You can describe what everyone else needs and go blank when asked about yourself
Larchmont, NY • In-Person & Online Across NY, NJ & PA
Codependency Therapy
Therapy for adults who have organized so much of their life around another person that they have lost track of their own.
Talia DiPietro, LCSW
What Is Codependency?
Codependency describes a pattern of putting another person’s needs, moods, and problems ahead of your own so consistently that your own start to disappear. It is a widely used framework rather than a clinical diagnosis, and I use it here because clients find it useful.
It usually develops somewhere it makes sense: a parent who needed managing, a household organized around one person’s drinking or moods, or a relationship where keeping the peace was the safest available job for you to take.
The cost comes later. You can describe what everyone around you needs in detail and then go completely blank when asked about yourself. Being needed starts to feel like the only reliable route to being wanted at all.
a personal note
Turn the Attention Back To You
I’m Talia DiPietro, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Larchmont, New York, and identity, self-worth, and relational patterns are a large part of my practice.
Clients often arrive and describe the other person for the first twenty minutes. That is the pattern. Part of the work here is turning the attention back onto you, and then keeping it there long enough for it to be useful.
what we work on
Do You Know Everyone’s Needs Except Your Own?
- You can list what everybody around you needs and not one thing you do
- Your own mood tracks somebody else’s mood almost automatically
- Being needed feels a great deal safer to you than simply being liked
- You take responsibility for problems that were never yours to carry
- Rest feels like something you have to earn before you are allowed it
- Without somebody to look after, you are not sure who you even are
how it works
How I Approach Codependency
We start with your side of it. The work turns attention back onto what you want and need, which for many clients is unfamiliar enough to be genuinely uncomfortable at first.
The pattern gets traced back. Understanding where this was learned takes the moral weight off it, because it is easier to change a strategy than to change a character flaw.
Identity gets rebuilt slowly. Preferences, opinions, and wants come back gradually rather than all at once, and we work on tolerating the space they take up.
Care without self-erasure. The aim is not caring less about people. It is caring in a way that does not require you to vanish in order to do it properly.
Practical, not only insight. We rehearse saying the difficult thing, sitting with somebody else’s disappointment, and letting a problem that is not yours stay theirs.
what we work on
What I Help With
Losing yourself in relationships. Work on the slow disappearance of your own preferences, opinions, and needs inside a close relationship.
Feeling responsible for everyone. Support when other people’s moods and problems keep landing on you as though they were always yours to solve.
Being needed versus being liked. Looking at why usefulness became the price of admission, and what a relationship might look like without it.
Enmeshment with family. Help when the boundary between you and a parent or a sibling never really formed while you were growing up.
Identity and self-worth. Rebuilding a sense of who you are that does not depend entirely on what you do for everybody else.
Loving someone with an addiction. Support for people whose lives have quietly organized themselves around somebody else’s substance use.
is this a fit?
This Therapy Is for You, If:
Your sense of your own worth is tied to how useful you manage to be to everybody else
You want this pattern named and worked on rather than only described back to you
Getting started is simple
How to Get Started
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01
Book a Free Consultation
Use the contact form or call 929-400-7783 to set up a free 20-minute phone or video consultation.
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02
Talk It Through
We go over what brought you here and whether I am the right fit. If so, I send consent forms and we schedule.
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03
Begin the Work
We map out what is driving the pattern, agree together on where to start, and work at a pace you set.
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What is codependency, and is it a real diagnosis?
Codependency is a widely used framework for a pattern of self-erasure inside relationships. It is not a diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR and no clinician can formally diagnose you with it. It stays in use because it describes something people recognize immediately in themselves.
Am I codependent or just a caring person?
Caring becomes worth examining when it is compulsory rather than chosen, when it costs you things you cannot spare, and when you have no idea who you are without it. Choice is the difference. Plenty of deeply caring people are not codependent at all.
How do you break out of a codependent pattern?
Usually by rebuilding the part of you that got displaced. It is uncomfortable first. That means practice at noticing what you want, tolerating other people’s disappointment, and letting problems that belong to somebody else stay where they are.
What causes codependency in the first place?
It commonly develops in households where one person’s needs, moods, or substance use dominated, and where managing them was the safest role available to a child. Later relationships can reinforce it. The pattern was adaptive once, which is exactly why it is so durable.
Does my partner or family have to be in therapy too?
No. This is individual work, and it changes what you do rather than what they do. Many clients find that shifting their own side of a pattern changes the relationship, though I cannot promise how any particular person will respond to it.
Do you take insurance, and how do I get started?
I am out of network and do not bill insurance directly, though I provide superbills you can submit for reimbursement. My fee is $275 and I offer 5-session packages based on sliding scale needs. To start, call or use the contact form. I respond within 24 to 48 hours.
Ready when you are
Ready to start codependency therapy?
Reach out for a free 20-minute consultation — no pressure, just a conversation.
If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or call 911. Therapy is not an emergency service.