Ep #342: Why I Don’t Use the Term “Codependency"
Feminist Wellness
Béa Victoria Albina
4.9 • 988 Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
#342: The word "codependent" is everywhere - on book covers (even mine), in therapy sessions, in conversations about relationships. But there's something fundamentally wrong with how we use this label.
If you recognize yourself in patterns of people-pleasing, emotional caretaking, or losing yourself in other people's chaos, I want you to know something important: You're not broken. You're not diseased. And you're definitely not codependent. What you are is brilliantly adaptive.
Join me this week as I share why I'm moving away from the term "codependent" and offer a new framework that honors your nervous system's intelligence while creating space for growth.
Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: https://beatrizalbina.com/342
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, my love, my book and emotional outsourcing comes out on September 30th, and we kick things off the week of October 14th with two ways to go deeper. |
| 0:11.9 | Join the four-week book club, pay what you can starting at zero, with options to add a live call and breathwork. |
| 0:17.1 | Or for folks who pre-order 10 or more copies, you'll get my private live course, six-week |
| 0:23.7 | live course and a 90-minute breathwork session. Get all the details and order now. These offers |
| 0:29.8 | expire on September 30th. Go grab them. You know you want to. Beiatricealbina.com slash book. |
| 0:58.7 | This is feminist wellness, and I'm your host, nurse practitioner, somatics, and nervous system nerd, and life coach, Bea Victoria Albina. |
| 1:05.8 | I'll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency, so you can live from your beautiful heart. |
| 1:07.9 | Welcome, my love. Let's get started. Hello, hello, my love, I hope this finds you doing so well. There is a word |
| 1:17.3 | that I want to invite us all to move away from. A word I've never really liked, but is also on the |
| 1:25.1 | cover of my first book because it's the word we're all using. |
| 1:30.0 | Drum roll, please. |
| 1:31.9 | It's codependent. |
| 1:33.3 | Before you shimmy away from this show thinking I'm about to tell you that those behaviors |
| 1:38.3 | that add up to codependent experience simply don't exist, hold on, Hold up, hold up. They absolutely do. I know, |
| 1:45.9 | because I used to live really deep inside them. If you've been called codependent, if like me you've |
| 1:51.7 | called yourself that, if you recognize yourself in those patterns of people pleasing and emotional |
| 1:56.9 | caretaking and losing yourself in other people's chaos, my beauty. I see you. |
| 2:02.5 | Those experiences are real and valid, for sure. But the word itself, co-dependent, |
| 2:11.1 | honey, baby, please, it's got to go. And I'm going to tell you why. Let us start by time traveling back to the last century, by which I do mean the late 1970s and 80s. The term codependent crawled out of the 12-step movement and was specifically designed to describe partners and family members of people struggling with addiction. And it really came to prominence during the war on drugs. |
| 2:36.3 | And listen, I get why it felt necessary at the time, for Lois, the wife of Bill W., the guy who |
| 2:42.9 | came up with the 12 Steps with AA, to make a group for her and her people. These folks needed |
| 2:49.2 | language for their experience. We all do. They needed someone to |
... |
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