How To Recognize and Free Yourself of Co-dependent Relationships in Life [Episode #762]

This week’s topic is: How To Recognize and Free Yourself of Co-dependent Relationships in Life

This may be a really interesting show for you to tune in and to create some awareness around, because this is something that can easily infiltrate into our lives. And it can create, um, friction and frustration. It can create general diminishment of enjoyment across our lives.

However, on the other hand, once we start to recognize some of our patterns and where we can free ourselves and our partners and our friends from codependency, there’s so much that opens up. There’s so much spaciousness and energy. It’s like a reinvigoration in our relationships, a reins inspiration and is really a wonderful, powerful thing to do.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question sent in by a Beauty just like you, listen now to find out!

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[Question Answered]

Kendall – Washington

Kimberly, I have noticed that a lot of my personal relationships tend to end badly and are not very healthy. I have been doing a lot of reflecting and notice that I always seem to unknowingly gravitate toward codependent people. What can I do to get out of this pattern?

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Namaste loves and welcome to our Thursday Q&A podcast, where our topic today is How To Recognize and Free Yourself of Co-dependent Relationships in Life. So we’ve got some interesting research here that shows that up to 90% of Americans in certain brackets, certain categories are demonstrating codependent behavior up to 90%. So this may be a really interesting show for you to tune in and to create some awareness around, because this is something that can easily, easily infiltrate into our lives. And it can create, um, friction <laugh>, it can create frustration. It can create just general diminishment of enjoyment, shall we say, across our lives. But on the other hand, once we start to recognize some of our patterns and where we can free ourselves and our partners and our friends from codependency, there’s so much that opens up. There’s so much spaciousness and energy. It’s like a reinvigoration in our relationships, a reins inspiration.

So it’s really wonderful, powerful thing to do. And of course, where there’s more flow, we have more wellbeing and health and energy. So today’s topic falls into our third cornerstone, which is emotional wellbeing, but just a reminder that our other three are food, body and spiritual growth. So every week, our q and As, which always air today, on Thursdays, we rotate around these cornerstones just to make sure that we’re really supplying practical tips across all of the cornerstones. And in this way, we just keep working towards this very nurturing and nurtured wholeness that gives us the results that we want. It helps us to feel really good in our lives, which is feeling connected, that we’re showing up, not that everything’s perfect in our life, not that we’re giggly or, you know, overly exuberant all the time, but we’re connected. So we’re in tune, we’re intuitive, we can feel where our needs are, where we can best nurture ourselves, and we keep moving forward.

So I love this topic today, and it’s, it’s something that I think we’ve all touched on in different ways. I know I’ve exhibited some co-dependency in relationships, and when you look into the research and you look at what the characteristics are, you realize how, how very common this is. But it’s okay because we learn and we grow and we create more freedom, and we just keep evolving.

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Question around the topic of:How To Recognize and Free Yourself of Co-dependent Relationships in Life: Kimberly, I have noticed that a lot of my personal relationships tend to end badly and are not very healthy. I have been doing a lot of reflecting and notice that I always seem to unknowingly gravitate toward codependent people. What can I do to get out of this pattern?

Okay, let’s dive right in. Codependency, our question today comes from Kendall who lives in Washington. So thank you so much, my love for being here. Thank you for being part of the community and participating. And your question is, Kimberly, I have noticed that a lot of my personal relationships tend to end badly and are not very healthy. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, and I noticed that I always seem to unknowingly gravitate towards codependent people.

How do I get out of this pattern? So Kendall, thank you so much for bringing your heart today and sharing with us. Relationships are complicated and they can, they are very personal. They can be a little bit tricky to talk about. So I really appreciate your coming to the community and know that your question is one that’s shared by many others. So we thank you in advance, just wherever you are, sending you a big virtual hug. And as I mentioned, the research around this is very interesting that we will, um, link to, there was a study, for instance, of depressed women and 36% of them said that they were in moderately to severely codependent relationships. The other stat I mentioned earlier is that this was in college students. So I just wanna clarify that there are certain groups that are more prone to co-dependency. And in these college students, they found 90% demonstrated middle to high co-dependency characteristics.

So you may be saying to yourself, well, what exactly is co-dependency? So this is research from 2018 that put it into four main themes or characterized co-dependency in four main cata main, um, patterns, themes that exhibited it. Number one is self-sacrifice. And so we can show up for loved ones. But this idea of sacrifice means we are putting ourselves in potential risk for wellbeing. Number two, a tendency to focus on others.  Number three, a need to control which may fuel conflict. And number four, difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions. So you can see how some of these tend to go together. So for instance, if we’re focusing a lot on what other people are doing, then we could often think that we know what’s best or then we try to control which fuels conflict. So this codependency shows up in many different ways. Some of these may pertain to some of your relationships and not to others.

Some of these may not pertain at all, but some of the other ones may be quite domineering in your relationships. So sit with that. Hmm, which ones of these apply to me? And so I will say, um, for myself, sometimes I can focus a lot on other people, and sometimes what I’m upset about isn’t the actual emotion, it’s something else that’s been bottled up. So emotional intelligence, as it continues to grow in your life, will continue to help you in this process of pinpointing codependency on the first place and then also helping to alleviate it, <laugh>. So where does this come from in the first place? So, um, we can look to childhood for sure, and this is because emotional neglect can lead us to not feeling that we are, um, enough in and of ourselves to handle ourselves, to fulfill ourselves, to be there for ourselves.

So if we weren’t shown how to express emotions, or we had, if we had parents that didn’t really express emotions in a healthy way for us, we picked up patterns from our childhood. And so emotional wellbeing is a huge part of this. And, um, you know, we may end up playing different roles or looking outside of ourselves to feel contained, to feel okay as we move through life. So this may lead to the four dominant characteristics that I mentioned earlier. Um, excessive cell sacrifice, a tendency to focus on others. I need to control difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions. This can parlay into some other characteristics that you may see within yourself, which are low shelf self-esteem. There may, part of codependency is we don’t feel that fullness in ourselves, so we look to others or we feel shame worthlessness. So there’s this blurry, uh, blurred boundaries.

Another part blurred boundaries with others, we feel that we’re responsible for their happiness or we have a very difficult time saying, no, this is part of codependency inside of us for some reason, we feel like we have to save someone else. This is part of our purpose. We have to, you know, it’s on us. Others’ happiness is on us. I have definitely felt that as well. And I feel a lot of guilt sometimes. Um, but this is part of co-dependency. And then there’s also, um, glimmers of perfectionism that can enter codependency. We feel like, oh, I have to be a certain way. They have to be perfect, I have to be perfect. And then control issues. This is can also manifest as possessiveness needing, you know, controlling our loved ones lives or how they spend their time, or even what they’re eating or how they, you know, their wellness practices. <laugh>,

It can show up in many, many different ways. And again, this is a product, this is a direct, um, product of some, you know, less than healthy, um, patterns from our childhood. So we’re not in victim mode here. We don’t have to demons demonize our caregivers and say, oh, wow, they really screwed me up here with my emotional wellbeing. It’s okay. Everything in life is for our growth. And on the soul level, we can say that our souls, you know, a believe yogic belief is we picked our parents and they picked us on some deep, deep level cosmic level. So it’s okay if we had some limiting patterns because as adults we can wake up to that and recognize it and then move past codependency into truly autonomous, healthy, boundaried fulfilling relationships. So let’s go through some action steps, and I wrote down five that can really help you transcend codependency and move into this beautiful place of bliss.

And oh, you people come and go and relationships are here, but they don’t have to be everything. To me. Relationships are fulfilling and healthy, but not unhealthy. So the first action step, the first tip to, to contemplate and to sit with is how to strengthen the relationship with yourself and see yourself as sovereign. What this means is the self as whole and complete. So whilst we can enjoy life and share life with others, others don’t have to complete us. So this is where this is a, you know, a million million hours of time and focus and podcast could be dedicated to this. But this is really where all the practices that we offer you at sa Luna are meant to strengthen your sense of self. So you can do this from a corner cone, four cornerstone perspective. Be really mindful about the foods you put in your body and treat your body with respect.

Really focusing on your microbiome. Focus on your spiritual practices, especially your practical enlightenment meditations, which we offer you free on our website. So you can really feel the wholeness within you. And you can learn to show up for yourself, and you can learn to feel who you are on the inside, beyond just what you look like. So I remember times in my life where I felt the most anxious was because I didn’t have a relationship with my true self. So it’s when I was really, you know, looking to others to validate me. And the more I started to feel the inside of me, and I started to really take care of myself on all levels, physically and spiritually, I started to reclaim my power. And so relationships could be what they were, which was, you know, learning enjoyment, but not going over into safety, security, and survival.

So we need, the most important thing here in co-dependency is to really nurture your relationship with yourself and repair it and make it healthy again. And, um, basically what the new book is about, you are more than you think you are. So I encourage you to pick up a copy if you haven’t yet, or if you have it to go back into those pro those practices and read the book through, because you never know whether it’s in the love chapter or the creator chapter in the intuition chapter where a nugget, a golden nugget or a golden practice will really speak to you. So everything about, you know, really sinking down deeper into the true self will allow you to not feel so much of that desperate clingingness in your personal relationships outside of yourself. Number two, create more emotional intelligence. So, particularly in the fear chapter, chapter three in the book, there’s the truth, the fear versus truth and wisdom practice that I highly encourage that you use in your daily, regular life.

And so what this means is we have two parts of us. We have the true self, which is that stable, loving, peaceful energy that’s underneath all things. It’s underneath your behavior. So we connect to this in meditation, and we wanna really allow that to flourish more in our lives. Then there’s this other part of us, which is the fearful ego. And sometimes the ego is there for, you know, helping to contextualize our experiences. But often the ego is the voice of fear in our head. Emotional intelligence allows us to understand when we are in fear, and to show up for ourselves and to understand what to do for ourselves when we are in that state. Otherwise, if we don’t understand, we don’t have this emotional intelligence, we will over-identify with the fear. And this can cause us to be overly controlling in our relationships or to feel fear or that we have to go over, we have to save this person.

We have to sacrifice everything in our life to just be there, be there, be there. So it goes both ways where we’re taking or we’re giving, but it comes from fear. And so the more we go along, we recognize, oh, there’s a fearful thought, or I’m in a fearful state right now, or there’s fearful energy. And instead of projecting it onto another human, we can do our breathing practices, our physical practices, the fear versus wisdom practice as a journaling exercise where we can get our raw thoughts and energy out. So we can say, oh, I’m coming from fear, but now I can choose to come from the truth and wisdom inside of me instead. So we start to create this harmony, this emotional intelligence. So we are not overly projecting. Number three, we start to create more mental strength against controlling exercises or cons, controlling mechanisms or tendencies rather.

So we need to create that awareness. What does controlling feel like to me? So once I started to create this awareness, it was so helpful. The awareness is created on the physical level. So we might not be able to see what’s what we’re doing in the, with the tricky mind, but we can see, oh, control feels like this constriction, it feels stressful, it feels like my heartbeat is speeding up. It just feels tight, it feels ugh. Once we can identify that feeling, we can say, oh, there I’m try, you know, this is me going over. So it’s this mental strength, this rationalization that can rise up more and more and help us to see our, our, um, you know, our codependency tendencies. And also to see where other people are crossing over into our boundaries where someone is being codependent with us. We wanna just see.

And then we can have more actual mental strength to verbalize the boundaries that we need. So this awareness is really, really important. This noticing what’s happening in our bodies that doesn’t feel right, whether we’re on the receiving end or we’re on the giving end. And then number four, we wanna listen to feedback from others in order to see ourselves clearly. So what this means is we need to hear the feedback because if we just dig in and say, well, no, this, this is, this is how it has to be and this person is doing this again, it’s not right. They don’t understand what they’re doing to themselves or this is the not the right way. There is, you know, equality means everybody has human, has free will. And so we need to understand where we are being controlling, where we are going over, where we’re paying too much attention to other people’s lives.

And so this feedback is important and listening is really important and will help to give us that mirror that is needed sometimes to keep things in check. And number five, counseling and professional help is sometimes warranted here. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be, you know, every day or, you know, many times a week. Maybe it’s once a week, maybe, you know, it gets spread out, maybe it’s once a month. But I’m a big believer sometimes in having someone dedicated to talk to that can give that perspective, that third party perspective. And it could look many different ways. It could be a counselor, it could be a rabbi, it could be, um, an energy worker, it could be even a trusted friend that can be neutral. Um, it could be a therapist in many, many, many different ways. Um, but it can be helpful in regards to relationships, which feels so sticky sometimes.

It’s good sometimes to have a little bit of space so you can really just take a step back and look at things and then work to create really healthy relationships. Spaciousness helps us rebuild and put energy into what we really want. So it’s a really wonderful practice. So let’s review again, I love this topic and I think it’s important because life really is a series of relationships and the healthier they are, the healthier we are, and we continue to grow and, um, foster more, uh, just strength and healthy structure in our lives and healthy relationships, which then can transition from being draining to being really nurturing. So some of the main signs of codependency is self-sacrifice, a tendency to focus on others or over focus, a tendency to control which can feel conflict and difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions. We can also feel low self-esteem and have poor boundaries.

We may feel that we need to save others. We may have perfectionist perfectionism issues. And it’s caused largely by, you know, childhood, which, you know, without blame, without falling into victim mindset, we realize that oh, maybe I learned some unhealthy patterns. Maybe there wasn’t the best, um, or, you know, wasn’t allowed to express my emotions clearly. I got a little bit, you know, murky or stuck on emotions or my role and I’ve projected I didn’t feel really complete in myself as a child. So I’ve projected this onto others and it’s almost this survival tactic to feel safe or secure. I need people to be this way or I need my relationships to look this way. So we understand, oh, okay, all of that’s in place and I see myself more. I see myself more clearly. So some of the things that I can do are to continue to strengthen my relationship with myself and see the sovereignty, sovereignty of myself know that the stronger and healthier my relationships are with myself, my relationships will all with all others will be stronger.

Number two, to create more emotional intelligence. This is the fear versus truth and wisdom practice. This is just realizing that, um, oh, I can, you know, best, uh, understand when I’m coming from fear and when I’m coming from my true self. And some of these practices, which is actually writing things out, are really helpful in this regard. Number three, start to notice when I’m going over, how can I start to create more mental strength against control? What does it feel like in my body, the physical cues and also this awareness when people are going over onto me. Number four, listening to feedback from others so we can see ourselves more clearly is really important. So we can see without digging into our ego or what we think is right or wrong. Oh yes, actually there is some control issues here, actually. Ah, there is something to look at.

And number five, using counseling and help when it is warranted. So this means that it could be a therapist or a spiritual counselor or a trusted friend or an energy worker or whatever it is. Sometimes third party support can be really helpful when we’re looking at ourselves and how we conduct ourselves in our relationships. So I hope this show was helpful to you and all of your relationships. And I know that this is something that I’ve journeyed through and we continue to look at it together, um, as a community and within ourselves. It’s a conversation I’ve had with my husband because we are very close and we, we can look at when we have co-dependent tendencies, which have come up already in our relationship and we’ve worked through some of them already, um, in all areas, you know, um, there’s a little sticky one sometimes where my husband says that he gets a little bit, um, you know, touchy sensitive sometimes when we talk about food because that is a rotating subject in our home.

And so I have, I’m clear when I’m, you know, it can be a little bit pushy around that subject especially, and when I, you know, I’m just coming from a sharing heart and I really do care. Um, but it’s just important that we’re always looking at ourselves and relationships are a very powerful mirror in this regard. So I look forward to being back here with you on Monday, our next show. And please continue to ask questions over at mysolluna.com and how else I can best support you in all areas, all cornerstones across your life. I’m very much here and listening.

You can also hit me up on cyberspace, social media at _KimberlySnyder. And please be sure to check out all the delicious recipes, meditations, articles, and more that we have for you over mysolluna.com . So it’s sending you much, much love. I’ll be back here soon. Take great care of your precious, unique, wonderful self and so much love and gratitude. Namaste.