Emotional parentification occurs when a child takes responsibility for a parent’s emotional needs, becoming a listener, comforter or mediator. This article explains how parentification differs from healthy helping, how it may affect adult relationships, common signs such as people pleasing and difficulty receiving care, and practical steps towards recovery.
Why do narcissists and codependents often form relationships? Explore how these patterns complement each other and how awareness can lead to change.
When does helping become controlling? Explore how codependency, rescuing, over-functioning, attachment and nervous-system patterns can blur the line between support and control.
Can self-awareness become another form of avoidance? Dr Nicholas Jenner explores why understanding your psychological patterns is only useful when insight begins influencing real decisions and behaviour.
Why do we repeat behaviours we already understand? Dr Nicholas Jenner explains why insight alone does not create behavioural change and how nervous-system responses and short-term emotional relief keep codependent patterns alive.
Many adult relationship struggles have their roots in childhood, not romance. This article explores how unresolved relationships with parents, siblings, and caregivers shape attachment, codependency, boundaries, and self-worth. Discover why familiar patterns repeat in adult relationships and how understanding your emotional blueprint can support lasting change.
Why are codependents drawn to emotionally unavailable and inconsistent partners? This article explores how childhood conditioning, low self-worth and nervous system activation shape attraction, causing healthy love to feel unfamiliar. Learn why codependents mistake drama for connection and how recovery begins by judging behaviour, not chemistry.
In Therapy Shorts 81, Dr Nicholas Jenner appears on The Good Men Project to discuss codependency recovery. This interview explores how codependent patterns form, why people-pleasing persists, and what healthy boundaries actually look like in real relationships. Practical insights cover self-worth, attachment, and small steps to shift from rescuing to relating.
In this episode I connect the wider culture to the private realities couples live with: how learned attitudes shape sexual scripts, and how those scripts can turn pornography into either an escape (often in codependency) or a sign of entitlement (often where narcissistic traits are present).
Codependents often bond with potential rather than reality, staying invested in who someone could become. This article explains how early roles and nervous system activation keep hope alive, why occasional improvement is not stability, and how to separate compassion from commitment. It includes practical checks to choose based on consistent behaviour.
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