Things I learned from fire

When I was living in Ireland for three months, I had small cozy space that was heated with a wood burning stove. I was staying there from November 1st 2022 until February 1st 2023. The nights get cold on the banks of the Foyle River.

Here is what I learned:

In order to start a fire, you need several elements of dry kindling. Dry wood lights easier and burns longer.
I have to be willing to use everything you have for one fire. I have to have the abundance mentality and consider that tomorrow’s fire is tomorrow’s problem.

Come from a place of abundance rather than lack.

I must be patient and determined to meet the goal. The goal is to get it lit and to have warmth. I can’t just chase it, I have to trust in my own ability.

It might take more than one attempt. I have to be willing to try more than once.

Smoldering elements can catch without warning. There are things that aren’t within my control.

Fire needs air to breathe. I can’t put too much pressure or stuff on the newly starting fire.

Fire must be fed consistently to continue burning. There is a constant need for stuff to be on the fire or it will go out.

A fire grows with air and time. It needs space to burn hot.  I have to be willing to wait a little longer before adding more wood.

I can trust that the next fire will come. I have been able to light one every time I need one.

There has to be patience when it comes to starting a new fire every time.

You have to be willing to take a break and come back to it.

A fire will need you to add a little at a time and not put the heavy stuff up front.

Sometimes you will need to add kindling and paper to get it really going.

I have to be willing to do extra on really cold days.

I will need to put in the work of cutting smaller pieces of wood to feed the flames and keep it going.

In order to keep the fire going when things cool down, it’s a good idea to introduce smaller dry elements like paper, cardboard or small wood.

I work really hard trying to relight a fire when it’s almost out. I fan with such intensity just hoping it will reignite. I think about that when I am working extra hard in my relationships to get the flame going again.

Loving my demons

There are so many parts of who we are and who we have been and also who we want to be. In talking with clients, there is often the struggle with angel and demon on our shoulders. What I know to be true is they are two halves to the same us. Usually being the past and the future. Who we are today is the person in the middle. In my travels and even before I left, I was in a struggle with old versions of me, the current state I was in, and who I was working toward. The struggle was happening in real time, day in and day out. When I was in these places, I was in a place of compassion for the past versions of me. I was more invested in who I was in the moment. I wasn’t too concerned with the future, probably for the first time ever in experience. Loving all of me, all of my parts was happening, including my demons.

The demon part of us is less of the traditional negative, or evil part, and more of those unhealed parts of who we are. They are the unhelpful coping skills. Those immediate reactions or go to skills that give us distraction or fleeting relief from the discomfort of the moment. While I was away, I didn’t have the old skills of reacting from anger, eating unhealthy food, drinks with friends, or meaningless sex. Those were the skills I would use when I needed to change a feeling. Or more importantly, not feel. I didn’t recognize that in the moment all the time. Sometimes, I would just do it. When I was away and in a foreign environment, I had to be more conscious of what I was putting in my body. I didn’t have my friends to distract me because, either they were in a different time zone, or they weren’t in my life anymore. I didn’t have the former roster of sex partners. I had detached from those people completely. It became clear I was totally just me and living in the moment. I was learning how to just be. The moments moved more slowly. The present was super clear. Clean.

Being in my own head and alone meant that I had time to reflect on the old parts of me. Doing the writing of where my codependency came from meant, I had to look my former selves. I had to take out my old tools and skills and look at them. I was looking from a nonjudgemental place. I was having compassion for those former parts of myself. Compassion was not my go to. I rarely had enough awareness to give myself mercy. I had often held myself to a standard that was set by my parents. I had to be the best at things. I had no chill. I had to be productive and be worthy of the very little love, acceptance and validation. Now that it was just me, I was giving that to myself. I was looking at these tools and seeing if they still fit in these new environments. In Greece, I was letting go of the idea of productivity as the only method of existing. It took weeks to detach from having to get something done everyday to be worthy of rest. I just rested. I enjoyed days of exploring and being present. I allowed myself to cry. I gave myself permission to grieve the things and people I left behind. I spent time healing the parts of me that were wounded along the way to get to where I was. I started to let go of the idea that I needed to fill the silence, I just sat in it.

By the time I got to Ireland, I was better at it. I had made friends with the demons that I had before. I didn’t need to do things in the same way because I was more grounded in the me, I was becoming. I hadn’t been holding on so tightly to the past version of me. With compassion and grace, I was able to forgive the parts of me that easily gave into disrespecting the precious girl I had been when those skills came in to being. I was able to hold those parts of with tenderness and appreciation. I was grateful for them taking care of me and keeping me safe. That is all our coping skills are doing. They are trying to keep us from hurting. The hard part is sometimes, keeping us safe does not allow us to feel the sadness or loneliness. I know that when I was angry or reactive, I was trying to keep myself safe by hurting the people around me. When I was eating unhealthy food, I was distracting myself with a quick fix. The hook ups were about feeling the immediate gratification of a quick hit of oxytocin in the moment. I could get the hit and keep going. I hadn’t put it together that I was fulfilling the preconceived idea that I was unworthy of healthy love and connection. Once I had connected that love and sex went well together, I was in another country and alone. I had to give myself permission to allow those two feelings to be partners in how I receive love. The “demon” was perpetuating the idea that I was unworthy, unlovable, incapable of having it. That was a big realization for me.

By the time I got to Italy, I was securely grounded and attached to me. I felt good about the body I was in. I trusted myself more. I had gotten through the first six months of travel and writing. I had looked at and loved all of my parts without judgement. I felt good about who I was and who I had been. I believed in what I was creating. I had been on planes, boats, busses and trains. I could navigate my way through all of these places on my own. I was able to see that I had gotten through 49 years of so many ups and downs with lots of great successes. All the failures were lessons. I trusted my intuition. I trusted my higher self in a way that felt like trusting an old friend that they were going to be there no matter what. I didn’t have to fight it. I just had to allow it. I was talking to myself like I was someone I loved. I didn’t feel that conflict that I used to have between my past, present and future. I was at peace. That feeling is and was so different than any other way I had felt. Now that I knew was it was, I could call upon it. I would need to have that feeling to be familiar for what was coming up when I got home.

Transformation

Molting

There are animals in nature who completely shed their protective layer be it a shell, skin, or exoskeleton when they grow. They are left with a soft new layer or forced to find a new home. Humans don’t go through anything so dramatic, but we do grow out of our old coping skills. Once we choose to live differently, it is our responsibility to slough off the old version of who we have been to take our new form as the latest version of ourselves. We can make the decision to evolve from the parts of ourselves that no longer serve who we are. In doing so the new version of who we are can feel soft and not quite set. It feels vulnerable. The new skills we learn can feel awkward and clumsy. With time they get easier to use. They become second nature.

Metamorphosis

The natural evolution from one version of an organism to another. The transformation from caterpillar to a butterfly. It happens slowly and intentionally. The human development from infant, to toddler, to child, to adolescent, to adult, to elder is all part of what we do if we are given the opportunity. Not any one of us is the same version of who started as. There will be some traits that stay the same, but we are all supposed to age, grow, and change. In the process of metamorphosis, the caterpillar encloses itself into a cocoon and breaks down into a soup or goo. We can choose to isolate in our time of healing. We want to keep ourselves safe while we learn how to use our new skills. This time by ourselves can give us an opportunity to shift perspective and practice adjusting how we see the road ahead. As our bigger, fuller, more whole self emerges, we can allow our wings to expand so we can soar.

Seasonal change

The transition from one season to another. As the planet orbits the sun we get further and closer depending on the elliptical motion. The position of the planet dictates season on the planet. I love the transitional season of fall and spring. I truly appreciate the death and rebirth that is evident with the plants and trees specifically. The climate in the high desert of New Mexico creates a glorious show along the banks of the Rio Grande River. The colors of red, orange, and yellow fall puts on the most beautiful show before the leaves fall and carpet the sand is breathtaking. The spring is equally transformative to the landscape. The trees come alive with green buds. The flowers of the desert begin to bloom on the cactus native to our arid mountain terrain. Humans also go through seasons of death and rebirth. With the events and circumstances of life, we change from one version of us to a new one. Losing parts of ourselves that used to make sense. We get to bloom and grow into new parts.

Nature reminds us that it is ok to let go. By practicing being present and appreciating the moment, we can work on creating meaning right now. So often we are holding on so tightly to what we think something should be we get stuck. Each of us has the opportunity to shed our old selves. We can choose to be a better version of us with new skills and tools. We can grow into the person we want to be having the relationships we deserve by allowing ourself the release of how things have always been. The making meaning is entirely up to us. What keeps up stuck is how much attachment me we have to the expected outcome.

When we are holding on to how it should be, we often miss the things that aren’t working. In choosing to continue in unhelpful dynamics we are only hurting ourselves. Taking a lesson from nature can give up new options and perspectives to shift the expectation and in doing so, the meaning.

Rules of Detachment

Be willing to let go.

Appreciate what was.

Give space for grief and sadness.

Being mad will keep you stuck.

Recognize that the Universe isn’t doing this to you, but for you.

Change is part of growth.

Learn to pivot.

Sometimes, it wasn’t meant to be what you thought it was.

The lesson is in the heartbreak.

The love was real and inside you.

Gratitude is strength.

Be receiving more than you are controlling.

Find gratitude in Goodbye.

Emotional Boundary

Emotional boundaries can be set around how we feel but also considering how our actions contribute to other people’s feeling. So much of Codependency is about avoiding or managing how other people feel. I usually ask clients throughout our session if the feelings they are managing are theirs or someone else’s. It is helpful to increase your emotional awareness to help prepare yourself for setting and managing boundaries around your feelings. It would be helpful to start to think about the people in your life that you feel safe around. Who sees you and is supportive consistently? Who are the people in your life you can turn to when you are struggling that show up and don’t judge you? Those people are the ones you can feel safely emotional with. Now consider who you struggle to be your whole self with. When you’re around them, you tend to hold back or put on a mask so as not to let them see what you’re going through. There will be more of these people, generally. It would be great if we could be our whole selves with everyone but that can be a level of vulnerability, we aren’t ready for just yet.

When I was younger, I was identified as sensitive. I had lots of feelings and expressed them often. I was often accused of wearing my feelings on my sleeve. I can remember often feeling like I was too much for most people. As I grew up, I started to build walls around my sensitive heart. I started to hold back and not share what I was feeling, or I would downplay the level of emotion I was experiencing. I got to an expert level where I could fake it most of the time and very few people knew what I was dealing with. It became very easy to put on a smile and pretend like I was confident and secure even while I was in a full-blown eating disorder and considering suicide most of the time. After being accused of being dramatic or problematic I shut down. Talking to people who knew me then would tell you I was fun, outgoing, smart and confident. They often forget that I lost a parent in the middle of high school. I was so exhausted by the time I graduated; I ended up in psych ward on suicide watch. I recognize how much hiding my feelings took a toll on me physically, mentally, and energetically.

It takes a great deal of vulnerability to let those walls down for most people. Growing up where you are working so hard to keep yourself together to avoid negative outcomes means that being vulnerable isn’t safe. So many humans build walls rather than boundaries because it is easier to have a fortress around yourself than fences. The challenge becomes that walls keep us in as well as keeping people out. Working with clients, especially couples, it becomes evident that humans don’t know how to set emotional boundaries. All of us have trauma in one form or another and the first thing we do is try to limit how much more damage we sustain from people, especially if our trauma was perpetrated by people close to us. With emotional trauma, we limit our needs to try to maintain a perceived status quo and not make things worse. The emotional needs of connection get distorted if not neglected all together. We seek to build community while we are carrying around armor waiting for any potential attack. Some of us hold back the best parts of ourselves and prefer to put on the persona of someone who doesn’t have any needs. Most of us have learned to be independent and are unwilling to be seen as needing anything from anyone else. That isn’t how connection works. Cooperation and communication with people who show up consistently help us to see who is safe to have feelings around. It comes with practice with evidence that we can be ourselves with the people we allow to see our most vulnerable parts.

Setting boundaries around our emotions can take time. I have worked with therapists and with friends to hold space for my own vulnerability. It has taken me years of unlearning the skills I developed growing up to hold myself back and away from being hurt. I have been very fortunate to have friends in my life that have been around for years showing me how to let my walls down. It is with their own willingness to be vulnerable that I was able to. When we can take ownership of our feelings and be honest with them, can we then begin to set up limits of access to them in a healthy way. Think of your boundaries as a gate rather than a fortress. If you can set up the parameters of who, when and how much access is given, then you can monitor them more easily.

The who has been identified as people who show up and hold space without judgement consistently. The when will be up to you to define. Our emotional state is in flux all the time. Being aware of your own capacity will be a practice to recognize how your feel and how much energy or space you have at any given moment. I remind myself often that when I am tired or distracted with things my emotional state is more fragile. I have less capacity to hold back or regulate my emotions. I also know that when I am anxious, I have a harder time keeping my emotions in check. My boundary would then be to communicate with the people close to me stating how I am feeling and that I might need some extra attention, or I might need some time on my own to recenter or regroup before processing. It has taken time for me to be aware of what my needs are around regulating my emotional state. I held myself back from being vulnerable for a long time. Now I can check in with myself more easily and I’m able to own what I am feeling.

The part about who gets access to your emotional self is also important to be aware of. Not every should have the privilege of having access to your vulnerability. There are people who may have had that right and have had it revoked. You get to decide how much of you they get to experience. Think about a stranger on an elevator who casually asks how you are. Our first instinct is to quickly respond “fine” or “good”. They don’t necessarily need to know what is going on with you. Consider that parent or family member who isn’t safe for you to share those intimate parts of you or people who have lost the privilege of having access to your feelings. Just because someone was once intimately connected to you doesn’t mean they have an all-access pass forever. You get to determine the admission to your emotional experience.

You are the gate keeper once the walls come down for how much you share of your emotional self. Being aware of your limitations and capacity, recognizing who is safe to share those emotions with and recognizing you have the right to pivot and change if you need to will help you start to set those boundaries. Communicate your expectations with the people close to you. Let them know what your experiences have been in the past if you choose to use that information to help inform them. Be honest with yourself about what the feelings are that you are experiencing. It might be helpful to seek out an objective outside perspective or professional to help identify those feelings. Then work on building tools on managing keeping yourself safe while also allowing yourself to have needs, wants, desires and emotions. Increasing your emotional awareness and doing so with compassion and kindness for yourself helps you to set healthy boundaries to your emotional self.

Things to consider:

Who do you feel comfortable sharing your emotional self with?

Who does it feel uncomfortable sharing your emotional sensitive self with?

Are you aware of when you or where you can share your emotional needs?

Are you aware of how much you are willing to share with the people you are safe being your full emotional self with?

How does it feel when you can be your full emotional self?

Physical Space and Material Boundary

            We take up space. Our physical self is made up of matter with weight and size. As humans we begin to be aware of our impact on our environment pretty quickly in the first few months of our experience of being born. Prior to that, we take up space inside our mother. What I have observed is we strive to create autonomy and independence after about age 2. If you have ever struggled to get a toddler dressed, you understand they want to do things on their own. We are constantly coming up again limits to our physical space out in the world. We have an awareness of the boundaries the world creates for us. Part of increasing our understanding of the larger world and our place in it is to recognize where we end and something or someone else starts. Setting up boundaries will be about communicating what we are comfortable with and what makes us feel less comfortable.  Consider that the physical and material boundaries include touch, space, what our needs are and then what things belong to us in terms of stuff.

We consider some level of autonomy over our bodies when we start to become aware of having a separate body from those around us. It is more common now to consider consent when it comes to touching someone else’s body. There has been a significant movement to teach children that they get to decide whether they want to be touched. When I was growing up there was less of a push for me to have a voice about how I was allowed to be touched. Depending on your culture, being hugged or kissed was at the discretion of the adults who were in charge of you. In the case of abuse, there are no limits to how someone touches your body. The psychological implications are that you might feel like you don’t have any control over what happens to your body or yourself.  In the case of familial interactions, when I was younger it was required to greet family with hugs and kisses. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice in the matter. I do appreciate now that we are asking little kids if we can give them an embrace or kiss them. Things are changing in how we teach kids what is appropriate touch and what they want. There is more information about the negative implications of physical punishment when it comes to parenting. There is also more information about how to help kids regulate their emotions and behavior by being aware of their own capacity for engagement. There are plenty of examples of people inappropriately crossing physical boundaries with touch both intentional and unintentional. I think about being a crowded train or bus where people are up against you and there isn’t much room for choice in the matter. There is always the choice of taking a different bus or train.

We also consider the idea of personal space when it comes to the physical boundary. We think about the space we take up as a human. We consider the space we occupy with our body as well as with our stuff. I think about sitting in the same seat at work or at school. We take a certain ownership of spaces with time. I had a favorite seat in class and a place I liked to study. When we share space with other people it takes time to get used to how and where those people also interact with the space. When we bring a baby or even a new animal into a space it takes a period of adjustment to incorporate their bodies and the stuff they come with. In new relationships or friendships, the lines of space get blurred initially and with time, our need for space can be more evident. We don’t always pay attention at first to our needs. What we do pay attention to is our level of anxiety or distress that comes from having a new person in our environment. Working with new parents and with couples, I helped them increase their awareness around when and how they feel with someone else in their physical space. There are times when it feels comfortable and good to have someone in your space and other times when it can feel overwhelming. I know for me; I only have a certain capacity for some people in my space. I can build up a tolerance, but it takes time. Growing up in a large family, there was very little personal space from other humans. Now that I have been single and living alone, I recognize my need for more space from people.

The way we communicate our needs for space, touch and what our capacity is will come with having an awareness of what it feels like to either have it or what it feels like not to have it. We don’t always know what our needs are in that regard. It is also helpful to recognize the meaning we assign to certain types of physical interactions. Certain places and people can feel safe and comforting. Other spaces and people can feel off putting and triggering. Our capacity for these spaces and how we feel in them changes over time. We can lose an affinity for a place based on what has taken place there and what our level of healing and growth is. It is fundamental to be aware of how you feel in a space and with the people who are around. You can have more tolerance in places when you have someone with you or at certain times of the day. If you are going into a space that can be triggering it might be useful to ask for a support person. It would also be helpful to remind yourself of your goal in being in the space. Once you become accustomed to asking for your needs it does get easier. Increasing your awareness of that you have needs then makes it easier to ask for them. There is a certain level of power that comes from overcoming fear and anxiety in spaces that used to cause discomfort. It is also helpful to recognize the facts of a new perspective with growth and healing.

As physical beings we take up space and we have the right to do so. We can start to be aware of what taking up space means and how we want to do that. As we become more independent and feel more confident, how we take up space feels more like a right than a privilege. When we can determine our capacity for having others in a space, we can communicate our expectations and feel more empowered to do so. Working past our Codependency looks like taking up space on purpose and feeling good about doing it. When we come from a place a loving ourselves, we are less concerned with how our presences effects other people. We can simply be present. We have the ability to set boundaries to protect our peace and ask for our needs.

Regarding our material boundaries, it is important to recognize what things mean to us. How attached are we to these things. Where we keep these things. Do these things bring us joy. How do we feel when they are touched or moved by other people. Think about the items you hold as prized possessions, are they displayed? Do they have the same meaning they once held? People can be particular about their things and can have undeclared boundaries about their things. When we move in with someone, we can start to increase our awareness of what things mean to us. We also become aware of how our space is oriented has meaning. We can become territorial about which way the toilet paper goes or where we put the cheese grater. When we end something or move into different spaces, holding on to things can change. If we lose things suddenly, it can create anxiety or panic. We get to decide what things we hold sacred and what things we don’t care as much about. A childhood toy can have more significance than an expensive bag or pair of shoes. It is important to make people aware of what is important to you so they can treat it with respect. If you find that you are holding resentment for how someone treats your items, that is a place where a boundary can be useful. The boundary is less about the other person and more about what your need is and how it makes you feel.

Much of how we feel about ourselves is about how we take up space on the planet. Although in the grand scheme of things we are but small pieces of a much larger system, we still have meaning and a place. How we interact with the environment and the meaning we give to that environment is significant. It becomes vital to feel like we have power over our body and things we cherish in these spaces. Communicating our needs both for our physical being and our things becomes our responsibility. Letting the people we interact with our desire for space to process is a way for us to manage our sense of peace. Attending to our peace should be the goal. As we continue to feel worthy and deserving, we are collecting more peace. Setting limits with the people around us to address how they interact with our physical being and our stuff is up to us with the intention of taking care of ourselves. The job of maintaining our wellbeing is our responsibility. The process of communicating those needs and expectations comes practice, we get better at it when we use that skill.

Things to consider:

What do we need to take care of our physical needs?

Who does a good job of respecting our physical boundaries and who is more challenging?

What behaviors from other people make us uncomfortable and how can we set limits with those people around those behaviors?

How can we teach the people around us to communicate their needs and expectations?

How do you know when you have reached your capacity for having people in your space?

What items do you have that are meaningful and important to you?

Time Boundary

The boundary of time is being aware of how you are spending the resource of hours or minutes you have in a day to address a situation, goal or circumstance. It can be argued that time is made up construct, but most humans are governed by the clock in one way or another. How we spend these resources are not always up to us. We have busy lives and 24 hours in a day to get things done. Some of how we spend our time is based on jobs, kids, partners and situations. The boundaries that we are responsible for can be dictated by these circumstances. What we can control to varying degrees is how we limit the time we spend doing things that can feel challenging or burdensome. Now I am not suggesting you just disregard the flow of your life as it stands right now. What I am suggesting is to be mindful of how and with whom you are spending your time. I would encourage you to think about the things you do freely, enjoying the time you spend to get your needs met. I want you to think about if the people around you are respectful of your time as a commodity. How we feel about our time helps to inform the way we set up limits of access to our time. If you are scheduled to work a 9-hour shift but your boss is often asking that you stay late, how do you feel about that? Can you have a conversation about it and also can you choose to leave when your shift ends? If someone comes to visit and they often overstay their welcome or extend how long they stay, can you suggest they come earlier or leave by a certain time. When you set up a meeting and people are often late or wander in after you start, can you create a policy or rule about starting on time?

How we spend the supply of time with our family and loved ones is also a place to consider how we set boundaries. What are we doing with/for these people and what are we getting in return? What is our expectation around the time we spend with them? Something to be aware of is how we are using the time with the people close to us. Consider how you feel when you are spending time with them. What is your energetic capacity and willingness to use your time resource with family? Often, these people are used to us giving of our time and not necessarily appreciating the cost we endure to spend time with them. When we can regulate the amount and quality of time, we might be able to adjust the toll on our mental health. If you start to set some limits around your time, you will notice that you have more time and energy to do other things. If you take an opportunity to evaluate your capacity and acknowledge if you are running low or feeling good, then you can choose to engage further or take a step back. Increasing your awareness of how you feel can inform your conscious decision to participate in any activity. I like to consider how our peace of mind is being taxed with the time we are spending with other people.

I challenge you to keep in mind the things you do out of a sense of obligation to the people around you. We sometimes do things because they are what is expected of us due to our role or position in a relationship not considering whether we want to actually spend the time doing that thing. Obligation can be a slippery slope because people may have an expectation of our time doing things, we don’t want to engage in. It would be important to identify what needs are met by you taking time from your day and if someone else could spend that same time doing that thing. You might have to set a limit to the time you spend doing those things and see if those expectations can be met by someone else. I like to have clients work with the idea of saying no to doing certain things with or for other people they are doing things from a sense of obligation. They might benefit from setting up the expectation with people close to them and then have them observe how these people will find a way to get their needs met in the absence of your time. What I have noticed is people will find a way to get their needs met without you always having to use your time resource. They will start to ask others or do things on their own. You don’t actually need to take time from what you’re doing to get things done. When we can pull back and allow the other person to problem solve, the task becomes less of an obligation for you and more for the other person to figure out. It is amazing how resourceful people become when they come against a limit or boundary.

Another way to consider time boundaries would be to consider how you set limits around your own time. The idea of compartmentalizing what you do and when. There is also a component of how you are spending your time on and for yourself then using boundaries to protect that time. Asking for your time to respected can be tricky when it comes to certain people or environments. Some people struggle with prioritizing themselves. They tend to overextend their time for others and then build up resentment or anger about their choice or feel as though they don’t have a choice in the matter. Setting limits before going into a situation can be helpful. Talking about how you feel in specific situations with the people close to you would be something to be mindful of.  Setting aside time for your needs, wants and desires is crucial for your wellbeing. I would encourage you to list a 5 things you enjoy doing and consider the last time you engaged in those things. Think about the activities that bring you joy and fill your cup. Consider the times in recent past when you feel rejuvenated and centered.  Now, think about how you can reintegrate these practices into your life and what you can shift or set a boundary in order to do so.

A while back I started making my time a priority in the beginning of the day. I am a morning person. I have more energy and feel my best first thing in the morning. I used to rush around in the morning getting things ready for other people. When I started to take the best part of my energy and using it for me, I started to feel calmer and more engaged in the day. I started to use that time for exercise, meditation and grounding. I took those precious hours to prepare myself for the day ahead. I created a practice of limiting how many clients I would see in a day and stuck to that limit. I made sure to stick to my own limits and not deviating from it. I put aside time for breaks daily and not schedule work during that time. What I found was I had energy at the end of the day to do things for myself like making a good dinner or making plans with people close to me. I felt more motivated to work during the day. I could be fully engaged in seeing clients.  I was able to enjoy the time I was using making my needs a priority. Admittedly, I work for myself and run my own schedule. For people who don’t have this luxury and have to adhere to a set schedule, I encourage you to you increase your awareness of when you have the most energy and feel your best, how can you spend that time giving yourself what you need? How can you use that time to get grounded and centered? Do you need silence, do you need more rest?

We all have busy lives and are pulled in many directions. When we can recognize time as a resource and how it can be used to create peace for ourselves, we will work harder to protect it and use it wisely. I know it can feel like you need more hours in a day to get all the things done. It can feel like there is not enough of you to go around. Protecting your peace and mental health can be a motivation to be more mindful in how you use the precious commodity of your time. The grown people around you will only respect your time when you start to respect it yourself. They will learn how to do that when you model that for them by setting boundaries or limits around accessing it. Think of your time as something precious and treat it accordingly. If you set limits around it and keep some for yourself you are adding it as a resource like food, water, and shelter to take care of yourself better.

Things to consider:

Think about what part of the day you enjoy and how can you incorporate rituals and practices to take care of you?

When we consider the amount of time it takes to engage with these other people do you feel drained or are you invigorated?

What is the cost to you if you participate in these activities?

How do you feel when you overextend your time with certain people or in specific situations?

Where can you set some boundaries for your own time to take better care of yourself?

What are things you can eliminate from your schedule to give more time to taking care of yourself?

Specifically, when you can a NO benefit how you can love yourself better by giving that time to you?

Boundary Introduction

Setting a boundary can be challenging especially in long standing relationships. It is important to consider the types of boundaries there are and how to create a framework around setting them. There are five primary types of boundaries to be aware of Time, Thoughts, Emotions and Physical/Material and Sex. I will be breaking them down by category and then use some examples of how creating limits in these ways helps to manage your peace as well as helps you establish an expectation of needs in relationship with other people. Keep in mind the goal of setting boundaries is to be aware of where you end and where someone else begins. A boundary or limit needs to be managed by you as your behavior is the only one you can control. You can communicate the limit to someone else but the follow up is yours to maintain. A boundary can be a no but can also be an opportunity to say yes to yourself.

Boundaries can also be set for and with yourself. Often, we put our needs and expectations last and put those of other people first. Setting boundaries for yourself can help to build practices of making yourself a priority. The goal would eventually be to make sure you have your needs, desires and wants met, addressing those primarily then to take care of other people if you so choose. When we start to value our time, thoughts, space, emotions, sex and things we work to make sure they are protected in a way that makes us feel better. Setting limits for yourself and about yourself helps you to shift the perspective inward rather than outside of yourself for attention, validation, and acceptance.

Communicating boundaries is something people struggle with, especially as adults. We don’t always enjoy having to ask for what we need or don’t like from people we are in relationship with. As with anything else, we do have to communicate our needs and expectations in order to get them met.  We can find it challenging to determine where we end and someone else begins. So many idealized relationships are about people becoming one entity or unit. The reality is we are separate autonomous beings even if we are all collectively part of a family, group or couple. Having autonomy is in many ways freedom. If we can recognize that having control of your physical space, time, energy, thoughts, things and sexuality are a gift it might help to create a sense of care and attention to help safeguard it.

Self-love versus Self-care

At first consideration self-care and self-love are similar concepts. They are both about caring for yourself first. The reality is there are some significant differences. Though both are important and necessary, self-love is a fundamental necessity that is the foundation for self-care. Humans are not inherently taught how to love themselves, quite the opposite. Most of us our socialization is about seeking out other people to love, validate and accept us. As empathetic creatures, we get our first cues in socialization and behavior from our adult caregivers. We learn how to engage with other people by mirroring what behaviors are around us. The concept of self-care is movement to do more things to make ourselves feel better and to help manage stress. Self-care focuses on actions we can take to care for ourselves in a better way. Though necessary, it stems from a lack of being able to validate and love ourselves. The action of taking care of our needs often can be pushed to background in our day to day lives. Take care of our own needs then should be something we prioritize for on our own.

Self-love can be a nebulous concept that most people haven’t the faintest idea how to begin. There are so many memes and affirmations on social media touting the benefits of loving yourself. Sometimes it can feel daunting to consider what loving yourself even means. There is an ego centric idea that loving oneself can be considered selfish and consequently a negative thing. So many of us our taught within our culture that we should put the needs of others before our own. There for, loving ourselves is seen as counter to the expectations of how we are supposed to function within society. In some faith-based organizations it is considered sinful or negative to be focused solely on yourself. We are supposed to find favor in a higher power or the community at large. In doing so, we are then viewed as worthy and obedient. The idea of being selfish is often frowned upon. I challenge that being selfish or taking care of yourself first is necessary to build a relationship with valuing yourself.

The foundation of Codependency is being reliant on external validation to justify your place on the planet. Within households and families where your worth is based in how you show up for others, you don’t learn how to appreciate who you are just for the sake of being. Your worth and value is transactional. We learn how to take care of our own needs not from a place of love but from a survival place because our needs are not being addressed by anyone else. I know that for me, I was inundated with inconsistent messages about my worth and value by my family of origin. I did not receive the validation or even encouragement to love myself for who I was. I didn’t start to create the foundation of self-love until well into my 30’s when I began to work on feeling good about how I showed up in the world through my intellectual or professional achievements.

I have spoken before about how our importance from a societal perspective is largely based on either how we are service to others or how liked we are by others. I often think about interactions on the playground of schools all over the world and how kids interact with one another. There will always be popular crowds and kids that are left out. I think about teachers talking about how to have friends is by being a friend. Somewhere that message gets distorted from the classroom to the playground. The challenges increase if, at home, the adults are struggling with loving themselves and not modeling healthy validation. In working with clients and in my own journey it takes a significant amount of unlearning old messages about self from childhood.

Since doing my own healing I have noticed how differently I have been able to see myself. I have had to start from the outside looking at the parts of myself that other people see and then internalize those feelings. I have had to unlearn what my value was based on when I didn’t like myself. I would look to others to validate me. I needed approval for my existence to feel worthy. It took a while to create that approval within myself. Part of how I worked on doing so was to change how I was talking about the things I didn’t like about myself. I have struggled with weight for most of my life. I didn’t like my body and how it was put together. I started to see my body parts for the good things they did for me. I would say things like I give great hugs with my big arms. I can walk for miles with my strong legs. I started to get tattoos and show off my beautifully decorated skin. I started to see the parts of my face that other people would comment on like the color of my eyes. I shifted the way I was looking at myself and I started to talk about my body as something I was proud of.

I also worked to clean up how I was talking to myself about myself. I used to make comments about how dumb I was or how irresponsible I was. I used to say things like “I am so stupid or worthless”. It took a while to reframe what I was saying to myself to something more neutral like I made a bad choice in that moment rather than I make bad choices. I started to check facts about what I do well. I would use things like, I got good grades in school. I finished my degree. Other people trust my decisions. I keep our home running really well. I am doing my best with the skills and tools I have. It got easier after changing the language consistently. I started to believe it more easily. It wasn’t so hard to think of things I do well. I recognized that I have been really good at being a grown up and have gotten through really challenging things before now. When we can shift the perspective from that negative mindset, we can start to see things in a more loving way. What I look like and how I conduct myself in the world are now validated from within me.

There are still hard days. The old negative messages I held onto are still inside me. They don’t come up as often as they once did. When they do, I can look at the facts, new facts, new evidence and it is easier to get back to a neutral place if not a positive place in how I see myself. One of the harder things in loving myself has been feeling worthy of good things. The old messages and beliefs about what I deserved was harder to break. I had thought for so long that I wasn’t deserving of having a good life or a happy life. I was stuck in comparing my life and my struggles to other people. Other people in my life, like friends and coworkers, seemed to have an easier time or better luck at getting the things I wanted. I felt like I wasn’t ever going to have those things. I remember thinking I could not get married or have love because I had my daughter when I was really young. I thought I was somehow ruined by not following the “right” path. I would push myself so hard to finish school because I had to make up for destroying my chances at being a good partner or parent with my poor choices.

It took time to see the path I was on as the right one. As I continued to accomplish the small goals, I set for myself like finishing a semester of college successfully or getting a higher paying job, I could see that I was, in fact, doing things right. It was many years later, after completing the degree and securing a good job, that I could see that I was capable of changing my life. I refused to be stuck in the circumstances I “put” myself in. I started to have compassion for the younger versions of myself that struggled to feel worthy of having good things. I kept working at setting goals and completing them. It started to get easier to set higher and harder ambitions. I could see the path of things I didn’t think I could do, that I had done. I added to the list of things I was able to complete, however challenging. I can see and have seen how people get caught up in the narrative that they don’t deserve positive things in their lives. I have seen people give up completely and stay in their circumstances because finding a path out is too hard. They feel defeated and unworthy of a good outcome. Changing just one thing can feel insurmountable. The thing is, when you can start with how to you talk to yourself about yourself, there is a possibility of changing things. When you can complete just one thing and stick to it, you will see change.

I have asked clients often to think of a time they felt good about themselves. I would challenge them to consider what was happening at that time. When they could attach to that feeling, they could start to see how it was once possible. The idea of it created hope. With consistency and action, it is possible to change from the current situation to a new perspective. The idea of something happening once, can create the potential for it to happen again. Now that doesn’t mean we have to recreate the exact situation. We just have to remind ourselves that it has happened before now. Rather than focusing on what created that situation, I ask clients to focus on the feelings, then talk about those feelings to themselves. I would have them say things like “I feel good when I am kind to other people” or “I feel accomplished when I get this thing done”. I encourage them I say out loud “I like my eyes when I wear this sweater” or “I enjoy spending time with people who appreciate spending time with me”. There is an element of doing in how we can love ourselves.

The doing of things is where the self-care piece comes in. How we care for ourselves is the next level in improving how we feel about the way we take up space on the planet. I have worked to change my relationship with food and my body. It had to shift my position of disdain for what I looked like and how food was the enemy to food being fuel and something to be enjoyed. It took like to create a healthier connection with what I put in my body and using it as something I look forward to. I enjoy eating good food with my friends. I enjoy spending time with people who care about me, and eating can be an opportunity for connection. Now, it is a way I take care of myself. I also take care of my physical and mental health with working out. I feel better when I get out and run or walk daily. Walking helps me manage my anxiety and gets me ready for the day. I take really good care of my skin and doing my skin care routine is a way I take care of what I look like. Doing things like managing my body is a way for me to feel connected with it and treat myself well.

I enjoy travel. One of the ways I reward myself and think about self-care is by taking myself to places I have never been or going back to places I really enjoy. I like to set goals of visiting places either by myself or with friends to see the ocean or have an experience. I enjoy planning the trip and talking about it with my people. I take pleasure in working to provide myself with the opportunity to go to new destinations. I also like going to see my family where they live and creating memories with them and their kids. I have made that part of how I take care of myself. I feel like setting goals to include the things I appreciate helps keep me focused on something to look forward to. I can then get through the middle part of accomplishing the smaller goals in between. I can set up a budget and work toward saving for the next trip.

Self-care can be as simple as making a good cup of coffee or tea in the morning. It can look like making your bed every day. You can be taking a nice bath with scented candles and essential oils. The business of caring for ourselves is being good to the person you are in the moment. I encourage people to listen to the music that can elevate their mood. I recommend they put on their favorite item of clothing that helps them feel comfortable or confident. Doing self-care in an extension of self-love. They are not mutually exclusive. Although they are in some ways about doing actions that make you feel better, they are also about how you are feeling about yourself. When you can shift your awareness and attention from the negative perspective to a neutral one, a positive point of view is possible. It is a daily practice, and it does take time. The best way to combat our Codependency and need to have other people validate us, is to love and take care of ourselves. When we do, we can shift what we allow from other people. The practice of self-care is to create peace for yourself. When you have peace consistently, you are more likely to protect it. You are more likely to defend the good feelings associated. The goals for improving your wellbeing start to become so important that you will set boundaries up to protect it.

Things to consider:

How do you feel about yourself right now?

What about yourself, even one thing do you like?

If you could start to shift how you talk to yourself, where would you start?

Can you think about what you say to people you love and apply it to yourself?

Start to list facts about who you are and how you show up that are neutral if not positive.

How do you take care of others, and can you do some of those things for yourself?

Write about how you feel in moments when your are feeling confident or positive about the person you are. Even if the moments are brief, allow yourself the opportunity to have those moments.

Trust yourself

Have you ever been about to make a decision and your gut tensed up? Have you ever been driving around at night and turned left instead of right? This is your intuition guiding you. Human beings are the only creature on the planet who go against our natural instincts. We consciously choose to do the opposite of what our intuition says. We will literally run into a burning building or go out with someone our whole body rejects. It is something that happens consciously. I have heard many a client say, they knew better and did it anyway. I have done things I should have avoided. What is it that makes go against our higher self to do what we “should” do or “have” to do? Something to consider is that when we shut down that first inclination, we make our lives significantly more difficult. Part of doing this is a lesson we need to learn but we could likely learn it in a better way.

I like to remind clients to check in with their gut, their solarplexius or their intuition. After trauma or growing up in a situation where they were often forced to do things from obligation or perceived need, they stop listening to their own gut. We can watch little kids and see that they do things by instinct often. They will be attracted to things that are visually pleasing, sounds that are comforting and people they feel safe with. At a certain point, the adults in their lives will, intentionally or unintentionally, go against this attraction or instinct. Adults are working from constraints of time, emotions or societal obligations. Think about the last time you didn’t like someone or an environment right from the beginning. That is your instinct.

I talk about healing by aligning your head or thoughts, your heart or emotions and your gut or your intuition. When you start to respond from an alignment of the three of these things, you will start to feel stronger. It takes time to turn up the volume on your intuition. We often get overwhelmed by our thought or react from pure emotion. When we can take some time to breathe and listen to the small voice inside of ourselves, we will begin to make more informed decisions. Think about how it feels in your body when your instinct is talking to you. Some people feel a flutter or a tension. Pay attention to that. It will be important not to fall into old habits because of what is expected of you.

When was the last time you felt your best? What were you doing? What was the environment like. Who was around you? We are so often doing things from obligation; we have turned off our own ability to make a decision from what is best for us. We are thinking about how we don’t want to disappoint someone or how we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. Here’s a thought, people are allowed to feel they way they are going to. That includes disappointment. No one ever died from being disappointed. They might be hurt. They might get angry. They might feel some type of way. Their feelings are less about you and more about their own expectations. When we take a step back and start doing what is best for us, some people aren’t going to like it. They will also get over it or get out of your way.

One way to get back in tough with your own instincts is to increase your awareness of how it feels to do things you like doing. You might not know what that is anymore. What did you used to like? How did it feel the last time you did that thing? When was the last time you made a decision that was best for you? You will start to recognize that your heart, head and gut will feel in alignment. You will have less anxiety when you say what you really want to. You will start to have an easier time making decisions.

Another way to turn up your intuition is to recognize what you have been able to overcome or get through. We have all had that feeling that you couldn’t live through a really hard time. If you think about the last time you felt raw, defeated or broken. You got through that. You are here today. You might be a little bruised or even have some scars but you got past that really tough time. That is an indication that you can get through tough things. That’s one way to know that you can trust yourself. You got up off the bathroom floor. You got up again when you thought you couldn’t. You washed off the dirt, cleaned up the wound and moved on. Think about leaving that job or that bad relationship. You aren’t who you were before now. There is often a small voice inside you that is begging you to make a change. The more you pay attention to your instinct, that voice gets louder. The more you are doing things for you, your intuition gets stronger.

Think about people you know or even yourself, are you relying on other people’s opinions when you make decisions? Do you ask other people’s perspective when you are thinking about doing things or are you able to trust your own decision making? I once gave my decision-making power to my best friend. I had a series of bad relationships and couldn’t trust myself to make a good choice. She took the role seriously. She gave me a couple options and would often help me weigh them out. I got better at really listening to myself and recognized that I could make better choices if I trusted my gut. There have been a few different times when I have thought, I had better check in with someone outside of myself. I call that needing an adult. When you aren’t sure, its ok to check in with a close friend to check your work. This would be a person whose judgement you trust but also someone who will hold you accountable. But when you’re doing it all the time, that’s a problem. The opinions of others aren’t helpful if you have to live with the consequences.

I will ask a client, when they are struggling to make a decision, what do you want to do? It is often the opposite of what they are considering. We lose our way to what we want when we are thinking about what other people will say or think about our choices. I can tell you when you are making a choice based on the needs of other people, you are likely giving away a part of yourself. Give enough parts of yourself away, you are left with a shell of who you are. It will take time to get back to the truest version of you. The good thing is you can do it. One decision at a time. Even something as basic as what you want to eat or what you want to wear. When you get back in touch with yourself, it becomes easier to recognize what you like. That being said, there are sometimes when it is helpful to pay attention to what is motivating the choices you’re making. If the choice is because you really don’t want to do that thing, ok. If you are doing it for other people, its time reevaluate the decision.

Trusting yourself will take time. Especially if you have stopped listening to your gut. When you are making decisions from that place consistently, it gets easier. It will take time to feel more in control of your instinct. When you can start with easy choices like what to have for breakfast or how you want your coffee, you can then apply that feeling to other choices. It might be helpful to do some mediation. Get quiet and ask what you need for the day ahead. At points during the day, take inventory of what you need. Checking in with yourself gives you an opportunity to become familiar with your inner voice. Recognize that when you become familiar with that voice, it gets louder. Creating moments to tune into yourself will help. When you are behaving from a place of instinct and loving yourself best, you will feel a greater sense of peace and grounding.

Things to consider:

When was the last time you went against your instinct? How did that work out?

What is your normal process when making big choices?

Can you think of the most recent decision you made from your gut?

What are three things you do to bring your instinct back online?

 Who can you turn to in an “I need an adult” situation?

Doing the Work of CoD

Doing the work of being aware of your Codependency is, at times, labor intensive. There is so much processing that takes place from the past, present and future. The heart and mind are working double time to look at where you have been and what you have been through while also looking at what behavior you are engaging in currently. There is much to be learned from what you have been through. The goal is to be kind to yourself through the process. While considering what is happening right now. Most people tend to avoid looking at hard things within themselves. It is, sometimes, easier to look at what other people are doing. We can get distracted from our own healing when we are uncomfortable. I can tell you, for me, I have struggled to spend so much time in my own head and emotions.

The challenge comes from recognizing what the pay off is from helping and taking care of people. We do what we are used to doing. It is helpful to look at where that patten of behavior originated. Often, the taking care of people or meeting other people’s needs comes from seeking security or safety. We will do what we can to avoid discomfort in the form of conflict or distress. If you were to look at your childhood or last significant relationship, what was communication like? Were you able to ask for your needs and were they met? In other sections, we talk about trauma or addiction as a source of needing to fit expectations of others. When you think about behaviors to seek approval or acceptance in relationship, what were you doing or what was happening around you? For me there was a need to make sure I was doing the most to hopefully not have to deal with a blow up. I was controlling everything I could so that I didn’t disappoint someone else. There were times when my anxiety was very high anticipating that someone else was going to be angry, anxious, hurt or mad. If they were in anyway having a negative emotion, I wasn’t doing enough. When thinking about how much effort I was putting in, I didn’t even consider that they were allowed to feel the way they did.

We will make ourselves a martyr to the other person’s needs. In doing so, we can get resentful when they aren’t putting the same amount of effort in. We become bitter and frustrated because they still aren’t seeing our efforts and not having the right feelings about the situation. There is also the likelihood that we didn’t actually avoid anything. We are still having to deal with the negative emotions or outcome. In talking with a friend while on a trip, we recognized the ease of trusting the other person and not having to manage them. In the past, when traveling with family, she and I would have to preplan things, make arrangements and reservations in order to avoid the other person’s disappointment or anxiety. What we recognized is we would have our own anxiety thinking about whether the other people were enjoying the experience and we weren’t actually enjoying our own experiences. It does take the fun out of things when you have take the lead all the time.

I think about the people I have fun with. I think about relationships that are effortless. I know that I have people in my life that I can trust to take either the lead or can take care of their own feelings and can communicate their needs. I consider the people who are good at being aware of their own energy and emotional wellbeing. I like when they can tell me no about things they don’t want to do or having space for. It helps me then be able to pivot and change plans for myself. I feel more secure when someone is willing to tell me in words what their needs are so I am not guessing what the outcome will be. It is easier to hold space or give time to them and not manage it. Since I was very young, I had to consider several potential outcomes and mange several possible emotional reactions, many of which were not my own.

Things to consider:

In current relationships, are there people you trying to manage?

Are you considering what the outcome will be if you don’t do the most?

Who are the people in your experience that you can trust to manage themselves?

What would it be like to give them the space to have their own emotions about a situation?

Abandonment Wounds

It is in our nature to want to feel connected to other people. The drive is so big from the time we are born. We seek out the gaze of adults in the room with milky watery eyes. Tiny hands reaching to grasp another. Our brains are chemically stimulated by electric impulses when we make connection creating pathways of reward. It could be said that the need is as compulsory as the need to eat or drink. It makes sense that the opposite, or the loss of connection. can be devastating. It creates a fear and determination to hold on to another person or people so primal we will do almost anything to maintain it. Other creatures in the animal kingdom don’t share that same motivation. Many are solitary and function better that way. Humans see solitude as an oddity but can also use it as a form of punishment to banish someone from their community. As it relates to Codependency, I’d like to consider what it means to abandon ourselves for connection. How are far are we willing to go to maintain connections while letting go of the parts of ourselves suffer?

I have talked about the connections we have with the family we are born to and the relationships we have with other people in a romantic way. I have briefly talked about connections with friends and people we work with. There are also more tangential connections we have with people in the communities we live in, worship in and learn in. The concentric circles growing further and further out of groups we belong to. There are rules and expectations of behavior and beliefs that regulate the belonging. Some overt and some suggested. What we can neglect to see is the choice we have as adults anyway to participate. Children have less autonomy over such things. I think about how people, once part of a group, work to sustain the being part of collective. We want to belong. We want to feel seen and have our presence be validated. Even the most introverted of us still wants to know they are part of something larger than themselves.

The idea of Codependency takes into account what we are doing to in an extra way to stay connected with others. Often times, we are willing to take on extra things or agree to do stuff that we might not really want to do but it helps keep the peace and therefore the connection. The fear is that we can be abandoned. We can be left behind as people move on. We are so motivated by the anxiety that comes from this idea that we will do lots of things to avoid it. The feeling of not being included in someone’s life or being part of something can keep us confined to what is familiar. There are a few parts of abandonment that compel us to do whatever is necessary to feel connected. The abandonment wound can come from multiple sources and often happens before we are aware of the lasting impact of it.

The injury of abandonment takes root in the heart. It leave a jagged edge. Healing from it takes longer than you expect. I know, for me, it calcified and created some unhelpful beliefs about love. I held onto the idea that people leave and what remains is a sad empty space. I let the injury stay uncleaned and it grew, rotting from within. The space got tender and hot. Infected with the belief that I wasn’t enough to stick around for. I already had the thoughts about not feeling worthy of love. The fact that people could just go away made that worse. I gathered all those feelings and kept them in a box in the back of my head. I longed for connecting to recreate the sense of wholeness in vacated space. But I was also fearful that if I allowed myself to love again the scab over the space would be reinjured. 

My dad died when I was 16. He was there and then he was gone. I can still remember when the space in my heart was ripped open and all the dad feelings were evicted. The tenant lived there went to work in the morning and didn’t come back. It took years to pack it up in boxes and trash bags. I lost my first boyfriend Jeremy a few years later. The empty spaces where they lived stood barren like condemned houses in a not so great neighborhood. Windows boarded up. The people who came into the neighborhood moved into the houses around the area but didn’t stay long as the property value went down with the eyesore of those vacant houses.  Weeds took over the once tended yards. The elements stripped the paint and rotted the frame and foundation.

My 16-year-old self didn’t have the skills to manage the properties. I let them become condemned. Over the years I would go back to the two spaces and reminisce about what used to occupy them. I could feel the ghosts of the former inhabitants’ brush past me. It was as though the memories were projected on the delipidated walls. The smells of breakfasts on Sunday faintly filled the air. I could hear the tinny sounds of oldies on an 80’s boom box playing in the garage. I’d fall asleep on the broken-down couch dreaming of a new couple talking under the willow tree that stood in the front lawn. The desire to feel those two humans specifically was such a strong pull. I held on so tightly and wanted to avoid that pain at the same time. The scar continued to grow over the gashes.

The unhealthy coping with those losses looked like bumping up against what could have been love and then holding myself back. It became a fascination with choosing people who resembled my distant dad and alcoholic teenage boyfriend. I did all the things I knew to try to fix them. I was accepting the bare minimum of attention and engagement. I let the roots of fear and undeserving grow into a warped tree diseased with branches. I believed that this was all I could expect of love from men. I shut down the boxes that held the potential for anything real or possible. I once wanted to have something real and now I didn’t think it was a possibility for me. I was going to have empty connections even though I poured myself into broken distant men. I never wanted them to feel the devastating loss that I knew would happen if I would walk away from them. So, I stayed in the relationships long past the expiration date.

I told myself those stories on repeat long after I was old enough to fix the houses. I would eventually gut the houses and rebuild. I replaced the warped studs and bowed floorboards. I put in new drywall and replaced the electric. I added new plumbing and replanted flowers in the boxes outside. New people moved in. They did a better job of keeping up the maintenance of the houses, but they were only renters. Over and over the houses feel into disrepair. There were long term renters, short term tenants and lots of overnight guests. Like any rented space, people don’t invest the time to manage the area with the same intention as someone who owns house. I am the owner and it’s my job of tend to the property. I had to decide whether to tear them down and rebuild or turn them into the graveyard they covered up.

I am learning how to fix up these empty spaces. I know that the bones of these love houses are good. I know today that there was love there to begin with. They were built with it. I know that even in the face of the losses, I am capable of love. I am capable of giving and receiving love. I can put that love back into the dilapidated old buildings and create something new. I know that because I continue to fill the neighborhood with new buildings, new houses where love exists. I know that my dad and Jeremy didn’t leave me, they just left. Their time in my story was done. They left a space but also memories of how I was seen and attended to. I don’t have to tear down the whole things to start over, I can mend what was left behind and create a new place for love to grow. There was a time when I wanted to burn them to the ground. I wanted to pave over them and forget they were ever here. Today, I don’t feel that way. I want to honor the memories of the two men who once existed and loved me. I want to remember that I had true connections with these two souls. They taught me things and spent good time with me that wasn’t just about them leaving. 

I am working on it daily. I try to check my facts about what I know to be true. I look for the people who show up consistently. I try to recognize that I have had people in my life who love me without trying. I think about my friendships and relationship with other people. I value the folks who seek me out and check in with me regularly. I invest time in those relationships that add joy and meaning to my life. I recognize today that everything changes and sometimes people leave. I take the opportunity to hold space for the grief but not grip onto it as tightly as I used to making the sadness part of my personality. I still think about the two houses. I can drive by them and think of the good times and sweet memories without hurting like I once did. I can see new life in them someday. No one can replace these two people, these two significant men who happened to leave. They are part of the story of how I learned to love but not the only story. I have lived longer now without them both than I ever had them in my life. I survived the loss. I love more now than I thought I was capable of.

I have a sense of belonging both to things bigger than myself and also to myself. I am working on not abandoning myself and my needs. I am making strides at shifting my expectation from very low and accepting the minimum to more of what I need in the moment. I continue working on detaching from any inevitable outcome to just being in the moment. I don’t have to have all the things figured out, I can be receiving in the moment of what people are offering or not. I am learning that I can have needs and if I am not getting them met, I can walk away. I am not abandoning anyone I am just not staying in something that doesn’t serve me. I don’t have to stay. I don’t owe anything to anyone but myself. I am worth effort, time and energy. I have people in my life who are willing to give these things freely and I don’t have to do extra things or give up parts of myself to receive them.

Things to consider:

Where in your story did you feel abandoned?

What were the unhelpful beliefs that you created because of those losses?

How did you cope with those hard feelings?

What parts of yourself have you abandoned to be part of relationships or groups?

How can you shift the beliefs with facts about what is actually true in your story today?

How are you willing to show up for yourself now to create connectedness?

Care less without being careless

         I was talking with a client once who was struggling with setting boundaries with his coworkers. He talked about how they all offer different levels of contribution to the projects they are working on. He processed his frustration with one of his team mates specifically. He processed having resentment and anger with him consistently. We talked with curiosity about why he cares so much how this other person works. He processed considering how much he does and wants the same level of commitment from his coworker. We talked more about the other things this person contributes. He processed recognizing that they have been going through some things lately and how the projects often get done and they are contributing equally in different ways. We talked about how it might be helpful if he started to care less without being careless.

I loved this idea because often we are super invested in the outcome and we miss the point of how people are showing up or why they are doing what they are doing or, in this case, not doing. He was able to see his coworker for the human he is and not just someone who isn’t pulling his own weight. We can do this more often with people we care about. Think about the people you are holding resentment toward and why. It is likely that you are holding on to expectations based on what you have given or done and how it isn’t being reciprocated in the way you want. I encourage clients to read The Four Agreements (Ruiz, D. M. 2001)₁. In the book Mr. Ruiz talks about not taking things personally as one of the agreements. It is more challenging than it sounds but super helpful as a practice. Often, people are just doing the best they can and they don’t do things to us, generally. They are just trying to get through like the rest of us. It is our expectations that create disappointment and eventually resentment.

We can start to be aware of what we are expecting and work to be more realistic about those. We can also start to see the person we have the expectations from as a human being going through their own experience. We can care about them from a place of genuine empathy. We can put ourselves in their position and have compassion without having unrealistic or unhelpful expectations of how we want them to show up. Here is where the idea of addiction is helpful. The foundation of ALANON is structured around the 12-step model and how I became very aware of my Codependency. I attended a meeting while I was in my master’s program as a cultural experience. There were lots of things I didn’t like about going to the meeting but there were also some helpful things. The concept that an addict “should” get better because we love them or because we do all these extra things is so unhelpful for both us and the addict. We can care about someone with an addiction issue and also detach from the outcome of them getting better. Addiction is not about other people. It is about the person who is struggling with their own issues. It will be challenging but helpful to care less about their behavior and focus on what we can control.

It will be a practice to start to see the individuals around us as separate from us or what we do for them. When we are practicing caring less about what happens and focusing on what we can actually control, things get a bit clearer. This will be helpful with the people close to us. We care about our partners, parents, family, friends, and children but is it our job to care about what they are choosing to do. Now obviously, with our children, their development is a key factor in this. With adults, we can care a little less about what they are choosing to do and still be supportive. Think about the last time you became super invested in what someone you loved or cared about was doing or choosing. How often did you take on the worry, anger or anxiety about it? People are out here making themselves sick about what other people are doing. That’s not helpful to you or them. This is an opportunity to care less and still be present and supportive. I encourage clients to acknowledge the feelings people are having and to be helpful when and if called about to do so but not before. I like the metaphor of the light house; it is a beacon of light indicating the shore but the skilled sailor is responsible for getting there. A skilled sailor only learns from going through the storm.

This concept is very important when it comes to our children. They need to have skills to function in the world with and without you. It’s hard to think about our precious infants without us. As we know, infants quickly grow into toddlers, school kids and then teenagers. For them to be successful, they will need to navigate the world without us. They will have to learn how to weather some storms on their own. Our goal is to encourage our children to be kind, caring and conscious of others. We also want them to be confident in their own abilities. The best way to do this is to give them space to figure things out with our guidance but not hovering the whole time. The concept of helicopter parents is real. I have heard some pretty unhelpful things parents have done in the name of caring for their children. Those parents are often overwhelmed and frustrated when their teenager or preteen is doing everything in their power to detach. Imagine a teenager acting like a three-year-old with acne and bad attitude.

Taking this idea a step further, think about those people in your life who are super invested when you are struggling but aren’t really around when you are doing well or even great. They might be a little codependent on your drama and struggle. I had a client who was working on herself and making serious progress on her boundaries. She was noticing that one of her friends was less interested in talking about her successes, but she would often ask about the things that had been challenges. There are some people in our lives who only care when they can “help” or “fix”. If you have these people in your life, this would be a good time to set a boundary with them. When we are talking with friends we may want to be specific in asking for what we need in terms of  space to vent or just to talk about the challenge. We will talk more about boundaries later but asking for your needs this way is a good one to start with people we care about and want to keep around.

We can be caring and compassionate about what other people are going through. I encourage you to keep managing your expectations about how people care about you. If you need something specific, ask for it. If you want help, say that. Pay attention to your resentment and frustration with the people you care for as well. There are ways to care for people that aren’t going to cost you energy or effort. You can send them a little note. You can let them know you are available when and if they want support. You can give them some options of what you are willing to do to support them. I like the word support because it is less action specific but it feels nice none the less.

Things to consider:

What are then relationships that is challenging for you?

What are your expectations of that dynamic?

Can these people be going through their own things that have nothing to do with you?

What are you doing do care about them, and what are they actually asking for?

Can you change the expectation of that relationship that includes compassion and grace rather than just fixing or helping?

1. Ruiz, M. (2001). The four agreements: A practical guide to personal freedom. Amber-Allen Publishing.

Self Love

At the core of Codependency is the need for validation from other people. One of the best ways to combat this is to feel a sense of worth and value on your own. This is a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly. It is a misconception that codependency is being dependent on other people. The dependency is on having people’s approval or acceptance. Consider the idea of taking care of people’s needs to feel worthy of their love. Aren’t we worthy of love just by being? There are several ways to work on increasing your self-love. The idea of loving yourself or putting your needs first isn’t organic to who we are as humans. It is important to unlearn the negative connection between taking care of yourself and being selfish. It will be vital to look at you’re feeling around receiving help. Learning what you like, want or need is going to be vital to the journey of self-love. Making time and space for those things will become a practice. Once you master identifying what your needs are, you will do more things to prioritize them. You will start to do things to protect them. You will see the value in defending the peace that comes from loving you.

In my work with clients, many of them spent a great deal of energy trying to get approval from family members, coworkers or partners. They would often sacrifice themselves by over committing or doing things out of obligation. When we started to break down their motivations for doing these things, it would often come down to wanting to feel worthy and deserving of love or acceptance. The first step would be to see what you get from doing things for other people. What is the pay off when you say yes to staying late at work on taking on that extra task? What feels good about doing those extra things for your partner, family member or even your kids? There are likely to be small rewards or even big ones. The smile on your little one’s fact when you send them with an extra snack. Your partner or family member gives you attention or shows their appreciation. These are good things and feel nice. Now think about How many times you, even unconsciously, expect those things back. Consider how it feels when they expect those extra things. Evaluate what you are doing and what you get from doing them. If you are doing them out of obligation or build up credit for doing them, that is a sign you are creating some resentment.

Taking a step back and just observing how it feels not to do those things. Are you still loved and appreciated? Do you start to worry about how the other person will feel? Are you concerned that they will not feel the same way about you? Do things still get done in the same way? All of these questions will help you identify if you are doing things because you want to or if you’re doing them for validation or acceptance. When you stop doing extra things and over committing, you might feel guilty or shame. Those are acceptable feelings but not the healthiest. If you enjoy doing things, keep doing them. If you start to feel resentment or anger about having to do them, take a step back. Consider what you are sacrificing to them. Are you still able to get things done for yourself? Are you able to get your own tasks accomplished? When are you making time for your thing?

Taking care of you is just as important as taking care of other people. What do you even need? When we are consumed with meeting other’s needs we start to forget that we even have needs. We have the same needs as our children and loved ones. We have the same needs as our bosses and coworkers. We need to eat, we need to rest, we need to move our bodies around. We need affection. We need space to cry, laugh, think and process. When was the last time you did errands for yourself? When did you get your nails done or took yourself for a treat? What do you like? What do you enjoy that you haven’t given yourself? There are lots of questions in this chapter because it is important to reorient your brain to thinking about just you. Many of us are thinking about the needs of others so often we forget that there are things we enjoy or need.

Once you know what you like, need or want, you will be tasked with making those things a priority. Many of us have to do lists because we will forget what needs to get done. When you consider what is on those lists, either physical or mental, how many of those tasks are about you? Grocery shopping, carpool, dinner, meeting, appointments, get stamps, yoga class, phone calls and emails. This is just a sample of things that might be on your list. Now which of those is solely about you? Now think about if you had a day just to yourself, what would be on the list? Eat food, workout, watch a movie, read a book, meet your friend for lunch, maybe go dancing. How often are you having a day just for you. Or even just a couple of hours. Are you making your needs and wants a priority? These things are part of how you love and honor yourself.

Prioritizing your needs and taking action to meet them will be hard at first. It will feel indulgent and certainly selfish. They are. But should they be? Who is meeting your needs? Is your partner or are your kids? They have their own needs. Are you asking for your needs. Are they asking things of you, is it reciprocal? Now with children it’s a little more challenging, especially when they are small. Its fun to watch them assert their independence. They get very confrontational when you try to do things for them. That’s normal. It’s a good opportunity to let them assert independence, safely of course. Now think about how you can use that same level of confrontation when someone tries to help you. Are you getting defensive or frustrated with those close to you when they try to help? Is that part of the resentment you have for doing things for other people? What is your self-talk around having help from other people? Are you under the impression that you are the one who helps but doesn’t need help? This is a trauma response. It’s actually pretty typical for people who are helpers and doers to be defensive about receiving help. You can’t have it both ways be someone who always takes care of others and not have people take care of you.

Taking care of yourself will start to shift how you spend your time. When you look at the to do list and you start to make the cut, you might use that same level of defensiveness to protect that time for you. If there are four things on the list, at least one of those should be about you. If you’re not on the list, why? What can you add that will be about taking care of you? Can you take yourself for coffee or a lunch. When you’re running errands, do you have time for a walk or can you make space for journaling? Can you ask a friend to meet you for dinner? Would it be helpful to text your partner and ask for cuddle time and movie? It will be helpful to evaluate when you are making time and space in your calendar for yourself and your needs. You don’t have to do it perfectly, but you can start by just putting yourself on the list. Once your get used to doing that, you will want to protect that time. You will start to look forward to those things. You can manage your anger and resentment of other people when your needs are being met consistently. You will start to feel valuable and worthy of your own time. You will increase how you feel about you.

Recognizing that you are a good person and worthy of love isn’t a default setting for most of us. It will take time to unlearn that your worth and value comes from how other people see you. Once you start to stand up for your own needs in a healthy way, you will see that those people around you will still love you and appreciate you even if you’re not doing extra stuff. If they don’t, they were benefitting from your sacrifice and maybe their needs get to be a little lower on the list if not off the list all together. It will get easier to manage the list when you are taking care of you things and not all the extra things for the people who aren’t making you a priority. You aren’t capable of meeting everyone’s needs all the time. At some point they will need to either meet their own needs or find other people to do the extra work. Even your children will need to meet their own needs on some level. We want them to feel the pride and sense of accomplishment when they do things for themselves. That is the feeling you will have when you make your own needs important.

Things to think about:

What do you like, need or want?

Who benefits from you doing extra stuff?

What do you gain from doing extra work?

How are you spending your time? Are you doing things for other people or are you doing things for you?

How does it feel when your needs are met?

What I've learned in 100 days.

100 days

Lonely is hard. I have had some long, lonely days. I have been stuck by the pounding silence in my own head. All the thoughts and feelings I avoided with people and plans came rushing forward. I was used to calling friends and making plans. I was hit with all the things about myself that I kept hidden away. I ran away from all the different versions of me. I had to look at each of them and ask them what they needed and what made them sad, angry, and insecure. I had to make time to love them individually. I want to see them so I can heal them.

Rest is necessary. I have slept more in the last 100 days than I have ever. I succumbed to the overwhelming fatigue of the past several years of doing. I had to learn how to just be. I surrendered to my body and mind working at overtime to run a business and helping humans. I leaned into the quiet. I found some days were spent just resting. I created soft places for my bones to relax. I moved slowly and intentionally cared for the parts of me that were held to a standard of productivity.

Gratitude for where I am from. I sat in the lack of desert vistas. I longed for warm tortillas and hot chile. I missed the mountain views. I recognized what I took for granted in the Spanish street names and local flavors. I missed the nods of greeting and nomenclature of getting down and putting gas. I strained to hear coyotes on the mesa when the sun goes down. Even the chirp of the cicadas was different. As fall started, I longed to smell the roasting of green chile on street corners. I wanted to see the leaves change along the banks of the Rio Grande.

Awareness of my own needs. I started to pay attention to what my needs were. Outside of the basics like food and toilet paper, I recognized that I need long walks to get the energy out. I increased my awareness of grooming like doing my nails and managing my hair. I identified that I do better when I know what my surroundings are. I like a good bakery and enjoy certain stores over others. I identified landmarks. I feel more secure when I turn off all the lights at the end of the night. I do better when I have a variety of snacks.

Silence is medicine. I am inclined into fill space with sound. When I just let the silence be, I can hear my thoughts better. I realize my intuition is heightened when I am still and quiet. I feel better after some time with no sound. I can clear my head more easily. I can calm my nervous system with little stimulation. When I get overwhelmed and over stimulated, its helpful to just unplug and be still.

Routine is important. I do things in methodical way. I like a clean kitchen. I have a rhythm when I get up in the morning and get ready for bed. I like to see order. I appreciate predictability. Even when I travel, I have rituals. I lean into what is familiar. I can be in a new environment but feel secure when I have my few things visible and accessible. I can adjust more easily when I can control my approach.

Exploration is grounding. I enjoy taking adventures. I get a better sense of my surroundings by getting out in them. I can ground when I know what is around me. I go further out into the space with each new outing. I like to seek our landmarks and signs to help me navigate a new place. I feel more attached to a place when I know the terrain. A wrong turn can be an opportunity to find a new favorite.

Trusting myself is key. I am doing a better job of being aware of what I know to be true about myself. I have a wide knowledge of my experiences. I can rely on my ability to get through hard things. I have collected enough data to know what I can tolerate. It has been helpful to push myself a little further know that I can get into and out of challenging situations. I am able to predict my reactions in unfamiliar circumstances because I have done different things. I feel more secure in my skills.

Celebrating the small wins. It took three separate attempts to find the post office, but that third time felt really good when I located it and bought stamps. I relished in figuring out the bus and metro system. I walked around the same block a few times before I figured out how to get back to my apartment. I smiled when I recognized which pharmacy had the nice lady who spoke English and was very helpful. I felt very accomplished when I navigated through the deluge back to the bus stop soaked but happy. I appreciated figuring out how to order the best chicken sandwich in Athens. I took pride in being able to take my sister and friends to the best place to see the city. Though small accomplishments, they taught me I could figure out a foreign place well.

Pivot with the changes. There have been a few times through the past 100 days that threw me off. I could have given up. I could have turned around the walked away. I chose to pivot. I chose to keep going. I chose to recognize that I can with the changes and see what happens. I have learned that changes to my plan are the way the Universe challenges me to grow. It’s never going to be easy but it will be worth it to adjust. I create my own heartbreak when I hold on to the expectation of outcomes. If I go with the change I get to new place. Roll with it and find new skills.

Horizons and coastlines bring me peace. Growing up in the desert, I longed for water. Every time I make it to the edge of the land, I get an opportunity to reset. I love feeling small in the face of a huge body of water. I feel the stress and tension leave my body into the surf. Living in a tight space of high-rise apartments, I have gained a new appreciation for horizons and wide-open spaces. I appreciate being able to see far off into the horizon. I gives me a sense of calm knowing that I have more to see and get to. I have had the pleasure of being on boats recently and it makes me happy to see where I have been and where I am going.

Tools for Codependency Work

            Before you dive headlong into the work of Codependency you will need some tools. This is hard work, and it might feel a lot like changing your whole outlook on life. It will require a high level of self-awareness. You will have to be able to look at your behavior and choices honestly. You will need to make time to reflect on the questions at the end of each section from the lens of how you were raised and what influences your worth and value. It helps if you have a few key people in your life who know you well and who are willing to give you unfiltered feedback. You will need to take breaks and have the ability to give yourself grace and patience. It will be helpful to have a therapist to work with you through the tough parts, especially around the resentments you have built up from doing all the extra things.

Self-awareness is the ability to recognize your patterns and behaviors. Often times we move through life doing things because that’s how we have always done them. It will be helpful to start to question and evaluate your behavior from the perspective of what you gain from doing things for other people. Consider how it feels when your instinct is to decline an invitation or do something you don’t have time or a desire to do. It will be a good idea to increase your awareness of the people in your life that you struggle to say no to and why. As you read more about the motivations for doing things, you may start to experience resistance and a need to take a pause. The awareness is just the first step, the real work will come when you start to make changes. Then you will need to be aware of how it makes you feel to set boundaries or say no.

Having a team of people in your life will help you feel supported. Being able to talk to them when you have questions about what you don’t necessarily see in your own behavior. It helps if they have been in your life for multiple seasons and maybe through some hard things. Consider your close friends or family members who do a good job of keeping you accountable. You might find that in the midst of this work, you will lose some of them. They might be the people who like that you do things out of obligation. There have been people in your life who like that you do those extra things for them. There will also be people in your life that don’t appreciate boundaries and prefer the unhealthy connection of you validating them.  Consider the people you have confidence in that will be honest with you. The ones who don’t just tell you what you want to hear but what you need to hear.

This work will be difficult and emotional. It will be important not to rush through each section without sinking deeper into the emotional responses. I will encourage you to set time aside when you read each section. Make time to unpack the information. Take breaks if it starts to feel overwhelming or like too much. It will be helpful to use the questions as journal prompts. Write about how it feels to look at how your codependency shows up. Having a place and time to read through your answers will give you an opportunity to add things as they come up. If you’re reading it on a device have a place to keep notes will be useful. Make sure to go back and look over what you have written. At different times in your life, your answers might change. As your relationships change you may want to rethink how those people show up in your life.

Doing any kind of deep introspective practice will bring up old issues. It will be useful to consider going to therapy or getting back in if it has been a while. If you are already seeing a therapist, you may want to let them know you are working on codependency. They might be a resources to help you increase awareness around issues and challenges that contribute to the reasons you started therapy in the first place. Though reading this book can be therapeutic, it should not be used in place of therapy. 

More than anything, give yourself patience and grace. We can often get down on ourselves for making choice and behaving in a way that wasn’t the best for us. This awareness and reflection might give you insight, but it also might contribute to your negative self-talk. Try to be gentle with yourself and recognize that changing patterns takes time and you will relapse. You will fall into old behaviors. It will happen. Rather than beating yourself up, take a breath. Recognize it took a while for you to build up those skills and it will take time to unlearn your old behaviors. It might mean you spend time with different people or have different relationships with the current people in your life. Giving yourself grace will look like taking a pause, being kind and understanding with yourself, you deserve it.

Things to consider:

What patterns would you like to change in doing this work?

Think of at least two people close to you that you can process with and why would you choose them?

When do you have time to process this information and where do you work best?

What does giving yourself grace look like and how do you show yourself kindness?

The Empath's Dilemma

Do you ever feel the emotions of the person you are with? Maybe you’re having coffee or a meal with someone and you recognize they are feeling down or excited about something? Can you tell when your partner or child is dealing with something heavy? You may be having an empathetic response to their feelings. We all have the ability to connect with people on this level. It is in our natural ability to identify how other people feel. From the time we are born, we start to gauge other people’s emotional response. Some people are more skilled at being aware of what other people are going through. The more experiences we have, the better are able to connect. The more closely bonded we are to people, the more we are able to know with some certainty what is going on with them. In ideal circumstances this is a great tool to use to help build connection. The challenge or dilemma is when we are not in ideal circumstances. Many children who grew up in chaos and trauma have learned to over identify with the emotions in a space and react accordingly.

Our ability to connect emotionally is not just human in nature. Other animals have the ability to gauge emotions. Dogs are notorious for being able to recognize when their humans are having a hard time. The same can be said for cats, although, to a lesser degree. Many times, animals will respond to their humans by coming closer and being present. When there is tension or stress, animals might hide away. Children respond in the same way. Small children are seen on playgrounds and in classrooms reacting to their friends empathetically when they are laughing or dealing with big emotions. As adults we might cry when our close people are struggling. Our mirror neurons are stimulated when we share space with other people and creatures.

The challenge comes when we try to fix or change the situation. The maladaptive reaction is when we change our behavior or choices based on someone else’s emotional experience. Now the idea of changing what we do to help someone is not inherently bad. It is when we do it to try to control someone else’s emotional response. The idea of control can be tricky. We don’t think we are controlling someone else’s emotions. We are just trying to help. Is it possible that helping isn’t helpful? Think about the phrase “I don’t want them to feel…”. I have heard clients often say this in hopes of helping their partner, child, boss or someone in their experience not have a negative reaction or feeling. The challenge is they might not be helping. It would help to recognize that we are going to feel how we feel. They are going to feel how they feel. Our emotional response is usually based on our own experience, history and circumstance. Our feelings are valid and part of how we process things. When we try to avoid the other people from having those emotions, we are limiting their ability to work through them. That said, it is a different thing all together when are intentionally doing things to hurt people or manipulate them.

We have a very limited amount of control over our other emotions, let alone over someone else’s. It would be important to build understanding and communication around an emotional response. Having empathy is an opportunity to ask questions and get a better understanding about someone else’s experience. We have our own lens by which we see emotions that can be expanded by other people’s experience. An example would be someone dealing with grief around losing a pet. If you have never had a pet, that might something difficult to relate to. If you have lost a friend or someone close to you, you could have some empathy for them. It might be an opportunity to ask what the pet meant to them. The same could be true for someone who lost a job or didn’t get into a program. If you haven’t had that experience, you could talk to them about how it feels to have to change their plans.

I often have used the example with people of considering teaching a child to walk. When toddlers start to stand on their own and take their first steps, it can be very scary but exciting for parents. It is our nature to want to keep them safe, protecting them from sharp corners or steep falls. It is also exciting to see them gain confidence and explore their environment taking tentative steps forward. The best way for children to learn how to walk is by letting fall and then get up. The same would be true for our people having feelings, even hard ones and allowing them to work through the feelings. As empathetic beings, we tend to want avoid hard feelings; sadness, grief, hurt, anxiety, worry, sorrow, anger. The reality is all of these are part of the human experience. Going through these feelings help build resilience. Just like the toddler, it helps them get back up and try again.

Some people are driven by a need to save, fix or rescue people they love. They are compelled to want to be the hero or fixer in the relationship. These people have the best of intentions, and we are all guilty of it to some degree. Consider when talking to a friend or partner and they are telling us about a problem or challenge they are experiencing, do we feel the need to start problem solving or offering solutions? Think about your close friends and those who like to be around for the drama or to hear about issues. Are you that friend? This concept of being a fixer isn’t inherently bad. It can be challenging because we want to keep the people around us from being uncomfortable or minimize their suffering. We don’t really have the ability to do that. People will suffer and be uncomfortable. We can be present for them and offer solutions, but it is better when we are asked to do so. Often, our people need support and to vent more than anything. It is a good communication practice to ask or clarify what your person needs when they are talking about challenges. If they are asking for space to vent, then give them that. If they are asking for support or empathy, then provide that space rather than jumping to the rescue trying to fix the issue offering solutions.

Something to pay attention to is how we adapt our behavior to limit someone else’s response. Think about how we avoid saying things to people because we are worried about their reaction. Consider how we sometimes agree to watching something or eat where someone wants to, to avoid having an argument. This starts to be a problem when we begin to lose our voice or what we like to minimize conflict. Consider not arguing with a two-year-old about what we are having for lunch even if they have eaten chicken nuggets for the fifth day in a row. Now think about that two-year-old being your fifty-year-old partner. What are we teaching them about who you are and what your needs are? How are we controlling or limiting their experience by often giving in? How are you limiting your own experience by giving in to someone else’s needs or wants?

Take some time to think about your relationships.

Who do you connect with more on an emotional level?

Are there times when you try to limit their experience of emotions?

Are there times when you are limiting your own needs to avoid a reaction?

What would happen if you just held space for them to have their feelings without trying to fix or avoid their reaction?

Beginning of CoD for me

We should start at the beginning. I came by Codependency honestly. I had the great fortune of being born the oldest female child of six humans. My parents were both relatively young, 28 and 25. They were both raised by single mothers. My dad lost his dad when he was 9 and my mom’s parents divorced when she was 3 or 4. My parents started their family out of love. They told the story when I was older, that I would have lots of responsibility being the oldest of their kids. I was an over achiever from the beginning. There are pictures of me and my parents all chubby cheeks and giggles. I was tested for gifted classes in early childhood. I liked the validation of adults. This started the formation of needing to perform to receive validation. Culturally, this is typical. We start as small children wanting to get reactions from the adults in our experience. It is how we develop empathy. Babies exhibit early signs of empathy in mirroring their parents’ smiles and cooing. Our brains start to wire the importance of reflecting emotions and facial responses almost immediately. All this information is to say that it is completely normal to build an empathetic response as a human. For me and for most humans, we develop a sense of validation from how other people see us.  The challenge comes when we start to connect our worth and value from those interactions.

There is a place in human development when we start to see ourselves in how other people see us. In today’s social experience much of who we are is seen through social media and relationships. Things go awry when that becomes the only way we get validation. The maladaptive response is when we do more things that are necessary to feel worthy. It is an unintentional consequence of being human. As higher thinking beings we make inferences about our worth based on other’s responses, reactions, behavior, and interactions. Parents start with messages about how others view us. The concept of “what would people think” starts very early. Mostly, the idea comes from the adults raising children and their own perceptions. The reality is no one is thinking about us all that much. Think about the first time you started to consider how other people were looking at or considering your outfit, behavior or how you spoke. Most kids don’t really think about those things until they get out of their family of origin. All this is something to consider under ideal circumstances. Most of us were not raised in “ideal” circumstances. If any trauma, addiction, or unforeseen situations take place things get much more challenging.

In the home I was raised in, my parents had lots of goals about raising a family. They wanted lots of kids. They valued education and their Catholic faith. They wanted to give their kids the best possible future in a complete family with two parents. Great goals when you think it was 1973 in the United States. I can imagine they both considered their own upbringings and wanted better, like most parents do. They had 5 more children over the next 16 years. My mom stayed home for much of my early childhood. My dad worked a lot with his job with the power company and the Army National Guard. They did the best they could with the tools they had at the time. Unfortunately, they had limited tools for how to raise a growing family and being in relationship without healthy examples of how to do that. I grew up with lots of yelling and conflict. My parents loved the idea of having a family but were ill equipped to deal with marital conflict. My mom had a temper, she yelled often. My dad was avoidant. Neither of them had addiction issues. Dad smoked marijuana and had the occasional beer. My mom wasn’t much of a drinker and didn’t ever use drugs. So where did the codependency come from? I’ll tell you. It came from unpredictable emotional responses. It came from feeling uncertain about what was going to happen on any given day. Even with a “stable environment” it was difficult to predict what was going to happen. I learned as a child that my behavior and choice might determine the outcome. That’s a lot of responsibility for a little kid.

Think about your own childhood. Think about what the expectations were of you by the adults in your experience. Take a few minutes to write your own early childhood story.

Who were your adult caregiver?

What did you consider the expectation about your behavior were?

What did you infer from those early experiences about what you could change or control?

How did you start to adapt your behavior to get the “best” possible response?

What were the possible influences informed those expectation?

Codependency In Romantic Relationships

One of the more prevalent ways Codependency shows up is within a romantic partnership. After the initial attraction and dating phase, we can start to lose who we are in the relationship. I know for myself; I have often made the decision to carve up little pieces of who I am to make sure the other person’s needs are met or to keep myself safe. Safety is a big motivator when we have grown up thinking that external love and validation are the only ways to get our needs met. We often will do things to reduce discomfort and avoid conflict. It might not be something overt but happens slowly over time. Our need to work things out can trigger our CoD even before we realize it. We will do things or not do things that are genuine to who we are to stay in something that isn’t good for us for far longer than is healthy.

When we meet someone new, we generally show the best part of ourselves. Rarely do we start new relationships laying out all our trauma and unhelpful coping on the table. It is not our first instinct to want to share the deepest and most vulnerable parts of ourselves when we meet someone new, especially when the goal is long term connection. When working with couples, I liked to talk about how they met and what drew them to one another. This helps to remind them what they found interesting about one another when things were new. It is also useful to help them recall who they were when they attracted their partner. We are attracted to people physically, emotionally and mentally. We are curious about who the other person is and what they are about. It is very much a job interview. The challenging part is the brain chemistry that comes with attraction. Endorphins and hormones can cloud our judgement. We are usually also on our best behavior. Hiding away our own trauma and damage.

What I know to be true is after the first part of a relationship and usually with time the shine and newness wares off. What we were attracted to can shift and change into things we might ignore as red flags. In my case, the helper and fixer in me is triggered to want to stick around and love potential avoiding the very challenging parts the person I am in relationship with. Because I am very loyal and have been trained to help, I can overlook things that aren’t necessarily good for me because I love someone. Growing up, love meant helping and supporting to get the love I needed. When someone needs that support, I will suspend my own needs to help with theirs. When we receive the payoff of validation and acceptance by helping and supporting, it is easy to disregard that we might not be getting that same support and help in return.

Things to pay attention to would be the time you are spending doing things with and for that other person. Is the time and attention mutual? There will often be times when things aren’t balanced or equal. I usually recommend spending a couple of seasons getting to know people before making a significant commitment like moving in or binding your life to someone. It is helpful to see how they are in different situation and circumstances. Look at how they treat other people, close and tangential. How someone is with you can look different when they are in other situations. See how they are with their friends and their family. We are all different around other people. I like to see how they talk to coworkers and service people. When learning about our new potential partners, it is a good idea to see how they manage stress and challenging situations. Are there things that trigger your anxiety and make you react differently? Do you feel safe and secure talking to your partner about those feelings.

The two long term relationships I was in both started in a relatively typical way with dating and spending lots of time with them. I was in different places in my life when I started each relationship. I was 24 in my first relationship. I was a single mom. I had been trying to finish my degree for several years at the time. I had been struggling financially. I was looking for a partner to help get basic needs met. I met and married my then husband within 6 months. I didn’t know very much about myself at the time because I was in a survival place. Consequently, I wasn’t really paying attention to who he was and what his needs were. The flags that showed up seemed like things I could manage if not help with. What I did recognize now is that I was willing to overlook certain things because I wanted to be in a relationship. I started to overlook my need for affection and a partner who wanted to do things with me. I became creative and getting my needs met in other ways. My relationship wasn’t bad by any means. It was functional. My partner wasn’t intentionally not meeting my needs. I had just stopped asking for them. We spend 18 years together just making it work. I conceded and compromised parts of myself out of the relationship. The last 5 years, I tried to be better at communicating my needs and watched as my partner tried to meet them but ultimately, he couldn’t do the things I wanted or needed. We both had resentment about the years of things we both did or didn’t do.

In my second relationship, I was newly single. I was looking for some of the things I didn’t get in my first relationship. The challenge was that I did the same thing. I saw potential where there was little evidence backing it up. I was listening to what he was saying not looking at what he was or wasn’t doing. I stayed waiting for the guy on the advertisement to show up and it turned out he was too. He has learned to say things that he thought I wanted to hear. In that relationship, I started to avoid doing or saying things that would trigger unhealthy reactions from him. I started not having opinions that didn’t match with his or I would shut down to avoid an argument. I was triggered to old coping skills of making myself small and compromising to keep the relationship going. I was building resentment up over time. I stayed hoping it would get better. There are so many reasons people stay in unhelpful relationships. What I did learn was how to love myself and meet my own needs again in creative ways. I had already been good at doing things by myself. I was travelling alone. I was taking myself on dates. I was making plans with friends and doing things with other people. I eventually left the relationship when it felt better to be alone than in that situation.

There were lots of parts of these two examples I won’t go into detail about. The general idea is that when we first start a relationship, we are looking at the best in people. We can start to see the challenges as things to be worked on. That’s a loving way of seeing the potential in a relationship and working through the more difficult parts, which is totally acceptable. The difficulty comes when we are sacrificing pieces of ourselves in the process. It becomes unhealthy when we are letting go of who we are to avoid a negative consequence. We don’t always see it at first. We do small things to make sure the other person has their needs met because we love them. Something as simple as not going to your favorite restaurant because they don’t like the food or the wait staff. Seems simple enough and we can find a compromise. It might be they don’t like the show we like or the music we choose. An easy fix is to just listen to it on your own or watch something when they are watching their own thing. The more insidious behavior is when it causes conflict or anxiety. When we start avoiding our friends or family because there is something challenging about those relationships and we want to side step a potential argument. It will be more obvious when we make excuses for our partner and do things to keep from having to deal with unpleasant parts of the relationship like how they can be aggressive or using their own unhealthy coping skills. By avoiding the challenge, we are also avoiding an opportunity to work through it. If by doing things like only doing what they want or spending time with their friends or family, we are teaching them that their needs are more important than yours. We are contributing to how they interact with us.

When we start to react from anger or resentment we are adding to the unhelpful behavior. If in our family of origin there wasn’t an example of healthy conflict, we might be continuing the tradition of avoidance or fighting. We may think relationships are just hard and this is what people in them do. We might spend a lot of time complaining to our friends or family about our partners. I do not recommend using these people close to you as the only sounding boards for relationship issues. What it does is paint your relationship from the perspective of negativity and challenge and if you choose to stay in it, that might be all your close people see. What I do recommend is getting a neutral party to work with you both to find ways to learning about healthy communication and conflict resolution. It is easy to lose yourself in a relationship and over time, you don’t recognize what you lost. There are solutions that don’t mean you have to end the relationship. Part of that is talking about the challenges and working through them. Doing things like having regular check ins to give feedback on how you are feeling about the relationship. Setting goals about what you both want to do, to see and what experiences you want to share. Having your own time to continue your growth and healing. Increasing your awareness about patterns you have seen in your relationship that you want to change. We all get into to routines and stop talking about things especially when things are not “really bad” compared to extreme examples like serious addiction or domestic violence.

We must keep in mind that we change as individuals over time. The things we once liked or accepted might not be what we like or want to accept as time passes. Our partners will change too. With experiences and exposure to new information, we can shift our perspective. It is possible to change and grow together. We can learn new things about ourselves and really like the things our partner likes. Our relationships with other people can shift and change to when we are in romantic relationships. Sometimes our partners can see things we don’t see or have accepted as “normal” because we come from that perspective. That kind of growth is helpful. We also get to define what we like and who we are in a relationship. What we used to like or who we used to be may not serve who we are growing into. If our partner supports that growth and change, that’s wonderful. It is when they become critical, and you don’t feel safe sharing those parts of yourself that can be unhelpful. The health dependency style in interdependent where two secure individuals come together and build a life highlighting their unique strengths and find compromise rather than just acquiescing to the needs or expectations of the other person specifically to avoid reactions or behaviors that don’t make us feel safe or secure.

Things to consider:

What has been your experience with romantic relationships in the past?

Do you get your needs me and feel seen and heard in your current relationship?

Are your true values, beliefs and feelings represented in your relationship?

Do you avoid certain situations, topics or activities to sidestep conflict or unhelpful reactions?

Are you more interested in the potential of your partner and not seeing who they actually are?