Connie Palmer, LCSW, offers a thoughtful and clinically grounded conversation on codependency, exploring what it is, where it comes from, and how healing is possible. Drawing from both personal and professional experience, she helps us better understand codependent behavior and how it shows up in everyday life.

Together, we unpack the societal shame often associated with codependency and reframe these patterns as adaptive survival responses rooted in trauma. Connie explains how codependency develops over time and how it appears across relationships—with partners, friends, and within broader attachment styles and relational dynamics.

This episode also explores how anxious attachment and avoidant attachment can shape relationship patterns, along with the emotional impact of prioritizing others’ needs over your own. Connie shares practical insight into recognizing these patterns, setting healthy boundaries, and beginning the process of healing from codependency with greater self-awareness and compassion.

Connie Palmer, a licensed clinical social worker, is an experienced teacher, presenter, therapist, and school counselor who has spent more than thirty years working with children, youth, and families. She is the owner of Therapeutic Learning Connections which offers social, emotional learning workshops to mental health professionals, community organizations, schools, and workplaces. She is also a Grief Education Consultant for Imagine, a Center for Coping with Loss in Mountainside, NJ which offers grief support groups and grief education. She can be reached at Connie@TLConnections.org.