Josh Connolly
From Pain to Power a Journey of Healing
In this insightful and deeply personal interview, Josh Connelly, an Amazon best-selling author and advocate for individuals impacted by toxic parenting and parental alcohol issues, shares his journey of healing and empowerment. His book 'It’s Them Not You: How to Break Free from Toxic Parents and Reclaim Your Story' addresses the often taboo and misunderstood topic of toxic parents. Josh explores what defines toxic parenting, emphasizing the consistent lack of accountability and emotional abuse, often disguised behind a respectable facade. He highlights the profound effects of growing up in dysfunctional environments, including self-abandonment, loneliness, and difficulties in emotional regulation.
Josh explains how these childhood experiences shape adult behaviour, particularly through the nervous system’s stress, rest, and shutdown states, and underscores the importance of reconnecting with the body to heal trauma. Through breathwork and somatic practices, individuals can access buried emotional memories and begin the process of self-love and recovery.
He challenges conventional ideas around forgiveness, asserting that forgiveness is not mandatory for healing, especially when abuse persists or accountability is absent. Instead, survivors can choose to move on without forgiving if that better serves their well-being. Josh also critiques societal dysfunction, particularly in Western culture, where children’s innate value and emotional needs are often neglected, leading to systemic issues like mental health struggles and disconnection.
Finally, Josh advocates for community, presence, and connection as keys to healing and a meaningful life. He encourages those affected by toxic parenting to be gentle with themselves, seek supportive communities, and embark on their healing journeys with curiosity and compassion.
Josh explains how these childhood experiences shape adult behaviour, particularly through the nervous system’s stress, rest, and shutdown states, and underscores the importance of reconnecting with the body to heal trauma. Through breathwork and somatic practices, individuals can access buried emotional memories and begin the process of self-love and recovery.
He challenges conventional ideas around forgiveness, asserting that forgiveness is not mandatory for healing, especially when abuse persists or accountability is absent. Instead, survivors can choose to move on without forgiving if that better serves their well-being. Josh also critiques societal dysfunction, particularly in Western culture, where children’s innate value and emotional needs are often neglected, leading to systemic issues like mental health struggles and disconnection.
Finally, Josh advocates for community, presence, and connection as keys to healing and a meaningful life. He encourages those affected by toxic parenting to be gentle with themselves, seek supportive communities, and embark on their healing journeys with curiosity and compassion.
watch episode here:
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Highlights
Key Insights
- 🌱 Josh’s healing journey began at 24, leading to his impactful work on toxic parenting and emotional reconnection.
- 🛑 Toxic parents are defined by consistent emotional abuse and a refusal to take accountability, often hiding behind a respectable public image.
- 💔 Growing up with toxic parents often results in self-abandonment, loneliness, and distorted self-worth in adulthood.
- 🌬 Breathwork and somatic practices help survivors reconnect with their bodies and access repressed trauma for healing.
- ❌ Forgiveness is not mandatory; survivors can choose to move on without forgiving abusive parents, especially if accountability is absent.
- 🏡 Dysfunction is often normalised in society, but healing begins with community, presence, and acceptance of one’s experiences.
- 💡 The meaning of life, according to Josh, is connection—being truly present and connected with others brings fulfilment.
Key Insights
- 🔍 Defining Toxic Parenting is Subjective but Centre's on Accountability:Josh stresses that while many parents exhibit toxic traits to some degree, the hallmark of toxic parenting lies in persistent emotional abuse combined with a refusal to acknowledge or take responsibility for harmful behaviours. This distinction empowers individuals to assess their experiences on their own terms rather than relying on rigid labels, which can be dismissive or invalidating. The emphasis on accountability is crucial because it separates occasional parental flaws from sustained emotional harm.
- 💔 Emotional Self-Abandonment and People-Pleasing are Survival Mechanisms: Children of toxic parents often grow into adults who abandon their own needs and desires to please others, creating personas crafted from external expectations rather than authentic selves. Josh’s personal story reveals how this leads to chronic loneliness—not due to lack of social contact but due to inability to reveal and connect as one’s true self. This insight underscores the importance of reclaiming identity and learning to value oneself beyond others’ perceptions.
- 🧠 The Nervous System’s Role in Trauma and Healing: Josh discusses the three states of the nervous system—rest, stress, and shutdown (dissociation)—to explain how trauma from toxic parenting imprints on the body. Many survivors reside in the shutdown state, where disconnection and emotional numbness prevail as a survival strategy. Healing requires helping people regulate these states and develop the ability to return to rest through body-centered practices, highlighting why traditional talk therapies alone may fall short.
- 🌬 Breath-work as a Gateway to Emotional Release and Body Awareness: Breath-work, particularly conscious connected breathing, is presented as a powerful tool to bypass the rational mind and access the body’s stored memories and emotions.