Codependency is much more widespread than originally thought. You don’t even have to be in a relationship. Codependents have trouble accepting themselves, so they hide who they are to be accepted by someone else. Codependency for Dummies is the most comprehensive book on the topic to date. It describes the history, symptoms, causes, and relationship dynamics of codependency and provides self-assessment questionnaires. The majority of the book is devoted to healing and lays out a clear plan for recovery with exercises, practical advice, and helpful daily reminders to help you know, honor, protect, and express yourself. It clarifies deep psychological dynamics that underlie codependency, yet is written in a conversational style that’s easily understandable by everyone. You will learn: How to raise your self-esteem The difference between care-giving and codependent care-taking The difference between healthy and dysfunctional families How to set boundaries How to separate responsibility for yourself and for others How to overcome guilt and resentment

This book helps readers identify if they have co-dependency traits that stem from wrong childhood programming. The book seeks to touch upon aspects of self-love, in the absence of which co-dependent people lose themselves in each situation to seek validation and approval from outsiders. The author courageously shares her childhood events, which, were not handled well by her primary caregivers, and shut her innocent brain encouraging her to tolerate exploitations by toxic people later on in her life as an adult. She gives a fresh perspective on the new-age therapy of healing through unblocking seven prominent chakras that play an important role in grounding us and developing our self-worth and self-love, through dedicated meditation. The author stresses the need to heal ourselves from childhood trauma to lead a stress-free, anxiety-free and healthy life.

In a crisis, it's easy to revert to old patterns. Caring for your well-being during the coronavirus pandemic includes maintaining healthy boundaries and saying no to unhealthy relationships. The healing touchstone of millions, this modern classic by one of America's best-loved and most inspirational authors holds the key to understanding codependency and to unlocking its stultifying hold on your life. Is someone else's problem your problem? If, like so many others, you've lost sight of your own life in the drama of tending to someone else's, you may be codependent--and you may find yourself in this book--Codependent No More. The healing touchstone of millions, this modern classic by one of America's best-loved and most inspirational authors holds the key to understanding codependency and to unlocking its stultifying hold on your life. With instructive life stories, personal reflections, exercises, and self-tests, Codependent No More is a simple, straightforward, readable map of the perplexing world of codependency--charting the path to freedom and a lifetime of healing, hope, and happiness. Melody Beattie is the author of Beyond Codependency, The Language of Letting Go, Stop Being Mean to Yourself, The Codependent No More Workbook and Playing It by Heart.

A nationally recognized author and codependency expert examines the roots of shame and its connection with codependent relationships. Learn how to heal from their destructive hold by implementing eight steps that will empower the real you, and lead to healthier relationships. Shame: the torment you feel when you’re exposed, humiliated, or rejected; the feeling of not being good enough. It’s a deeply painful and universal emotion, yet is not frequently discussed. For some, shame lurks in the unconscious, undermining self-esteem, destroying confidence, and leading to codependency. These codependent relationships—where we overlook our own needs and desires as we try to care for, protect, or please another—often cover up abuse, addiction, or other harmful behaviors. Shame and codependency feed off one another, making us feel stuck, never able to let go, move on, and become the true self we were meant to be. In Conquering Shame and Codependency, Darlene Lancer sheds new light on shame: how codependents’ feelings and beliefs about shame affect their identity, their behavior, and how shame can corrode relationships, destroying trust and love. She then provides eight steps to heal from shame, learn to love yourself, and develop healthy relationships.

"Prodependence," a new psychological term created by Robert Weiss to describe healthy interdependence in the modern world, turns this around. Rather that preaching detachment and distance over continued bonding and assistance, as so many therapists, self-help books, and 12-step groups currently do, prodependence celebrates the human need for and pursuit of intimate connection, viewing this as a positive force for change. Simply stated, prodependence occurs when attachment relationships are mutually beneficial--with one person's strengths filling in the weak points of the other, and vice versa. And this can occur even when an addiction is present

'The disease he has is addiction,' Nina Renata Aron writes of her boyfriend. 'The disease I have is loving him.' Their affair is dramatic, urgent - an intoxicating antidote to the lonely days of early motherhood. But soon, K starts using again. Even as his addiction deepens, she stays, thinking she can save him. It's a familiar pattern, developed in an adolescence marred by family trauma - how can she break it? If she leaves, has she failed? In this unflinching memoir, Aron shows the devastating effect of addiction on loved ones. She also untangles the messy ties between her own history of enabling, society's expectations of womanhood and our ideas of love. She cracks open the feminised phenomenon of co-dependency, tracing its development from the formation of Al-Anon to recent research in the psychology of addiction, and asks uncomfortable questions about when help becomes harm, and when we choose to leave.

"Born in the cauldron of personal experience of suffering and healing and honed through years of professional experience, this book will help anyone understand the attractors of love and consequent suffering. I recommend it to couples who are mystified by the depth and repitition of their pain and joy and to therapists whose destiny is to help them." ~ Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., co-author with Helen LaKelly Hunt of Making Marriage Simple: Transform the Relationship you Have Into the Relationship you Want Since the dawn of civilization, men and women have been magnetically and irresistibly drawn together into romantic relationships, not so much by what they see, feel and think, but more by invisible forces. When individuals with healthy emotional backgrounds meet, the irresistible “love force” creates a sustainable, reciprocal and stable relationship. Codependents and emotional manipulators are similarly enveloped in a seductive dreamlike state; however, it will later unfold into a painful “seesaw” of love, pain, hope and disappointment. The soul mate of the codependent’s dreams will become the emotional manipulator of their nightmares. Readers of the Human Magnet Syndrome will better understand why they, despite their dreams for true love, find themselves hopelessly and painfully in love with partners who hurt them. This book will guide and inspire both the layman and the professional.