The Fan in the Window Podcast
The Fan in the Window: Interrupting What We Inherit
There are things we carry that were never named.
Not just experiences—
but patterns, responses, and ways of moving through the world
that took shape long before we had language for them.
This podcast explores that.
The ways our nervous systems are shaped by what we live through.
The patterns that feel like personality.
The ways we adapt, survive, and sometimes keep repeating what once helped us get through.
Some episodes are personal.
Some weave in research.
All of them return to one question:
What did we inherit—and what are we ready to interrupt?
It didn’t start with you. But you can interrupt it.
New episodes will be available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Apple Music, and iHeart Podcasts starting Tuesday, March 31, 2026.
Episode 1: The Book Wasn’t the End
Tressa Bell introduces her podcast, The Fan in the Window, about trauma, nervous systems, generational patterns, family systems, caregiving, and the work of healing and interruption. In the episode “The Book Wasn’t the End,” she describes finishing her manuscript and realizing that publicly naming patterns exposed how they still operate in her body, including over-functioning, bracing, and managing what isn’t hers. Drawing on Dr. Bruce Perry’s “bottom-up” brain development and the concept of implicit memory, she explains how childhood unpredictability and silence shape nervous systems before language, and shares that she experienced sexual abuse as a child, compounded by not being able to name it. She reflects on how hypervigilance can look like competence, including in nursing, and how reactive urgency can be passed to grandchildren. She offers a self-check question, a brief grounding exercise, and safety disclaimers and resources.
This podcast is for educational and reflective purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice.
Listener discretion is encouraged.
Episode 2: You Can Leave and Still Be Dysregulated
Tressa Bell explains that leaving an unhealthy marriage or environment can create external safety but not immediate nervous system regulation, describing how, after leaving her marriage amid escalating conflict and self-harm threats, she remained hypervigilant and cycled between fight responses and dissociation. She distinguishes safety (external) from regulation (internal), noting that nervous systems follow learned patterns rather than logic, and cites Bruce Perry’s “old dirt road vs. new highway” metaphor to describe healing as building new pathways through repetition, not erasing old ones. Drawing from What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry, she emphasizes that regulation happens in relationships and through rhythm, movement, rituals, and community—protective factors often missing in modern isolated healing. She stresses repair over perfection, offers a brief grounding exercise, and previews the next episode on how chaos can feel familiar and inherited.
This podcast is for educational and reflective purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice.
Listener discretion is encouraged.
Episode 3: When Chaos Feels Normal
Host Tressa Bell introduces The Fan in the Window, and explores how growing up around conflict, emotional unpredictability, and unresolved intensity can become “normal,” shaping adult templates for love, attraction, and resilience as conditioning rather than health. She explains that children prioritize attachment over accuracy, adapt to survive, and often can’t name dysfunction even when they perceive tension, power dynamics, and harm. Using a dinner-table memory where her mother cruelly told someone she hoped he would choke, Bell describes how normalization can trigger “management mode” instead of clarity and how lack of repair teaches that relationships are destabilizing and damaging. She discusses how the nervous system builds expectations, making familiar chaos feel more trustworthy than calm safety, invites listeners to notice “familiar vs. safe,” and closes with a brief grounding exercise, resources, and a preview of the next episode on what children carry.
This podcast is for educational and reflective purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice.
Listener discretion is encouraged.
Episode 4: What Children Carry
Host Tressa Bell introduces The Fan in the Window: Interrupting What We Inherit and the episode “What Children Carry,” explaining that children absorb adult tension, tone, silence, and nervous-system shifts without needing explanations, often taking on anxiety and responsibility that are not theirs. She describes how kids learn love and conflict through what adults demonstrate, especially what happens after rupture, emphasizing that repair, accountability, and naming impact teach that relationships can bend without breaking. Drawing on personal moments with her grandkids and research referenced in What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry, she notes children experience repeated patterns as bodily expectations. Bell offers reflection questions about what listeners carried in childhood, leads a brief grounding practice, previews a next episode on family roles, and mentions her book The Fan in the Window releasing April 21.
This podcast is for educational and reflective purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice.
Listener discretion is encouraged.
Episode 5: The Roles We Take On
Host Tressa Bell introduces The Fan in the Window: Interrupting What We Inherit and explores how children in chaotic, emotionally unpredictable homes adapt by organizing themselves into survival roles—responsible one, peacekeeper, protector, invisible one, performer, or mascot—often without realizing it. She connects this to family systems theory (Murray Bowen) and parentification, describing instrumental and emotional forms and noting research links between emotional parentification and adult anxiety, depression, emotional regulation difficulties, and boundary struggles. Bell shares a teenage memory of protecting a younger sister and explains, using Lindsey Gibson’s concept of the “Internalizer,” how these roles persist into adulthood and across relationships and work because the nervous system keeps running “old programs.” She observes different roles emerging in her own children, reflects on Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey’s “what happened to you” lens, and invites listeners to identify their role, practice awareness, and use grounding to begin interruption and repair. She mentions her book, The Fan in the Window, releasing on April 21.
This podcast is for educational and reflective purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice.
Listener discretion is encouraged.
Episode 6: When You Change and the System Doesn't
Tressa Bell introduces The Fan in the Window: Interrupting What We Inherit and explores what happens when you step out of an inherited family or workplace role. Drawing on Murray Bowen’s Differentiation of Self and Family Projection Process, she explains how systems often push back—through anger, silence, questioning, or blame—to restore the old balance. She shares personal examples of being ignored by family and judged at work when she stopped always saying yes, and connects this to nervous system responses, including Steven Porges’s neuroception. Bell reframes guilt as a nervous system signal of unfamiliar change, not proof you’re wrong, and notes some relationships adapt while others can’t hold your growth. She offers reflection prompts, a brief grounding exercise, and previews a next episode on grieving lost roles while promoting her book.
This podcast is for educational and reflective purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice.
Listener discretion is encouraged.