The Making and the Re-Making of 
A Codependent Mind

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Get your copy of the book on Amazon in Canada  🇨🇦
 

How Childhood Trauma Shapes a Codependent Mind

 

Codependency can begin long before adult relationships.

When a child grows up focused on other people’s moods, needs, reactions, and expectations, attention that might otherwise go toward developing a sense of self is directed outward. Instead of learning what they feel, want, need, and value, they may become highly skilled at reading other people, keeping the peace, avoiding conflict, and anticipating what will make others happy.

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The Making and the Re-Making of a Codependent Mind examines how these learned behaviors develop as adaptations to childhood environments—and how they can become maladaptive patterns in adult relationships.

 

Drawing on his own experience, Brian explores how family dynamics, emotional stress, trauma, and C-PTSD shaped the way he understood himself and related to other people. Behaviors such as people-pleasing, caretaking, compliance, conflict avoidance, and weak boundaries did not appear from nowhere. They developed as ways of creating safety and some measure of control in situations where, as a child, he had very little power.

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Over time, those behaviors came with a cost: difficulty identifying his own wants and needs, feeling responsible for other people’s emotions, fear and shame around conflict and self-assertion, and relationships organized around managing other people rather than knowing himself.

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"This was the best description I have ever heard of my own background and the coping mechanisms I developed in response. The specifics are different, but the general patterns he describes of how people in his life impacted how he felt about himself and how he responded, and how those patterns reinforced themselves over time fit like a glove from my perspective."

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From reviews: 

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"I read Codependent No More about seven years ago and it didn’t really help me make any changes in my life. This book (and the podcast) has offered me so much more - it has helped me make sense of my own experiences and be more compassionate with myself. Most of all, it has offered me hope that I too can overcome trauma and shame and find love. And I have! I highly recommend it to anyone struggling with codependency or related behaviors. Reading about Brian’s efforts will help you do the work."

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"I’ve read books on codependency, watched videos on codependency, been to CODA and therapy and this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone articulate their experience in a way that I can relate to."

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"I have been on my journey to healing from codependency for the past five years. I have read many books and followed many podcasts on this subject. This has been the most helpful to me. It has given me words that pinpoint exactly how I feel and helped me go deeper in the causes of my codependent behaviors."

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In Part 1 Brian explores:

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• The family dynamics in childhood that set the stage for codependent habits. 

• The long term effects of trauma, including its complex and chronic manifestations. Threat responses (particularly freeze and fawn) and the connection to the behaviors that make up codependency. 

• The role of shame and fear.

• How these behaviors fostered isolation and perpetuated dysfunctional relationship dynamics.

• The toxic interplay between narcissism and codependency, and the trauma bonds that ensnared him in relationships with abusive narcissists.

 

In Part 2 Brian describes:

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• What is on the other side of codependency and CPTSD? Is it worth it?

• Healing from emotional wounds by connecting with other people, repairing the emotional system and re-writing stories.

• Breaking the codependent habits including people pleasing, caretaking and lack of boundaries that prevent from the emotionally intimate relationships. 

• Acquiring a new approach to romantic relationships.

 

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