Episodes

On this episode of the Recovery Rebirth Podcast, Dominick and Jillian talk about fear as a universal human experience. We’ve all been scared when we’re startled or while watching a horror movie. These kinds of fear quickly subside and we return to our (ideally) calm state. But some fears are persistent and hijack our ability to have a relatively serene existence. When we’re living in a state of hypervigilance, expecting the worst to happen, it’s difficult to enjoy our lives. For many people in ...

On this episode of the Recovery Rebirth Podcast, we build upon our previous discussion on relationships, taking a deep dive into attachment theory/attachment styles. We also dig deeper into analyzing our patterns, rooted in our childhood traumas/wounding. We share some elucidating insights gained through looking at ourselves vs. focusing on the behavior of our romantic partners. Many of us can be on autopilot while dating, completely unaware of our unconscious patterns. We aim to become aware of...

On this episode of the Recovery Rebirth Podcast, we continue delving into the topic of relationships and learning to have healthy relationships through the recovery process. We reflect upon our childhood experiences and how they set the template for our romantic lives and relationship patterns. By understanding the origins of these patterns, we endeavor to get to the root of the issue and to form new behaviors and healthier patterns. We discuss our fears of abandoment based on our childhood exp...

Relationships can be challenging even for those of us with a strong sense of self-worth, a template for healthy relationships and conflict-resolution skills. But many people in recovery lack these fundamental building blocks for healthy relationships. Dating and relationships can feel like walking through a minefield for folks in recovery. On this episode of the Recovery Rebirth Podcast, we discuss our dating patterns and the childhood experiences that informed them. Both of us have had deeper ...

In this episode of the Recovery Rebirth Podcast, we discuss how we’ve been affected by homelessness, either personally or within our family system. There is an undeniable intersection between people experiencing homelessness and struggling with addiction and/or mental illness. The pandemic has exacerbated the experience of people being precariously housed along with a surge in alcohol/substance use and mental health crises. We tackle the biases and victim-blaming that are endemic to the issue o...

Our Recovery Rebirth Podcast starts off with an unrehearsed, impromptu, and comedic commercial for Ice Mountain sparkling water. Next time, Ice Mountain from BlueTriton Brands, had best pay us for such an endorsement. But seriously though, we have a great episode about the challenges of unworthiness. Struggling with self-worth is a common denominator for many people in recovery. We often come from chaotic homes where parents weren’t able to provide the kind of love and support we craved. It was...

In this episode of the Recovery Rebirth Podcast, Part 3 in a series, we focus on adult trauma and also discuss PTSD. Many of us in recovery have a foundation of trauma from childhood. Unfortunately, we can get stuck in repetition compulsion as adults, recreating traumatic dynamics from our youth as adults which compounds our existing trauma. While many people conflate PTSD with soldiers returning from war, there are myriad ways PTSD can be experienced. Dominick shares about his PTSD surrounding...

The Recovery Rebirth Podcast, hosted by Dominick and Jillian, continues to delve into discussion on trauma and how it shaped our life experiences. We talk about divorce, parental abandonment due to mental illness and death, bullying, and other adverse experiences from childhood. Such experiences caused us to develop maladaptive coping mechanisms. These strategies seemed to work when we were young children in survival mode. However, these tactics failed to help transition into high-functioning ad...

The Recovery Rebirth Podcast presents “Trauma” related to addiction and maladaptive behaviors. Trauma is the gateway drug. Parts 2 and 3 coming soon so please subscribe to the podcast. In this episode, we delve into the complex, vast topic of trauma. We realized quickly that we could not do this topic justice in just one podcast, so we recorded three. In this initial podcast, we discuss different types of trauma, detailed below. We also discuss “big T” vs. “little t trauma”. We talk about the...

2020 and 2021 were unprecedented for many of us. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic of this proportion. People’s work and home lives were upended. Unemployment, working from home, virtual learning, shopping with masks and viewing our fellow citizens as potential contagions. Fear, anxiety, forced isolation and the scarcity mentality, and hoarding took a huge toll on our collective mental health. We were all plunged into survival mode and our amygdala was fully activated. Add to that a...

In this inaugural podcast, Dominick and Jillian, share their perspectives as people in long-term recovery from alcohol, substance use and codependency. We provide a synopsis of the life experiences that led us to addictive and self-sabotaging behaviors, our pathways into recovery, and the new life possible as a result. While our backgrounds may be different, we have the common experiences of losing parents at a young age; through death and abandonment. We have both struggled with overcoming fea...