Apr 22, 2026
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.”
You can learn more about Barb Nangle at https://higherpowercc.com/meet-barb/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbnangle/.