255 - How Your Inner Child Shows Up in Love: The Wounds That Decide Who You Choose w/ Galit Atlas
1h 5m | Nov 4, 2026Everything that helped you survive childhood costs you something as an adult. Love is usually where you pay.
Dr. Galit Atlas is a psychoanalyst, an NYU faculty member, and author of Emotional Inheritance and her new book, Come Closer: Childhood Wounds, Adult Love, and the Secrets of Emotional Intimacy. As a kid, her closest friend was her diary, because it would never hurt her, disappoint her, or leave. This is a conversation about the six wounded inner children we carry into adulthood, and why love is where they show up the loudest.
✨ What this episode explores
▪️ Choosing the Safe, Empty Partner - Why the frightened child often avoids repeating chaos by choosing someone less available, and how that safety slowly turns into a relationship that feels empty.
▪️ Parenting From Your Own Wounds - Why giving your kid the parent you wished you had can be a conversation with your own fantasy instead of your actual child, and what it looks like when a kid is asking for more structure.
▪️ Leaving Volatile vs. Empty Relationships - Why both are hard to walk away from: in the volatile one you keep trying to convince them you’re good, and in the empty one you’re convinced you’re crazy for wanting more.
▪️ Chosen Child vs. Golden Child - The difference between being picked to meet a parent’s emotional needs and being picked to make them look good, and why the threat for not delivering is usually louder than any praise.
▪️ Meeting Your Needs in Secret - How guilty children learn to take care of themselves behind closed doors, like taking a nap and saying they were on a call, and why asking directly is the real work.
🎧 If this episode resonated, you might also love:
▪️ Ep 134 | Avoidant Attachment and Romantic Relationship Pitfalls for ACA’s with Dr. Sofya Vass
▪️ Ep 252 | Toxic Guilt: Why You Feel Like You’re in Trouble When You Didn’t Do Anything Wrong
▪️ Ep 227 | Daughters of Narcissistic Fathers: The Golden Child’s Grief w/ Taylor Pearl
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