Episodes
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Complex Trauma: The Hidden Ways It Affects Your Life
Janice Johnson Dowd explains what complex trauma is, how it develops through repeated adversity, and why it can shape relationships, emotions, and nervous system responses long after childhood. She also walks through practical steps for healing, including nervous system regulation, boundaries…
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5 Signs Your Emotionally Immature Parent Is Actually Changing
Have you spent years hoping your parent would change, only to find yourself having the same painful conversations over and over? How can you tell the difference between genuine change and another empty promise? In this episode of Recovering Relationships, we explore five signs that an emotionally...
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The Dopamine Trap: Why You Can't Stop Scrolling
Is your phone just a tool, or is it training your brain to keep reaching for the next scroll, notification, like, or hit of novelty? In this episode of Recovering Relationships, Janice Johnson Dowd explores Digital Dopamine and the psychology behind problematic technology use, compulsive phone...
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Rebuilding Trust After Addiction: What Actually Works
When addiction damages trust, rebuilding it takes more than an apology. It takes time, consistency, honesty, and actions that family members can begin to rely on again. Katie and I originally recorded this conversation a year ago, but the message feels just as important today. We’ve condensed it...
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The Surprising Way to Help Someone Accept Treatment
How do you convince someone you love to get help for addiction? The answer may be the opposite of what you think. When we’re frightened, angry, and desperate for someone to change, it’s easy to believe that if we can just make them understand how much damage they’ve caused, they’ll finally agree…
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After Estrangement: What Helped Us Find Our Way Back
Healing Family Estrangement: What Helped Us Reconnect What does it actually take to heal a damaged parent-child relationship - and what does that process look like from the adult child’s side? In this deeply personal episode of Recovering Relationships, Janice and her adult daughter, Katie, talk...
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Estranged From Your Adult Child? 5 Things You Need to Hear
If you’re estranged from your adult child and wondering what you can do to begin repairing the relationship, this episode is for you. I share five things I’ve learned, personally and professionally, about family estrangement and the possibility of repair. We’ll talk about why parents and adult...
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Estranged From Your Child? Start Here...
Estranged from Your Child? Start Here If your adult child has limited contact or cut you off completely, you may be asking the same questions over and over: Why did this happen? What did I do wrong? Why won’t they talk to me? And is there anything I can do to repair our relationship? In this...
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The Brutal Truth About Relationships in Recovery
Why can relationships actually feel harder after someone gets sober? Sobriety is supposed to make things better. But for many families, early recovery brings more conflict, more difficult conversations, and emotions that have been buried for years. That doesn’t necessarily mean recovery is…
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Do I Really Need Therapy? Understanding the Benefits
Do you really need therapy - or is therapy only for people who are struggling with a serious mental health crisis? In this episode of Recovering Relationships, Katie and I take a closer look at what therapy is really for and why counseling can be valuable even when your life isn’t falling apart....
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Legal Doesn't Mean Safe: The Truth About Gas Station Drugs
Just because a substance is legal or readily available doesn’t necessarily mean it is safe. Janice explores how these products are marketed, why consumers may underestimate their risks, and why the constantly changing landscape of emerging substances creates challenges for individuals in…
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From Grief to Growth: Healing When the Relationship Has Changed - Part 2
In part 2 of our conversation about grief and changing relationships, Katie and Janice talk about what happens when the person you love is still here, but the relationship you once knew is not. Katie shares what it was like to grieve the mom she remembers while learning to build a relationship…
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How Dysfunctional Families Shape Who We Become
Why do siblings raised in the same family often turn out so differently? In this mini episode of Recovering Relationships, I introduce the concept of family roles: the ways children often adapt in homes affected by addiction, trauma, or chronic family stress. Many children become the responsible...
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Role Reversal: What It's Like to Grow Up Without a Safe Parent
When Addiction Causes Family Roles to Reverse What is it like to grow up without a parent you can truly rely on? In this deeply personal conversation, Katie shares what it was like growing up with addiction in the family, including the painful reality of feeling emotionally parentless even while...
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Five Tips for Better Conversations in Early Recovery
Difficult conversations are almost unavoidable in early recovery, but they don’t have to leave everyone feeling defensive, misunderstood, or emotionally exhausted. In this episode, Janice shares five practical ways to communicate more effectively as relationships begin to heal. You’ll learn how…
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Nobody Prepared Our Family for Early Recovery: Our First Family Visit Was a Disaster
We thought sobriety meant things were finally going to get better. Then came our first family visit, and it was a disaster. In this episode, Janice and Katie look back at expectations, emotions, and misunderstandings that collided during early recovery. We talk honestly about what families may…
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The One Thing You Must Do to Rebuild Trust in Recovery
In this mini-episode, I answer one of the questions I get most often: "What is the one thing I need to do to rebuild trust?" While there isn't a single action that restores trust overnight, there are five essential steps that create the foundation for healing and lasting change
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Grieving the Living and Learning to Respect New Boundaries - Part One
In this episode of Recovering Relationships, Janice and Katie open with a heartfelt discussion on how to grieve someone who is still alive—a parent, partner, or child who is emotionally or physically distant. Together, they explore the concept of ambiguous loss and what it means to hold space for...
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Trust Interrupted
What happens when trust — the foundation of every healthy relationship — gets interrupted? In this episode of Recovering Relationships, Janice and Katie explore how addiction, betrayal, and emotional neglect fracture connections within families, and what it truly takes to rebuild them. Through...
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What Alcohol Took From Us--and How Long it Took to Get it Back
In the official first episode of Recovering Relationships, Janice and Katie discuss mental health, forgiveness, and the barriers that made reconnection difficult.
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Introduction
In this recording, we give an introduction into topics we may discuss in future recordings, while briefly introducing ourselves and our story.