Codependency & Individuation
A Depth Psychological Exploration of Losing Ourselves in Relationship
Sunday, October 11, 2026 — 12:00PM - 2:00PM Pacific Time
by Lyna Tevenaz Jones, M.A., ACMHC
Reclaiming the Self in Relationship
Workshop: Sunday, October 11, 2026 — 12:00PM - 2:00PM Pacific Time
What happens when our identity becomes psychologically organized around another person?
Online Workshop
Codependency is most often described through its visible behaviors: people-pleasing, difficulty setting boundaries, excessive caretaking, rescuing, or feeling responsible for another person’s emotions. While these behaviors are certainly part of the picture, I have come to think that they describe the manifestations of codependency more than its underlying psychology.
From a depth psychological perspective, we will explore the following question:
What happens when our psychological life becomes increasingly organized around another person?
We can become so oriented toward someone else - their needs, moods, wounds, potential, approval, disappointment, or well-being - that our own inner life gradually recedes from view. Our attention moves outward. Our psychic energy follows.
We become extraordinarily perceptive about the other while becoming increasingly estranged from our own center, our genuine desires and needs.
This is one of the reasons I believe codependency needs to be understood not only as a relational problem, but as a problem of differentiation and individuation.
In this workshop, we will explore codependency through a depth psychological lens, looking beyond its outward behaviors toward the unconscious dynamics that can keep us psychologically bound to another, and toward the difficult but necessary movement of returning to a life that is genuinely our own.
When Our Lives Become Organized Around the Other
Codependency does not always look like dependence. In fact, it can sometimes look like the opposite!
We can appear extraordinarily capable, independent, generous, empathic, and emotionally perceptive while our inner life has slowly become organized around another person.
We become very good at reading them. We notice the slightest change in their mood, anticipate what they might need, try to understand why they behave the way they do, and become invested in who they could become rather than remaining in relationship with who they actually are.
And somewhere in that process, we can begin to lose sight of ourselves.
What do I need? What do I feel? What do I want? What is actually good for me?
Those questions can become increasingly difficult to answer when so much of our psychological attention is directed toward the Other.
We may adapt ourselves to preserve the relationship. We may feel guilty when we disappoint someone or establish a boundary. We may assume responsibility for maintaining the emotional equilibrium between us. And sometimes, even after a relationship has become painful or has ended altogether, the other person continues to occupy an enormous amount of psychic space.
This is partly what makes codependency so difficult to recognize.
Many of its expressions can look remarkably similar to qualities we value: love, empathy, loyalty, generosity, devotion, even psychological insight.
But there is an important difference between loving another person and gradually disappearing into our relationship with them.
From a depth psychological perspective, I am interested in what lies beneath that disappearance.
Why does this particular person hold so much psychic power? What are we unconsciously attempting to find, repair, preserve, or become through them? What parts of our own life have remained unlived while so much of our energy has been invested elsewhere?
About the Workshop
This workshop offers a depth psychological exploration of codependency, moving beyond a purely behavioral understanding of the pattern to examine the unconscious dynamics that may sustain it.
Drawing from Jungian and psychodynamic perspectives, we will consider the role of projection, attachment, identity, and differentiation in relationships where the psychological presence of the Other has become particularly powerful.
We will explore what may be happening beneath the compulsion to rescue, accommodate, anticipate, understand, or remain indispensable to another person, and why simply recognizing these patterns does not necessarily make them easy to change.
Particular attention will be given to the relationship between codependency and individuation: the gradual process of differentiating from the Other, reclaiming disowned or unlived aspects of ourselves, and developing a life that is increasingly organized from within.
What to expect…
This workshop will draw on several complementary psychoanalytic and psychological traditions to explore the underlying dynamics of codependency and the movement toward differentiation and individuation.
Grounded in Jungian psychology, codependency will be considered in relation to projection, complexes, and individuation. Particular attention will be given to the ways psychic energy can become invested in another person, and how qualities, desires, possibilities, or aspects of our own unlived life may be encountered primarily through the Other.
Object Relations theory contributes to an understanding of how our internal world of relationships shapes the ways we experience ourselves in relation to others. From this perspective, difficulties with separation and differentiation can involve more than conscious attachment to another person; they may reflect deeply internalized relational patterns through which identity, responsibility, guilt, and connection have become intertwined.
Insights from Self Psychology help illuminate how a sense of value, cohesion, and psychological stability may become dependent upon particular relational roles. Being needed, indispensable, admired, helpful, or emotionally attuned to another can sometimes become an important source of self-experience, making changes in these relational patterns psychologically complex.
The workshop will also draw upon psychoanalytic understandings of differentiation and separation, exploring why becoming more psychologically distinct from another person can evoke anxiety, guilt, conflict, or fears of losing connection.
Together, these perspectives allow us to approach codependency not simply as a collection of problematic relational behaviors, but as a deeper question of where the self is located, how it has become organized in relation to the Other, and what is required for psychological energy to return to one’s own life.
About me
I am an analytic psychotherapist in Salt Lake City, Utah. My work integrates analytical psychology, psychoanalytic theory, Self Psychology theory, and attachment research.
I earned my master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, where my thesis, Archetypal Reparenting: Constellating Archetypal Parental Figures to Reparent the Self, explored the role of archetypal structures in the repair of early attachment wounds.
My clinical and theoretical interests center on mother and father wounds, individuation, internal psychic structure, and the symbolic processes through which adults reorganize attachment and self-cohesion.
🔍 What You’ll Learn
Participants will be guided to:
understand the deeper psychological dynamics underlying codependency
recognize both obvious and subtle ways the self can become organized around another person
explore why certain relationships become so psychologically consuming
understand the roles of projection, differentiation, and identity in codependent patterns
recognize what may make separation, boundaries, and differentiation evoke guilt or anxiety
explore how psychic energy invested in the Other can be reclaimed in service of one’s own life
understand the movement from codependency toward greater differentiation and individuation
🔍 Who This Workshop Is For:
This workshop is suited for women who:
find themselves highly attuned to the needs, moods, and emotional states of others
tend to prioritize relationships while losing contact with their own needs and desires
feel responsible for helping, rescuing, fixing, or emotionally supporting others
struggle with guilt when setting boundaries, disappointing someone, or choosing themselves
repeatedly become preoccupied with understanding or changing another person
have difficulty distinguishing care and devotion from over-responsibility
find that certain relationships consume a disproportionate amount of their emotional and psychological energy
are interested in developing greater differentiation while remaining capable of intimacy and connection
wish to reclaim more of their attention, energy, and inner life in service of their own individuation
What You’ll Receive With Registration
Registration includes:
Live access to the online workshop
Workshop recording
PDF presentation slides from the workshop
Reflective exercises and prompts designed to deepen your exploration of codependency, differentiation, and individuation
Live Q&A and discussion following the teaching portion of the workshop
To preserve the intimacy and integrity of the learning container,
registration for this series will be intentionally limited.
This live online workshop will offer a depth psychological exploration of codependency, moving beyond its familiar expressions such as people-pleasing, excessive caretaking, rescuing, and difficulty setting boundaries to examine the deeper psychological dynamics that can organize our lives around another person.
Drawing from Jungian, psychoanalytic, Object Relations, and Self Psychology perspectives, we will explore codependency through the lenses of projection, differentiation, and individuation.
Together, we will consider what happens when our attention and psychic energy become increasingly directed toward the Other, why separation and differentiation can evoke guilt or anxiety, and how aspects of our own unlived life may become entangled with the people we feel compelled to help, understand, change, or remain indispensable to.
The workshop will explore the movement from a life organized around the Other toward a deeper relationship with one’s own Self.
Live Online Workshop
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Recording and workshop materials included
What You'll Receive
Immediately after purchase, you will receive a downloadable PDF containing simple instructions for accessing your course portal. Following the live session, you'll be able to view the workshop recording at your convenience and download all accompanying materials, which includes the recording, PDF presentation, and self-reflective guide.
Taking good care of your psyche and your body.
This lecture is intended for educational and self-reflective purposes only and is not a substitute for individual therapy or professional mental health treatment.
By participating, you acknowledge that any emotional material that may arise is your responsibility to process, and it is strongly recommended that you engage in ongoing personal therapy for deeper integration. While care has been taken to create a safe and thoughtful experience, I am not liable for any psychological discomfort or triggering that may occur. Please honor your own boundaries and seek support from a licensed therapist if needed.
The unconscious is not neutral; it carries both light and shadow, and engaging with it requires reverence, humility, and a grounded internal container. For this reason, we will not be practicing active imagination together live.