Relational Practice: a social work podcast
Aug 30, 2026 · 1 hr 10 min · 12 segments
In this episode of *Relational Practice: A Social Work Podcast*, hosts Dr. Jodie Park and Rose Mackey sit down for a deeply honest conversation with Dr. Adam McCormick, Professor of Social Work at St…
Adam McCormickGuest
Rose MackeyHost
Jodie ParkHost
Can we talk a little bit about why caring for others can become a coping mechanism to avoid addressing personal trauma? Like, I just think that's fascinating.
Yeah, you know, I, I think it's a, a, a in many ways a, a kind of a pretty complex trajectory, but also sometimes a, a pretty simple one, um, in a lot of ways.
And here in the United States, we have a social worker named Terry Real, who does such a brilliant job of explaining why young people develop these, these adaptations.
But he talks about kind of one-over adaptations and one-under adaptations to, to trauma.
And the one-over ones, those are kind of the hurt people hurt people ones that we know a lot about, that, you know, anybody who does trauma work.
We, we know about power and control and, and fight and flight and, and, but there's a whole nother [laughs] set of adaptations that children en- engage in order to stay safe, in order to attach or survive, and these are one-under.
Meaning, you know, I don't go one-over people with power and control, and I don't go one o- over these really scary or overwhelming emotions.
I have to people please to keep people in relationships, or I have to be the family hero to make my family normal, or I have to do all of the, the emotional labor or over-function in relationships because somebody else is under-functioning in a relationship.
Or the, you know, there's a whole host of reasons that a child would take these on.
Like I said before, we, we become good at the things that, that we do in, in childhood.
And then here is this profession, social work, that just happens to, to, to, to, to, uh, uh, to require the, these a- adaptations that I've become so good at.
Uh, I, I remember, uh, and I write about this in the book, when I, I was talking to my g- guidance counselor when I first started college, and I was a first-generation college student from a very, um, uh, toxic, uh, uh, family and a, and a, and a family where, um, you know, going to college wasn't, wasn't something that people did.
And as I'm sitting down with this, this guidance counselor, I'm getting really, really frustrated because they're going through this list of majors and nothing is...
And then they get to S, social work, and explain what a social worker does, crisis intervention, trauma work, you know, all, all of this and, and I start to perk up a little bit and, and I remember him saying to me, "Are you any good at any of those things?" And, and I think to myself like, "You have no idea." Um, but he says, uh...
Can we talk a little bit about why caring for others can become a coping mechanism to avoid addressing personal trauma? Like, I just think that's fascinating.
Yeah, you know, I, I think it's a, a, a in many ways a, a kind of a pretty complex trajectory, but also sometimes a, a pretty simple one, um, in a lot of ways.
And here in the United States, we have a social worker named Terry Real, who does such a brilliant job of explaining why young people develop these, these adaptations.
But he talks about kind of one-over adaptations and one-under adaptations to, to trauma.
And the one-over ones, those are kind of the hurt people hurt people ones that we know a lot about, that, you know, anybody who does trauma work.
We, we know about power and control and, and fight and flight and, and, but there's a whole nother [laughs] set of adaptations that children en- engage in order to stay safe, in order to attach or survive, and these are one-under.
Meaning, you know, I don't go one-over people with power and control, and I don't go one o- over these really scary or overwhelming emotions.
I have to people please to keep people in relationships, or I have to be the family hero to make my family normal, or I have to do all of the, the emotional labor or over-function in relationships because somebody else is under-functioning in a relationship.
Or the, you know, there's a whole host of reasons that a child would take these on.
Like I said before, we, we become good at the things that, that we do in, in childhood.
And then here is this profession, social work, that just happens to, to, to, to, to, uh, uh, to require the, these a- adaptations that I've become so good at.
Uh, I, I remember, uh, and I write about this in the book, when I, I was talking to my g- guidance counselor when I first started college, and I was a first-generation college student from a very, um, uh, toxic, uh, uh, family and a, and a, and a family where, um, you know, going to college wasn't, wasn't something that people did.
And as I'm sitting down with this, this guidance counselor, I'm getting really, really frustrated because they're going through this list of majors and nothing is...
And then they get to S, social work, and explain what a social worker does, crisis intervention, trauma work, you know, all, all of this and, and I start to perk up a little bit and, and I remember him saying to me, "Are you any good at any of those things?" And, and I think to myself like, "You have no idea." Um, but he says, uh...
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