Co-Dependency Isn’t What You Think, with Rawly Glass, LCSWCo-Dependency Isn’t What You Think, with Rawly Glass, LCSW
Hopestream for parenting kids through drug use and addiction
Brenda Zane and Rawly Glass rethink codependency through the lens of trauma, development, and parenting. Their conversation focuses on external dependency, relationship-first parenting, and practical ways for parents to reconnect with themselves while supporting teens who struggle.
1:05:17•7 May 2026
Rethinking Codependency: Rawly Glass on External Dependency and Parenting
Episode Overview
- Codependency is reframed as external dependency: a compulsive focus on others rooted in an absence of relationship with self.
- Trauma in childhood can disrupt neural development, leaving people disconnected from their inner life and over-focused on external control.
- The common parenting pattern of control, correction, and consequences often backfires and damages connection with teens.
- Practical tools like SIFT (sensations, images, feelings, thoughts) and timed writing can help adults reconnect with their emotions and bodies.
- Genuine self-care means tending to emotional and physical sensations first, rather than relying only on surface-level breaks or treats.
“Trauma disrupts development, leaving us unfinished, disconnected, and externally oriented.”
What can we learn from those who have battled addiction and the patterns that surround it? This conversation on Hopestream zooms in on parents, codependency, and why so many mums feel compulsively driven to "fix" everyone but themselves. Host Brenda Zane sits down with social worker and family systems specialist Rawly Glass, LCSW, who grew up in a violent home and made a teenage promise to parent differently.
Despite advanced training and decades of clinical work, something still felt off until he began questioning the label "codependent" and what it really described. Rawly shares the sentence that changed everything for him: "Trauma disrupts development, leaving us unfinished, disconnected, and externally oriented." He explains how this disruption can create an absence of a relationship with self, which then shows up as what he calls **external dependency**: a compulsive focus on other people’s needs, behaviour, and approval.
Parents of teens using substances will likely recognise themselves in his description of the "classic parenting model" of **control, correction, and consequences**. Rawly argues that this approach, even in its gentlest form, often fuels shame, anxiety, and power struggles rather than genuine growth. Instead, he champions "relationship first"—building connection so influence comes from trust, not control.
You’ll also hear practical tools for healing that disconnection from self, including Dan Siegel’s SIFT practice (checking in with sensations, images, feelings and thoughts) and Rawly’s own version of timed stream-of-consciousness writing. Brenda has a genuine light‑bulb moment about self-care, realising that spa days and walks don’t change much without emotional and body-based work underneath. For parents feeling exasperated, ashamed, or labelled as "codependent", this conversation offers language, context, and gentle humour that make complex ideas feel usable.
It asks a big question: what might change in a family if a parent’s first project became their own inner relationship?
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