Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward reclaiming balance, peace, and authenticity in your relationships—and within yourself.

Originally coined within the AA Recovery community, codependency described the shared thought and behavior patterns among family members of recovering alcoholics. Today, it’s recognized as a layered condition with emotional, mental, and behavioral dimensions that reach far beyond addiction.

By today’s standards, codependency is understood as a pattern of behaviors we adopt to manage or control outcomes—whether in our relationships or in how we seek acceptance and love from others. This can look like fixing, managing, rescuing, or directing others, often at the cost of our own well-being. Common traits include caretaking, people-pleasing, over-concern with others’ opinions, and giving unsolicited advice. These patterns can become habitual, driven by a need to create safety or earn approval.

It can also show up as hypervigilance around how others are feeling, what they need, or what they might be thinking. Sometimes this turns into a deep preoccupation with how others perceive us. We start managing our appearance, words, and energy—trying to win people over or shape ourselves into who we believe they want us to be.

People who experience codependency often have the best intentions and care deeply for others. Many learned early in life that taking control felt necessary to maintain safety and harmony—something they believed, as children, was their responsibility. What they couldn’t know was that true responsibility belonged to their caregivers. That early conditioning of over-responsibility becomes the foundation of codependency. In adulthood, it can resurface when we begin taking on too much responsibility for a partner, adult, child, or loved one engaged in destructive behavior.

In dysfunctional family systems, codependency can quietly take root as a way of life. Children raised in unpredictable, unavailable, addicted, or emotionally neglectful environments often learn to prioritize their parents’ needs to ensure their own survival. They strive to “fix” their parents’ moods, believing that being good enough will earn love and care. This creates a lifelong pattern of hypervigilance—constantly scanning the emotional environment and adjusting behavior to avoid conflict or rejection.

You may have heard the word codependency before, but I often feel there should be a more fitting term for it—a word that truly captures the complexity of this condition. 

Your care runs deep, but sometimes at the cost of your own peace

  • You find yourself consumed by other people’s struggles, leaving little space to tend to your own needs
  • Struggle with Trust: Hard to rely on others, always bracing for disappointment.
  • Low Self-Worth: Feeling “not good enough” and self-critical.
  • Struggle to express your true feelings, needs, and wants—often fearing they’ll be dismissed, criticized, or too much for others.
  • Fear of Intimacy: Vulnerability feels unsafe; may choose unavailable partners.
  • Need for Control: Anxiety from trying to manage everything in life.
  • People-Pleasing & Poor Boundaries: You find it easier to say yes to others than to honor your own no
  • Skewed Expectations of Self & Others: Can show up as self-neglect at one end, or perfectionism at the other, including lack of self-care or unrealistically high expectations
  • Struggling to Define Where You Begin and Others End (Enmeshment)

Some of the ways codependency can show up in our lives include:

Molli Burkett

This shared thread often leads to a similar healing process across all three forms of family dysfunction. Whether you identify with one or all, the path toward healing follows many of the same steps and principles.

So how do we begin to heal? It likely took years to arrive at this point, and these patterns are deeply rooted. The first step is understanding that we can’t simply think our way out of it. If logic alone could fix it, we would have healed long ago. True healing begins with the body—the place where our emotions, memories, beliefs, and stories live. Yet this connection is often missing from traditional talk therapy and self-help methods.

The path forward lies in integrating the mind and body—our Soma. Many of us have spent years disconnected from our physical selves, living mostly in our heads within a culture that prioritizes intellect over intuition. Healing asks us to return to our bodies, to rediscover the sensations, emotions, and wisdom that have always been there. This reconnection is where lasting transformation begins.

I’ve witnessed remarkable change through Somatic work, as individuals find the courage to connect with their bodies, process their emotions, and reflect with compassion on their relationships and experiences.

It would be my honor to walk beside you as you return home to yourself.

It’s true that when you examine Codependency, Narcissistic Abuse, and Childhood Emotional Neglect, you’ll notice a meaningful overlap in symptoms.

You feel the pull to change, but you’re unsure how to begin.

Here’s how to work with me

this way to learn more

Our 1:1 Somatic Coaching experience includes personalized sessions, ongoing chat and email support, and access to 15-minute spot coaching between sessions. You’ll also receive customized exercises and practices to support you at home, all held within an intensive six-month container designed to gently shed the layers that have been hiding your true self and to create lasting transformation in your relationship with yourself and others

1:1 Coaching:
 the mastery


This program includes 1:1 Somatic Coaching sessions with ongoing chat and email support. You will receive suggested exercises for home, all within an intensive, three-month container designed to Ignite the journey back home to yourself. 

1:1 Coaching: 
The Intensive


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