Patient recovery for the hidden self.
Recovering My Inner Child treats recovery as slow, concrete work rather than instant transformation. Through ACA readings, personal reflection, and long-form conversations, it connects inner-child healing with anxiety, boundaries, self-doubt, learning, acceptance, and responsibility.
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Recovering My Inner Child approaches recovery as a disciplined return to the parts of the self that learned to hide. The show often begins with ACA material, especially readings about adult children, dysfunctional families, membership, fear, boundaries, and the injured inner child. That fellowship language gives the series a grounded center. It is less interested in performance than in repetition, reflection, and gradual clarity. One episode may focus on Tradition Three and the need to make room for anyone seeking recovery from a dysfunctional upbringing. Another may turn The Courage to Be Disliked into a meditation on approval, worth, and the separation of tasks. The movement is usually patient: name the wound, find the mechanism, then choose a small next action. The show also reaches beyond inner-child language. Conversations with David Hanscom connect anxiety, anger, chronic pain, expressive writing, and active meditation. Barb Oakley brings learning, metaphor, analogy, and the possibility of changing one's relationship to difficult subjects. Dr. David Burns brings cognitive behavioral therapy, procrastination, acceptance, and the paradox that painful feelings can point to values rather than defects. James Hollis brings Jungian analysis, dreams, shadow, parental inheritance, and meaning in the second half of life. These interviews are spacious. Guests often carry the explanation while the interviewer nudges for personal relevance or clearer examples. Across both solo and interview episodes, the recurring concern is how old family patterns become adult reflexes: people-pleasing, self-doubt, perfectionism, anger, isolation, and fear of disapproval. The remedies are modest but concrete. Writing one sentence can matter. Calling a friend can matter. Sitting quietly for two minutes can matter. The show is for listeners who prefer recovery work that feels earnest, searching, and practical. It carries real pain, including abuse, family dysfunction, anxiety, depression, and addiction language, but its aim is repair rather than confession for its own sake.
Made for: For adults working through childhood wounds, family dysfunction, anxiety, self-doubt, or approval-seeking patterns. It also fits listeners drawn to ACA recovery language, CBT, Jungian thought, learning strategies, and practical emotional tools.
What sets it apart: The show blends ACA readings and inner-child reflection with extended conversations about psychology, learning, chronic pain, and meaning. Its strength is the way it turns large emotional ideas into repeatable daily practices without rushing the listener toward a polished conclusion.
This podcast is my journey on healing, recovery, and thriving from Trauma
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Kwan Saluja turns conversations about anxiety, pain, therapy and meaning into accessible accounts of how psychological change may work.
Kwan Sal Saluja follows big questions about distress and change into detailed conversations with authors and practitioners. Anxiety, chronic pain, cognitive behavioral therapy and Jungian analysis all enter through personal histories, then become discussions of concrete methods…
A notebook becomes an anxiety tool, while Jungian questions ask whose life you are actually living.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at anxiety, chronic pain, expressive writing, anger, and active meditation.
This single-episode review frames anxiety as something felt through the body, tracing David Hanscom's path from an abusive childhood to extreme anxiety, physical symptoms, and chronic pain.
Barb Oakley's path from math phobe to engineering professor makes learning feel open to revision.
Barb Oakley's story gives this episode its center of gravity: the uneasy work of changing the story a person tells about their own ability. She recalls going from a self-described math phobe to a professor of engineering, not through a sudden breakthrough, but through doubt,…
A patient conversation about procrastination, acceptance, and the values Burns finds inside painful feelings.
Change arrives through two deliberately uncomfortable ideas: action can precede motivation, and acceptance can create the larger shift. Kawan Seluja's conversation with best-selling author Dr.
A thoughtful conversation about midlife, inherited patterns, and the hard freedom of choosing a life.
Midlife is treated here as a call to self-knowledge, not just a point on the calendar. The episode follows James Hollis from a serious depression in his academic career into therapy, Zurich, analytic psychology, and a second vocation, then uses that personal turn to open out…
A patient, searching conversation about midlife, inherited patterns, and the work of becoming oneself.
James Hollis, a Washington-based Jungian psychoanalyst, treats the second half of life as an inward turning point, following his path from humanities academic through midlife depression, therapy, and analytic psychology in Zurich.
A personal chronic-pain story turns anxiety into a matter of mechanism, distance, and practice.
Chronic pain opens into a broader look at anxiety as David Hanscom traces a 15-year struggle shaped by an abusive childhood, demanding work, professional success, and symptoms he could not initially explain.
Executive function, translated for real life.
Long-form arguments with biography behind them.
James Hollis, a Washington-based Jungian psychoanalyst and author of 16 books, connects his own midlife depression to the ideas in "Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life" and "The Middle Passage." He explains Jungian analysis as dialogue with the unconscious through dreams, feeling, behavior, and recurring patterns rather than only cognitive or pharmacological change.
Host Kulan Suleja reads from ACA literature on service and Promise 11, focusing on the 'dark night of the soul' in recovery.
Interview with Lisa Romano about her recovery from a traumatic childhood and her work helping others overcome codependency.
Spine surgeon Dr.
This episode discusses ACA Tradition 3, emphasizing that anyone from a dysfunctional family who desires recovery is a member, and explores the importance of inclusivity and boundaries in the fellowship.
Host Kwan discusses how the book 'The Courage to Be Disliked' helps heal the inner child by overcoming the need for approval and applying Adler's separation of tasks.
["Recovering My Inner Child features Kwan Saluja interviewing David Hanscom, author of Back in Control, about reducing anxiety through expressive writing, active meditation, and chronic-pain management.", "Hanscom says he lived with chronic pain for 15 years after an abusive childhood and that writing started changing his symptoms within two weeks.", "He argues that anxiety, anger, and pain are nervous-system processes, not simple mindset problems, and that tearing up the pages helps keep the thoughts from being analyzed.", "He also describes a 4.6% surgery conversion rate in his practice, family-triggered pain loops, and an Omega Institute workshop in Rhinebeck, New York, scheduled for June 29 to July 1."]
This episode applies mathematician George Pauliou's four-step problem-solving method to emotional recovery and inner child work.
A reading and reflection on the inner child in recovery from family dysfunction, emphasizing the need to heal the hurt true self.
["Barb Oakley says she moved from Russian translator and self-described math phobe to engineering professor by starting over with remedial high-school math at age 26.", "Kwan Saluja frames her Coursera course Learning to Learn as the most popular massive open online course of all time and asks why it drew so many people.", "Oakley says recall after reading, chunking, metaphor, and analogy matter more than rereading for technical material.", "She also describes Pomodoro, sleep, exercise, and broadening passion as practical habits that help people work and learn."]
Recovering My Inner Child's 'How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Change Your Life' centers on Dr.
James Hollis argues that the unconscious can keep choosing partners, careers, and habits until it is made conscious.
Lisa Romano discusses her traumatic childhood and her work helping others recover from codependency and trauma.