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I remember I was sitting in a cafe with my wife when the idea came to me. I had always thought about doing something along those lines and the ideas had been jostling in my head for a few years. The one thing I did know is that I wanted it to reflect my own personal journey and experiences as a codependent, something I have managed day to day for as long as I can remember. I also wanted it to have a clear message. 

That codependents aren’t sick. They don’t need pills or diagnosing. I wanted to make it very clear that recovery is very much in the hands of the codependent and that recovery starts and finishes with the codependent. Codependency is behavioural and learned from the environment we grew up in and it can be unlearnt. The only recovery from codependency is to find and maintain the individual within.

It also got me thinking about the roots of my codependency and how I have behaved in relationships. First my mother. 

I always thought that my mother was cold. Given her experiences with my father, it would not have been beyond belief that she turned off the emotional tap. I just didn’t realise how much I had learned from her when it came to codependency. My mother stayed with him even though, she made herself many promises to leave. Why didn’t she? Because she was codependent herself and she taught me all I know now about it. Due to the fact that I couldn’t learn much from my father, my mother was my main frame of reference and she stayed, primarily because she was on a life long quest to fix him, change him and make him love her. A quest that ultimately failed. Her last words to him were “I forgive you”, which summed up her whole enmeshed attitude to a man who had consistently and intentionally let her and the family down. She was the matriarch and martyr of our family, working three jobs and never taking anything for herself. This is what I learned about relationships.

There was also a more sinister side to this. My mother was a controlling, enabling codependent who expected that all around her complied with her wishes but shielded my father from the consequences of his actions. We got the tough, Irish immigrant attitude that helped us survive without all the more positive aspects found further up Maslow’s Triangle of Needs. What did this teach me? That relationships were all about sacrifice. Sacrificing the individual inside you, your needs and wishes for the good of others. I learnt that my only value was with what I did, not who I was. I was taught egoism, not altruism. 

With this background, I trod with great apprehension into the adult world, not knowing a damn thing that was useful. Disaster was very likely to strike and it did, many times. Obligation over Self, guilt over self care, compliance over independence and resentment instead of healthy boundaries. I had the perfect training for the program.

After plenty of hard work—and more than a few setbacks—I’ve arrived at 63 feeling grounded and empowered. I’m fully my own person. I cherish my individuality, and I find joy in uncovering new layers of myself, as well as reclaiming the parts I once buried in shame. I’m living proof that discovering who you truly are can be a total game-changer when it comes to healing from codependency.

Is it scary? Absolutely. There’s no codependent safety net to collapse into, no endless distraction with the external world to avoid what’s happening inside, no escaping intimacy or vulnerability. But that’s the beauty of it. That’s what being truly alive is all about.

I poured all of this experience into On Demand Therapy. The same tools that helped me through that transformation are all there. They gave me the insight to break old patterns and the awareness to finally put myself at the center of my own life. If you’re ready to stop running from yourself and start discovering who you really are, this is where the work begins—and where the healing truly takes root.

Start your journey today with On Demand Therapy by Dr. Nicholas Jenner