Vanessa Bennett, LMFT

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Vanessa Bennett, LMFT Depth Psychotherapist | Author | Facilitator | Mama

09/17/2026

One of the most uncomfortable realizations in codependency recovery is recognizing how much of what we call love is actually a demand.

Most of us were never given the tools to manage or soothe ourselves and so we enter relationships believing it is other people’s jobs to “fix it for us.” And when they don’t (because they honestly can’t) we equate that with our worth and loveability.

I write about this and SOOO much more in my book The Motherhood Myth — link in bio if you haven’t read it yet.






09/16/2026

What I’ve come to understand about having an absent father is that the wound was never about the absence of things. It was about the absence of presence. Of showing up. Day after day.

Your children don’t need you to be perfect. They need to know you’ll be there when it matters.

In this episode with the one and only Dr Shefali Dr. Shefali. Conscious Parenting & Living we also discuss:

- Why conscious parenting is parent inner work — not child fixing
- How children become mirrors for the parent’s unconscious
- The difference between guidance and control
- How parental anxiety becomes codependency and “puppeteering”
- Projection, essence, and letting the child’s nature lead
- Cycle breaking, repair, and apologizing without burdening the child
- Dr. Shefali’s new books: Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons
- Screens, algorithms, and the pressures facing boys and girls today
- Conscious masculinity, shame, and raising safer men

Comment “PARENT” below and I’ll send you the link to Episode 32, Dr. Shefali on Conscious Parenting, Cycle Breaking, and Raising Sons and Daughters.






We have become very good at justifying pleasure.Proving it’s productive, earned, deserved, or useful enough to allow. An...
09/15/2026

We have become very good at justifying pleasure.

Proving it’s productive, earned, deserved, or useful enough to allow. And somewhere in all that justification, we stopped actually feeling it.

This piece is about Freyja — and what she has to teach us about appetite, grief, beauty, and letting life actually reach us.

Swipe through, save it, and share it with someone who is ready to feel more alive.

This is a full piece from my Substack — link in bio if you want to read more like this...








09/14/2026

The men causing the most harm in the world right now didn’t arrive that way.

Dr. Shefali. Conscious Parenting & Living traces it back — to how boys are raised around two things specifically: competency and sexuality. Who am I in terms of what I do? And how do I exist as a sexual being?

When those two things go unaddressed, unwitnessed, uninitiated — the results scale all the way to the top.


🎙️ Episode 32, Dr. Shefali on Conscious Parenting, Cycle Breaking, and Raising Sons and Daughters of the Inner Compass Podcast is live. Link in bio.

Many of us want very carefully.We stay just far enough from what we really want so that losing it won’t be devastating. ...
09/12/2026

Many of us want very carefully.

We stay just far enough from what we really want so that losing it won’t be devastating. We keep desire at a manageable distance.

But desire that doesn’t cost you anything isn’t really desire.

This piece is about what it means to want deeply, and what that kind of wanting really asks of us.

Comment “DESIRE” below and I’ll send you the link.






09/11/2026

It is very important in codependency recovery that you understand that the hypervigilance, the over-responsibility, and the sense that everything depends on you are not personality flaws.

They are what a nervous system learns when it grows up inside an unpredictable emotional field.

This episode goes into the psychology underneath all of it.

🎙️ Episode 31, The Three C’s: Codependency and the End of the Fantasy of Control of the Inner Compass Podcast is live. Link in bio.






When you realize that what you think of as your personality served a function in the relational system you grew up insid...
09/10/2026

When you realize that what you think of as your personality served a function in the relational system you grew up inside some of the hardest work begins…

Comment “SUBSTACK” below and I’ll send you the link to the full article.






So much of what we call love in codependent dynamics is actually an attempt to manage our own anxiety.If I do enough, st...
09/10/2026

So much of what we call love in codependent dynamics is actually an attempt to manage our own anxiety.

If I do enough, stay present enough, love hard enough…maybe I can prevent the pain. Maybe I can reach the part of them they can’t reach themselves.

That’s not love, it’s the savior fantasy. And it costs both people a lot.

🎙️ Episode 31, The Three C’s: Codependency and the End of the Fantasy of Control of the Inner Compass Podcast is live. Link in bio.






09/09/2026

I’ve been the rescuer in most of my relationships for most of my life.

And what I’ve learned, both in my own life and sitting with clients, is that rescuing keeps the system from feeling the full impact of its own dysfunction. It stabilizes things just enough that nothing really has to change.

We call it compassion or love. But sometimes it’s really just a savior fantasy. And the savior fantasy has its own hidden agenda worth understanding.

🎙️ Episode 31: The Three C’s: Codependency and the End of the Fantasy of Control of the Inner Compass Podcast is live. Link in bio.






The people who have come through this program describe it the same way.Not just that they learned more. That something s...
09/08/2026

The people who have come through this program describe it the same way.

Not just that they learned more. That something shifted in how they understand themselves, the people they work with, and the world around them.

Applications for Cohort 4 of Inner Compass Academy close September 9th. If you’ve been sitting with this, this is the moment.

Link in bio to apply.








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