Codependency is secondary to your true nature.
Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centered therapy, believed in the power of what he called “unconditional positive regard.” Think of this as a means by which to provide someone with absolute and total emotional safety.
Nothing you can say or do will jeopardize that safety. He believed if a person was given a truly safe space, they would be able to solve their emotional problems on their own. He believed every person has the innate ability to heal themselves, they only need an environment of unconditional positive regard to do so.
In a similar fashion, I believe everyone has within them the natural capacity for healthy, mutually nutritive relationships. Human beings are social creatures, not out of preference, but out of survival necessity.
As will be explored later, our biology reacts positively to the presence of other people, and being a positive presence is the most effective strategy for keeping other people around. Codependents know this well.
But there is a critical difference between acting positively out of fear and being positive out of love. Healthy relationships emerge exclusively from the latter, and the ability to have them is the natural, effortless result of being a healthy person.
Prioritizing your health will naturally result in healthy relationships with other people because it begins with a healthy, loving relationship with yourself. Anything other than unconditional positive regard for yourself is unhealthy, and this site is dedicated to addressing, categorizing, and breaking down common unhealthy beliefs.
Knowing the beliefs underpinning codependent logic and their associated behavioral tendencies is a life raft from which you can escape the sea of uncertainty. It can also protect you from getting sucked back into toxic whirlpools in the future.
If you search for codependent “traits,” you will be presented with a combination of beliefs and behavior, some of which are appropriate for clinical intervention.
You are under your control.
Once you have the problems isolated, take every approach you can find to make the difference you are looking for. Just deal with one part of one problem at a time, and they will disintegrate on their own.
After you see progress, keep going and never stop. You will finally be living your actual life. You are not this way by accident, and you are not condemned to be this way forever.
You are aware of your issues and are investigating how to solve them because you want better for yourself. That means that the act of reading this book is an act of self-compassion. You have already started on the road to recovery. If this book helps, that’s great, but 100% of the results will be because of you.
But before we begin the deep dive into the darkness of codependency, the lighter side deserves to be acknowledged. Codependents possess some of the best qualities of humanity, and they are some of the only people with true superpowers, like unwavering loyalty, giving the benefit of the doubt, and seeing themselves in others, or dedication, empathy, and projection, respectively.
Codependents actually act on the wisdom that is supposed to make the world a better place, like “Be the change you wish to see in the world” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Codependents work every day towards a utopian society where everyone loves each other, and where there is no loneliness, suffering, adversity, or pain.
Codependents are often the favorite of their social circles because their friends, family, and coworkers couldn’t live for the sake of others if they tried, and they all know it. Most of the people in the world consider only themselves and must be guilted, ramrodded, imprisoned, and psychologically terrorized to be gentle, kind, and generous. You are one of the precious few for whom the greatest challenge in life is being too gentle, too kind, and too generous.
Codependency ends with the total embrace of self-love.
Buddha offered a quote that every codependent can use: “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
I would add that if your compassion does not include yourself, you are incomplete.
The feeling of emptiness, the void inside, the deep, desperate need to be approved of and loved that most codependents have in common is caused by the absence of self-compassion.
Most codependents were created when they were made responsible for a volatile person’s emotional well-being. The result was a belief system and personality built entirely upon the delusion that putting the needs of others above their own was “good” for everyone.
You have an incredible discipline of mind, character, and genuine dedication to making other people feel warm and special. Now you just need to turn that energy toward yourself. Learning to make that strength work for you is the whole game, and other people will appreciate you more when you figure it out. You can’t give away something that you don’t have, and that’s the logical hole that codependency shrivels up and dies in.
You cannot be loving to anybody if you cannot be loving to yourself. So the question remains: If you haven’t cultivated a deep love for yourself, what energy or motivation is causing you to sacrifice yourself for others? And if you are not helping others for their own sake, whose sake is it for?
If you rely on unhealthy behavior to stabilize your identity, you are codependent. If a relationship is stabilized by unhealthy behavior, it is a codependent relationship. If any of these describe your reality, there is no shame in accepting it and moving on.
When healthy adults are triggered, they can observe their reaction rather than submit to it. They have years of maturity and self-compassion to avoid being overrun with emotion. They got this way by having good mentors who exposed them to healthy, authentic responses.
Recovery is freedom from insecurity.
They don’t need to engage in hysterics, violence, rage, guilting, stonewalling, deflection, trivializing, or isolation, because they have a healthy relationship with their uncomfortable emotions and with themselves.
They know what a good empathy coach or therapist will be able to teach you: all of your emotions are authentic and appropriate. None of them are unique to you, and none of them will last forever. Now, let’s work on managing them appropriately.
If you read something here that triggers you, please refer to the Deep Dive and CBT worksheet.
Try to find a quiet, personal space and calm yourself before reading triggering material. Start calm, approach it piece by piece, and when your calm is disturbed, go straight to the worksheets and figure out why. If a good coach or therapist is available to you, include them in this process. Feel free to contact me and let me know how it’s going.
Remember, at their core, nobody is disordered. There is no reason to take your feelings or the actions of others personally. Everyone you know is acting in a rational, predictable way to their biology and experience, just like you. I am unaware of anyone who asked to be exactly the way they are, but here we are. Now what?