Are you betraying yourself or healing yourself

Hi everyone, Dr. Nicole Lepera, The Holistic Psychologist here. Here actually to talk about a very personal topic to myself, which is codependency in relationships. So those of you who followed my work or any version of me sharing my personal history and story probably know by now that I talk a lot about a really conditioned pattern of codependency in myself, you know, via vis-a-vis my family that I really had to break essentially and learn how to operate new in relationships. So talking about this is really helpful I think for a lot of us because I know I'm not alone in these codependent patterns and there's a lot of ways that it shows up in relationships. So I'm going to talk about a few of those ways today. Anyone out there listening, I know some of you have heard this word and are definitely like, yes, this is me. And for a lot of us, this is a newer word, this concept of codependency. So the way I define codependency is codependency is really rooted in consistent, that's an important word here, consistent choices, right, directed at or resulting in, that's a better word, the neglect of self, the neglect of our physical self, the physical needs of our body, our emotional self, or our spiritual self. For most of us, these conditioned habits and patterns around conditioning originate in our very early life experiences, typically in childhood. So in childhood, when we come to this planet, however it is you believe we get here, we are in a state of complete dependency, meaning we cannot meet our needs on our own. So we are dependent to the humans around us. And again, we've all grown up in different family environments with different people around. So essentially we're completely dependent on whomever the caregivers are around us, again, to meet our physical, our emotional, and our spiritual needs. So from that state of dependency, you're very adaptive, meaning we learn through being in relationship with these people, how attuned or not attuned they are to those differing needs. And then what happens is we kind of internalize what we saw modeled to us. So we're watching our parents take care of their physical needs. We're absorbing how they help us meet our own physical needs. Same thing with emotional, same thing with spiritual. And then we tend to internalize essentially those same habits and patterns. And a lot of us, what we internalize and then repeat into adulthood, again, is that neglect. To put it really simply, it like looks and feels, and you'll see when we go through each of these, of like an other focus, right? Where I'm focusing my time, my attention, my choices, my feelings on things or people. Usually codependency often happens in relationships outside of ourselves. So what does it actually look like? What are some markers that we might have that codependent conditioning? If you find yourself having an obsessive focus on your partner's behaviors, could be your friends, your family members. If you're always kind of focused on what someone else is doing, right? As opposed obviously to you. This is consistently. It's not the time over here where, you know, I know my sister's struggling, so I'm a little more thinking about her. This is if consistently I'm always kind of focusing on what everyone else is doing, not really focusing on what I'm doing. So I just want to kind of reiterate this. In each of these, we're talking about kind of a consistent pattern. This isn't the one-offs contextually where it is actually maybe the choice I want to make. That's what conditioning is, when I'm kind of habitual about these choices, just to make that clear. So if I'm habitually always focused on someone else, then it might be a marker that I'm operating with that codependency pattern. Similarly, if I find myself habitually trying to control, change, or fix, usually these two go together. The more I focus on people outside of me, I can diagnose what they need to do differently, and then I typically attempt to affect that change. Interestingly, so what is driving both of these, just so we're understanding why this is codependency, it's driving this idea, right, that anyone else's choices outside of me, what they're doing or not doing, obviously I want to tweak those in the second version, that they're reflecting on me in some way. That's that kind of example of codependency, that what you're doing, partner, has some reflection on me. There's not that separation. So understandably, if I change or help you change what you're doing, I get to feel differently in whatever context that is. So just to make clear kind of what's going on behind this or deeper in both of these, and that's why it's kind of codependent. My focus on someone else has some meaning for me. What we want to cultivate, of course, is that separation, where I can allow other people to behave as they will, obviously within limits. If I need to set a boundary for myself, that's a different conversation, but I'm not trying to change people to affect change indirectly through me. I may be showing up differently and affecting change on them. Another marker of codependency in relationships is enabling harmful behaviors or lacking boundaries entirely. So if you find yourself as being someone who's always kind of like okaying things that deep down you know maybe aren't okay for you, that friend calling you at all hours of the night, you know, when I say harmful, that's harmful to your sleep, yet you can't seem to find the way to put up the boundary by not answering or by telling the friend that you'll no longer answer those late night calls. So harm doesn't mean, I think, traditionally what we typically think of, like I'm physically harming myself. You might be emotionally exhausting myself by not having boundaries in that friend calling example. Again, pattern. Do I always find myself allowing anyone to kind of be as they are around me to my own detriment or disservice? And furthermore, if I've heard of boundaries and limits, do I struggle to keep them or enact them? Another marker of codependency is if separation, the experience of it, or even the thought of it brings up anxiety or brings up fears of abandonment. I very much can resonate with this one. For a very long time, not having a response text back or not having my partner available on the other end of the phone or even my partner wanting to travel or be separate from me at my core, again because of that codependency, right, because that separation feels threatening, I feel fearful and I operate it with that anxiety a lot. And so for me, how that expressed, I would try to kind of reach out and grab the person. So you're not answering me. I'm going to text you. I'm going to become angry. I'm going to chase you to relieve that fear of abandonment or that anxiety. So again, consistently, if you find yourself struggling with distance, physical, emotional relationships, if it's hard for you to, you know, kind of give partners or friends space or to go and be or be in a different emotion than you are, any sort of separation, because separation, emotional separation feels like separation. I still see, while I'm very much more tolerant of actual space between my partner Lali and I now, the thing I find myself struggling about is emotional separation. When very naturally, understandably, we're in different mood states in any given day. We're different humans. We have different hormones. Some days I'm in a, you know, positive high vibe state and she's not. That separation can bring up a little anxiety because all codependent me from my family, this was the environment I was raised in. We all shared the same feeling. When one person was stressed, we were all stressed. So that to me felt like a emotional connection. I now realize it isn't kind of superficial and artificial. So what actual emotional connection is for me now means allowing us to be in different emotional states and still feel together in it. That's another example that just came to mind around emotional separation that isn't as clear. I think a lot of us can say, oh yeah, being alone is hard for me. So I definitely know I'm a little bit codependent. A lot of us aren't able to really identify the emotional piece. And sometimes that's what it looks like when you struggle to hold space for someone feeling differently than you do for whatever reason in any given moment. A final marker, again, this kind of sums it up. Anytime consistently, we betray ourselves or our own needs in order to be chosen. Sometimes we're conscious of this where I know that someone I love and care about has this need and I have the differing need in that moment. Sometimes I'm consciously saying, okay, I'll put this person first. And sometimes it's unconscious. This isn't the one-off context where I've determined that in this situation, I can hold off on what I need to show up for someone I care about. This is when it's consistent. I just want to continue to kind of hammer that in. So when consistently, the other person always wins, right? When I always see my need, or maybe I don't even know what my need is. Maybe I don't even know to ask myself, maybe I'm always just deferring to anyone else's needs. So again, when this habit is consistent, when I don't even acknowledge or check in with what my need is and or when I do, and I always pick someone else, chances are you might have this codependent conditioning. So I hope this was helpful. I think there's a lot of ways this patterning can show up. Again, it originates very early on. It becomes the patterned way we relate to others. And as all patterns, it can be broken. So the first step to creating change is to create awareness, to become conscious to whether or not you are someone who sees this codependent patterning, who witnesses it in your current relationships. So take note, observe yourself. It could be all of your relationships. You know, you see these markers. It could be a certain type of relationship. Some of us operate differently in our professional world versus our personal world. Some of us operate differently with family versus with friends. Some of us don't. Some of us are very habitual in all of the ways. So again, the first step to change is to create awareness. Notice. Notice if you, like me, have this deep-rooted, codependent pattern.