“The dis-ease of looking outside oneself”

 Nikki Myers

Today, I want to have a very real conversation with you about codependency and how it plays out and wreaks havoc in your life. It’s my experience and belief that codependency has been very underestimated and overlooked as a powerful and destructive addiction.

To begin, let’s take a look at what codependency is.

At its root, codependency is a fear-based attempt to control or manipulate another person or oneself in order to hold onto an unhealthy, dependent relationship, often times at any cost.

It is using a relationship to fill a bottomless void due to not feeling whole and loved as an individual. It’s not the need to be loved that’s the issue, and on some level, it’s the inability to love oneself that causes the dysfunction.

Fear says, if I don’t control, manipulate, deny, you’ll leave me, you won’t love me, you don’t see me, hear me, listen to me, so I’m going to make you. 

Codependency is always about power and control! 

The Four Pillars of Codependency:

1. External Focus

Looking into the outer world or externally focused for a solution to an internal problem that can only be solved internally.

2. Self Sacrifice

Overlooking your needs to focus on the needs of someone else, often terrified to look at what “I” need because:

1. 1. I might be lacking
   2. The world might be lacking
   3. I might find out there is no solution to my problem
   4. I might find out that I am the solution to my problem

This has the energy of victim mentality, meaning, something is happening to me, I don’t have any control, there is nothing I can do, I am trapped, helpless, stuck. I am at the mercy of my circumstances, no one understands, I have to keep trying.

3. Emotional Suppression

Stuffing, denying, setting aside, living inauthentically and untrue to oneself.

1. 1. Avoidance of feelings
   2. Limited awareness of ones own needs
   3. Being walled off:  No understanding of the rich emotional life within.
   4. A lot of addictions of all types stem from this as a need to escape, numb, continue the old patterns and cycles.  

4. Interpersonal Conflict or Issues of Control

Engaging in relationships that foster self-sacrificing behaviors in order to stay in the relationship with the other person. This often happens at any and all cost and at the expense of oneself and those around you.

Symptoms and outcomes:

1. 1. Stifles creativity
   2. Prevents one from experiencing anything new
   3. People pleasing
   4. Subservient
   5. Projection of our worries and anxieties onto someone else
   6. Self-criticism

I know this is a lot to absorb, digest, and consider. You might even be having an argument with that little voice inside that’s trying really hard to convince you that this simply doesn’t apply to you. After all, if anyone really understood my situation they would see why I do what I do.  

So my brave and beautiful sisters in closing today and with so much love and understanding I want to invite you to imagine saying this to that person or persons:

I love you so much I will no longer disable you by enabling you.  

I am letting go of trying to fix, rescue, or save you.

That is not my job

Never was.

Never will be.

Besides, maybe it was me who needed my help all along.

If any or all of this rings true, makes you squirm or uncomfortable because you know deep in your heart this is you please consider joining Preparing For The Journey. Or if you just want to talk, I invite you to schedule that with me.