The conversation around codependency has gone too far. It has become a pathology—a "condition" to be treated rather than a life path to be understood.

It’s time to change the narrative.

The Danger of the "Fix-It" Industry

Our healing and wellness industry has turned everything into a pathology where we seek the cause and try to eliminate the symptoms. This is dangerous for the soul.

It’s dangerous for your life path, your relationships, and the unique way you love and need to be loved. This clinical approach threatens to strip us of our humanity, letting a kind of perfectionism enter the field of healing—a perfectionism that denies the human project and our sensitivity to a violent world.

In this world, many of your "symptoms" don’t belong only to you.

Validating the Hunger

Codependency is, at its heart, a dependence—an addiction to a relationship dynamic. Like any addiction, there is an underlying hunger within that process. The "substance" draws you close to something you need, but it never actually fulfills it.

But here is what the industry misses: That hunger is for a genuine and valid need. We don’t just need to "stop being codependent" or "focus on ourselves." We need to find out what that genuine relationship need is and validate it. There is a real pain being suffered and a real cost being paid.

Moving Beyond Ideas into the Body

True change doesn't come from moralistic or psychological ideas used to blame and shame—"Stop being that way," "You're a codependent," "Get over it." We must move toward an embodied experience. By meeting the hunger and the pain somatically, we allow for a transformation that "thinking" can never achieve.

This is a Life Path, Not a Diagnosis

We are often told that our patterns in relationships are signs of something that needs to be fixed, something wrong with us. In reality, this is the path of the psyche navigating a world of difficulty and pressure.

Yes, we give ourselves away in relationships.
Yes, we must gather our authenticity back.
Yes, we have been traumatized and we fawn.
Yes, we get caught in addictive patterns on both sides.

But this is not an illness. This is a path of development for almost everyone—a journey where we project parental figures and early experiences onto others as we slowly regain our true selves.

Don’t shame yourself.

Be careful with the idea of codependency. Work on your issues, bring yourself out more, speak up more, and care for your needs more. But don’t look at yourself as a sick person.

Yes to change. Yes to becoming more yourself. Yes to more centering your own needs and less giving yourself away.

But we will not pathologize the human experience.

In this Masterclass, we’ll explore:

The Valid Hunger: Identifying the genuine relationship needs hidden beneath addictive dynamics.
The Somatic Shift: Moving past "shame-based ideas" and into an embodied way of processing the pain of codependency.
The Human Project: Understanding your sensitivity as a response to the world, not a defect of character.
Reclaiming the Self: How to gather yourself back from relationships without the weight of shame.
Rejecting Clinical Perfectionism: Unshaming codependency and moving away from seeing it as a pathology to be fixed.

Class Details:

WHEN: Tuesday, February 17th

TIME: 12pm-2pm Pacific

WHERE: on Zoom with recording

COST: $55

PLEASE NOTE: If you are already a Monthly Medicine member, you do NOT need to register for this class, you already have access as your February Medicine class.

REGISTER HERE

MEET YOUR FACILITATOR:

David Bedrick is the author of The Unshaming Way, about which Gabor Mate wrote, ”In this astute work, David Bedrick provides a deep investigation of shame, the most debilitating of our mind states, and offers a workable, practice-based, and accessible path to divesting ourselves from it.”

Davidis a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix for 8 years as well as the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland. He is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he educates therapists, coaches and healers. His embodied way of teaching goes beyond informational, students are regularly brought to tears and face to face with their beauty, power, life path and soul.

David’s passion for studying shame arose from his childhood, growing up with a father who used fists and belts to express his rage and a mother who coped by denying and gaslighting his experience. Forty years of research, teaching, and working with individuals awakened his heart and mind to how the dominant healing paradigm pathologizes people—sees people's suffering and symptoms as something to “fix" instead of messages that deepen our relationships with ourselves and the world around us. David’s unshaming way treats difficulties as invitations to insight, soul, and the divine unfolding of our lives.

David also writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three additional books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change, You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption. His 5th book will also be published by North Atlantic Books and available early in 2026.