Barb Nangle is a boundaries coach, speaker, author, and podcaster. After nearly 40 years of therapy and personal development, Barb found her way to 12-step recovery at age 52. What began as a journey to address codependence soon expanded to include recovery from intergenerational dysfunction, childhood trauma, and compulsive overeating—issues she hadn't initially recognized in herself, and decades of personal development had merely scratched the surface. Recovery melted the iceberg of her life.
Because codependency was her core wound, learning to set healthy boundaries transformed her at every level—her relationship with herself, with others, and with the world around her. The ripple effect of these changes even reached her professional life, profoundly affecting her team at Yale University, where she worked at the time.
Before recovery, she was acutely aware of her history of unhealthy, unsatisfying romantic relationships. She also struggled with years of substance use and overeating, carrying over 100 pounds more than she does now. Despite these struggles, she maintained an outward appearance of having it all together. She once believed she was a positive, optimistic person. Recovery revealed the truth: she was trapped in negativity and fear. She ruminated about the past, catastrophized about the future, complained frequently, engaged in "if only" thinking, and blamed others for her difficulties. She was terrified of judgment, rejection, abandonment, and being seen as a bad person.
She didn't realize how deeply these patterns affected her until they began to change. Combining her life experience and education has shaped her purpose: to help professional women stop saying yes when they mean no and to end the cycle of self-neglect by reclaiming their focus and power. She achieves this through her boundary-setting coaching, professional speaking engagements, and her podcast, "
Fragmented to Whole: Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery."
