You Can’t Parent From a Place You Never Healed

In this powerful episode of Survival Mode Disrupted, Leticia sits down with Anne Alvarez, a parent coach and school counselor who grew up in a deeply dysfunctional, abusive home – and turned her pain into a mission to help families heal. Anne shares how living with constant conflict, violence, and being sexually abused by her father at age 10 shaped her sense of worth, safety, and identity. She opens up about leaning into faith as a child, praying for protection, and the moment her father finally left the home – a turning point she still sees as divine intervention. Now, as a parent coach and school counselor, Anne uses her story and training to help parents understand something crucial: you cannot raise emotionally healthy children while ignoring your own wounds.

🎙️ What We Talk About

• What survival mode really looks like: “Going through the motions while still bleeding inside.”
• Growing up in a home filled with yelling, violence, dysfunction – and never being told, “This is not okay.”
• Parentification: becoming the emotional adult in the home while your own needs go unmet.
• Overachieving and constant “doing” as a trauma response and desperate search for validation.
• How faith, mentors, and witnessing healthy families gave Anne a new blueprint for what “normal” could be.
• The power of teachers, counselors, and “other adults” who actually see children others label as “problems.”
• Why strong-willed kids are often future leaders – and how we damage them by trying to make them “easier to manage.”
• The importance of apologising to your children, modeling accountability, and repairing relationship.
• How unspoken pain and unexpressed emotions turn into resentment, anxiety, and depression.
• Practical ways parents can start their own healing journey so they stop passing their unhealed trauma on.

🔑 Key Takeaways

“You can’t keep walking around wounded and pretend it’s not bleeding onto your kids.”

“Strong-willed doesn’t mean ‘difficult’ – it often means ‘leader.’ Stop trying to dim what makes them powerful.”

“The words we don’t say inside families break us more than the ones we shout.”

“Your healing journey is not selfish. It’s the most generous thing you can do for your children.”

💬 Connect with Anne

• Business: Masterful Parenting
• Facebook: Masterful Parenting
• Instagram: @masterfulparenting
• YouTube: Masterful Parenting
• LinkedIn: Anne Alvarez