Episode 41 of What’s Your Damage? brings a first for the show: AJ and AJ welcome their editor, KT, as their very first guest. Together, the three of them unpack abandonment — being left, leaving others, and the ways we sometimes abandon ourselves.

KT kicks things off by tracing the roots of her codependency back to high school, when a complicated relationship with a close friend and make-out buddy ended in a painful rupture. After a mental health crisis involving her friend, KT found herself suddenly ostracized not only by that person, but by their family as well. It became her first real rock-bottom moment and helped establish a pattern of trying to rescue the people she loved.

That pattern showed up again in a seven-and-a-half-year relationship. KT rushed into building a life with her partner — moving in quickly, getting pets together, and becoming deeply invested in helping him through difficult periods. As the relationship became increasingly strained and alcohol became a major problem, KT found some escape through another relationship within their polyamorous dynamic.

But after the original relationship ended, the person who had become her refuge fell in love with someone else and moved away, triggering KT’s deepest fear of abandonment. Strangely, it also became the beginning of something new. With distance, time, and an unexpected assist from the show Couples Therapy, KT began learning how to stop rescuing everyone around her and start healing herself.

J approaches abandonment from a different direction: the grief of realizing that relationships can change even when nobody has done anything wrong. After moving to a new city with her husband, she found herself listening again and again to The Head and the Heart’s “Rivers and Roads,” a song about distance from the people who once felt closest to you.

When her parents also moved away, the hometown “hub” she had always expected to return to disappeared. During one visit, she and her husband realized that none of the doors they had imagined opening for them actually did — there were no invitations to stay, no plans being made, and no easy return to the life they had left behind. After a year of trying to maintain those relationships exactly as they had been, J finally let herself grieve on the drive home and accept that they needed to build roots where they were now.

A closes things out by talking about a different kind of abandonment: abandoning herself.

During her years in New York, she allowed the culture surrounding UCB to shake her sense of who she was. She tried to become the kind of performer and person she believed the theater wanted her to be, pouring her time, talent, energy, and identity into an institution she hoped would validate her.

Then she was cut.

Instead of fighting her way back in, she made the decision never to return. Around that time, HAIM’s album Days Are Gone — and especially its title track — became part of the process of letting go. The theater she had given so much to was gone from her life, but in leaving it behind, she began finding herself again.

This week, it’s abandonment from every direction: the people who leave us, the lives we outgrow, the relationships we can’t rescue, and the moment we realize that sometimes the person we most need to stop abandoning is ourselves.

AJ and AJ are middle-aged now, which means it’s time to look back at who used to be in charge: their parents.

“J“ remembers blasting Billy Joel with her dad and how quickly a fun moment could shift when his need for control took over. One Sunday, a harmless evening of cards, singing, and good clean Mormon fun turned into “J” and her brother quietly managing their dad’s mood — something she now recognizes as fawning and children being asked to emotionally caretake for an adult.

“A” reflects on control from the other side now that she’s raising Little "A". How do you guide your kid, build good habits, and keep them safe while still preparing to eventually let them go?

She also revisits being called “Cinderella” growing up, when keeping the house clean often felt tied to keeping her mother happy. Now Little “A” is obsessed with Cinderella — but instead of seeing A as the girl scrubbing the floors, she sees her mom as the princess.

This week, AJ and AJ talk parental control, fawning, emotional caretaking, and trying not to pass the same patterns down.

Episode 39: AJ and AJ begin this episode with a trigger warning as they explore experiences of violation, entitlement, and the anger that comes from realizing someone else believed they had a right to you.

“J” starts with her time performing in The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, where she played the only woman in the cast—a character who, quite literally, gets passed around the men in the family. After the production ended, “J” discovered that one of her castmates had secretly developed feelings for her. Two years later, when she met the man who would become her husband, that former castmate became angry with both of them because, in his mind, “J” should have given him a chance. “J” talks about the rage of realizing that someone she considered a friend felt entitled to her body, her attention, and her heart—and how clearly she could see the patriarchy at work in that entitlement.

“A” takes us back to her college years, when she had a huge crush on a baseball player. One night, while out at a bar with friends, “A” was drugged. Thankfully, her friends recognized something was wrong, got her home, and kept her safe. Later, when she saw the baseball player, instead of showing concern, he laughed and called her “drunky.” “A” talks about the anger, humiliation, and sense of violation that followed—and how she turned to Nelly Furtado’s music to reconnect with her own power.

This week, AJ and AJ talk about the many forms violation can take, the entitlement that so often sits underneath it, and what it means to reclaim yourself after someone makes you feel like your body, feelings, or choices belong to them.