A toxic family can shape how you work, trust and love long after you leave home. Author Susan Gold, who wrote Toxic Family: Transcending Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom, tells Jeremy Van Wert what she learned from her own upbringing, why talk therapy alone did not move her forward and what freedom means to her now.
ᛉKey takeaways
- Susan describes her family as hurt children raising hurt children, and she sees patterns repeating across generations until someone looks at them.
- She says talk therapy helped her get the storyline down, but body-based work, meditation, walking and breathwork are what created change for her.
- Jeremy asks clients where they feel anger in the body, then works on the tension itself, such as a clenched jaw or tight shoulders.
- Susan defines freedom as facing the truth, letting go of the victim role and refusing to be defined by a title or job description.
- She says the old programming many people carry may not even belong to them, and that dropping it is for the benefit of the people who came before too.
ᛃ Moments in this one
ᚠSusan Gold's story: from a toxic family to adult freedom
Susan Gold calls herself a transformationalist. She says she trudges through difficult circumstances and sees them as opportunities for soul evolution, though she adds that this was not clear to her at the start. She is the author of Toxic Family: Transcending Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom, and she says the title came from her publisher. Her own title was Magical Illumination.
Susan grew up in a chaotic family with a dream of reaching New York City and being like Barbara Walters. She did reach New York, and she later worked with Walters. In time she says she had to ask why the same red flags she saw at home kept appearing in her own life, and she kept walking through it until it was clear.
Today she works with clients and says she lives in freedom. She also says she has always felt like an outsider who sees what she calls faulty systems and belief systems, and that surrendering to the truth was the starting point.
ᚢHow a toxic family passes patterns down the generations
Susan speaks about her upbringing with care and says her experience is her own. Siblings in her home had very different experiences of it. She describes her parents as hurt children who raised hurt children, and she says that when clients look back, they often see the same patterns repeating through their lineage.
She left home the morning after her high school graduation and says she knew she had to survive and make her own way. Looking back, she says some of what she lived through has served her, and she describes many high achievers as running from this kind of past by achieving more, afraid that a small pebble will make the wall fall.
Jeremy adds that fear and anxiety can pass down the same way. His example is a father who feared change because his own father did. These patterns can continue, he says, until one generation asks why it acts the way it does and how to stop passing it on. Susan believes this programming does not always belong to the person carrying it, and that letting it go helps the people who came before too.
ᚦHealing childhood trauma as an adult: what talk therapy left out
Susan says she still finds trust a little wobbly, and she thinks people from homes like hers often struggle with relationships and self-esteem. She also describes years of recovery from addiction and a decade of clinical depression before she learned to work with it.
In her experience, talk therapy helped her get the storyline down but brought her back to the same square. What created change, she says, were more somatic modalities: going into the body, exploring pockets of trauma and releasing them, along with meditation, walking and breathwork. This is her story, and she is not saying talk therapy fails for everyone.
Jeremy says he does something similar with clients. He asks where they feel anger, whether in the chest, the neck or the teeth, then works on relaxing that tension and asks why the body stores it there. If you want to explore childhood patterns with someone, Jeremy offers individual therapy and ADHD coaching for high achievers.
ᚨWhat freedom really means: leaving the corporate sandbox
For Susan, freedom is addressing the truth, surrendering to it and saying, this does not work for me. She says she gave too much of herself away and had to face her own beliefs, shift them and live from her heart. She has held two corporate jobs, at ICM and at Fox, and otherwise worked as a consultant and an entrepreneur.
Jeremy says he has spent his entire career in the corporate world, and that entrepreneurship has been new for him. He recalls losing a CEO job and worrying about the instability of self-employment, until a friend with 20 contracts pointed out that losing a few would not sink him. Jeremy now sees that working for yourself can be more secure than a single paycheck, though it takes self-discipline.
Susan stresses that she is not judging anyone. Her sister had a fulfilling corporate career and retired early. What she recommends is to follow the intuitive voice when you are being untrue to yourself or feel caged. She says that letting go of the victim role and of the labels society or a job description places on you is part of it.
ᚱAndy Warhol, three pugs and a career built on intuition
Susan describes herself as an empath who can feel the tone of a room. She says that sensitivity helped her career. While working at ICM, she took up personal training on the side, and Barbara Walters became a client. After losing a job for confronting her boss, she decided to match celebrities with brands.
Her breakthrough was a request from Donny Deutsch to get Andy Warhol to endorse a Pontiac client. Nobody answered the phone at Warhol's studio, so she took the train and knocked on the door. His business manager told her to return the next day. When she met Warhol, she realized he cared about his three pugs and wanted attention, so she offered to put the dogs in the shot. He agreed, and she says that deal started her career.
She also describes being an empath as a plus and a minus. If she cannot turn it off, she gets overwhelmed, and she works to release energies that she believes do not belong to her.
ᚲHow Susan works with clients and what she tells listeners
Susan says she usually senses what is going on with a person right away, and she shares her own experience instead of lecturing. She says she is in the trench alongside her clients, with no agenda to pontificate. Jeremy calls it an incredibly personal way of working.
In the education discussion, Susan and Jeremy agree that school often trains people to follow instructions instead of thinking for themselves, and that connection with other people gets lost. Susan describes her difference as connecting the heart to the head.
Her closing message is that listeners have value, worth and purpose, and that they do not need to stay in a rut and furnish it. For readers who want a private, straight conversation about whether this kind of work might help, Jeremy offers a way to book a consultation, and the Mindful Mutiny community is a place to keep the conversation going with others.
This episode includes discussion of difficult childhood experiences, addiction recovery and depression. Susan describes her personal experience and this is not medical or therapeutic advice. If you are struggling, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional or your local emergency services.
ᚨ Questions people ask
What is a transformationalist?
It is the word Susan Gold uses for herself. She says she works with people who face difficult circumstances and sees those circumstances as opportunities for soul evolution. Others have also called her an alchemist, a transformer and an activator.
How can you heal childhood trauma as an adult?
Susan says talk therapy helped her get the storyline down, but body-based work created change for her. She names exploring pockets of trauma in the body, meditation, walking and breathwork. She is describing her own experience, not giving a prescription.
Can toxic family patterns be passed down?
Susan believes so, and she says clients often see the same patterns repeating when they look back through their lineage. Jeremy agrees that fear can pass from parent to child until a generation asks why it acts this way and works to change it.
What does freedom mean to Susan Gold?
She describes freedom as addressing the truth, surrendering to it and living from the heart. It also means letting go of the victim role and of who society or a job title says you should be.