When you’ve spent years in codependent dynamics, it’s easy to confuse intensity with connection and fantasy with compatibility. This episode helps you uncover the subconscious habits, like rescuing, reenacting old wounds, people-pleasing, and idealizing emotionally unavailable partners, that quietly pull you away from real, grounded intimacy. You’ll learn how to shift from managing others’ reactions to expressing your truth, how to recognize when you’re chasing a “do-over,” and how to begin reparenting the parts of you that never felt fully seen. By the end of this episode (and this series), you’ll understand how to build relationships based on clarity, self-attunement, and genuine connection and hang up the familiar cloak of codependent coping.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN:

• How codependency shows up as “unconscious fantasies,” idealization, and the search for an emotionally mature rescuer.
• Why repetition compulsion makes you attracted to familiar but unhealthy partners and how to interrupt that cycle.
• The difference between people-pleasing, peace-keeping, and honest self-expression (and how to practice truth-telling without oversharing).
• How to recognize when you’re managing someone’s reactions instead of gathering real information about who they are.
• Tools for moving from other-attunement to self-attunement, including emotional cues, body awareness, and boundary-setting.
• What reparenting actually looks like day-to-day and how to become the safe, grounded adult your younger self needed.

RELATED EPISODES:

1. Part 1 of 4: 48. Codependence 101: Why You Keep Losing Yourself in Relationships
2. Part 2 of 4: 49. How to Break Codependent Patterns and Come Home to Yourself

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DISCLAIMER: The Self Centered with Katie and Allie Podcast is intended for entertainment, educational, and reflective purposes only. The views, opinions, experiences, and content shared by the hosts and guests are personal and subjective. They are not presented as objective facts or as representative of any professional body, organization, or field, including psychotherapy, coaching, or personal training.

This podcast includes personal reflections on dynamics in various relationships, platonic, family, romantic, and professional. General references to “family,” “an ex,” or “a friend”, for example, are intentionally vague to protect anonymity and do not refer to every individual in those categories. When names are used, they are fictitious, and identifying details are altered. Some information shared is based on research or professional experience, not personal history.

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