and concepts like IFS can help make sense of intense anger and long-standing patterns that started in childhood.
- Gaining a separate identity – as Wendy did away from her twin and family system – can be an important step in finding your own voice.
That was the first time I’ve ever said it out loud.
Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of how childhood in a chaotic home still shows up in adulthood, even in the most high‑pressure workplaces. In this Shitshow Saturday, Andrea chats with Wendy N., an identical twin and adult child of an alcoholic, whose story centres on one deceptively simple theme: finding her voice in rooms where authority feels terrifying.
Wendy talks about growing up with a drunk dad and an enabling mum, where asking questions or having needs often felt annoying to the adults. She shares how that early training led to a pattern at work: never asking for help, freezing with authority figures, and then mentally beating herself up afterwards.
A brutal moment in the operating room – when a surgeon yelled at her for not setting up a table he’d requested – left her thinking, “What is wrong with you?” and eventually led her to therapy and the language of being an adult child. You’ll hear how a boundary book, “Set Boundaries, Find Peace”, helped her realise that asking for clarification is actually a boundary and a way of setting herself up for success, not a sign of weakness.
She explains how this realisation now plays out in her current role in tissue and eye donation, where she has learned to push past the urge to people‑please and say what’s needed, even to busy nurses. Wendy also talks about twin dynamics, being labelled “they” by her mum, and how finally having her own identity at university felt like breathing for the first time.
There’s raw honesty about rage, Al‑Anon attempts, her dad’s late‑in‑life sobriety, and the ongoing search for an IFS therapist to help calm her inner teenager. If you’ve ever thought, “Why can’t I just do this basic adult thing?”, Wendy’s story might make you feel a lot less alone – and a bit more curious about what’s really underneath that freeze response.