Codependent Behavior Drains Other People of Energy

there's a stereotype around codependence that it's something that kind of passively just happens to people who are in the lives of people who are selfish or narcissistic or addicted or energy vampires of some kind or another and the belief is that they just take from codependence and codependent people just let it happen but i've noticed that codependent behavior the role that a codependent person plays is anything but passive like most people who went through abuse and neglect as a kid i have some codependent tendencies not all the time not in every relationship but sometimes little ways and occasionally big ways have really been incredibly damaging and what i've noticed is that the stereotype that codependent people just give too much and are taken advantage of it just doesn't really describe it it's more like a codependent person puts their energy into another person like forces it injects themselves into fixing or helping or just generally moving the center of their lives into another person's life and the reason they do it as i see it is to set up that other person to feed them the energy that their codependent tendencies crave it doesn't always work but the goal of all that focus on someone just focus focus on someone else is to get something from them a feeling something they are missing in themselves whether it's security feeling seen heard validated a sense of purpose a sense of identity these are all things that they ought to be finding and creating themselves but with codependent behavior they're effectively stealing these things from another person they're latching onto them and trying to then suck something back out so i've been talking a lot about energy vampires and some people just directly try to stir up a bunch of energy and then take it it could be people who stir up romantic energy and then you know get to enjoy that flood of romantic energy and then they run away but with codependence i think it's it's similar actually it's where you get you you go in and put your energy into somebody else and try to make them change because doing that gives you energy so it's the same sort of thing and it is like a theft romantic shoplifting is what i call it so i realize this is a kind of apocryphal view of codependence but that's how i experience it when codependents try to attach their hooks to me to people please me or to get my approval and i think this view might be helpful to know as i read a letter i received this week from a woman i'll call chloe all right she writes hi anna your videos on isolation limerence and abandonment are striking a very relevant nerve in my life and i have applied them in order to heal my dysfunctional and usually non-existent romantic life it's improved it's somewhat but i'm still stuck in this loop that i just recently identified with the help of a friend i find myself attracted to unavailable people which is very common for cptsd i know but when a person who is available and present and listens to me and asks about me and generally displays good partner characteristics shows interest in me my instinctive action is to make them into a friend attraction doesn't even register in my brain circling here interesting things i want to come back to i'm going to read all the way through this letter we'll come back and go through again and i will then try to help you chloe to see what's happening here all right so attraction doesn't even register in my brain i immediately jump to friend zoning people who are appropriate i also must add that by them showing interest in me it makes my romantic attraction falter i grew up with loving and providing and selfless parents but my father was and still is an emotionally unavailable workaholic and my mother is an enabler codependent people pleaser i love them but i was never heard seen or understood growing up there is a lot of shame within me that originates from this point the type of person i go for tends to be someone who doesn't listen to me and who only really talks about themselves which is what my father did and does but they are always intelligent and can hold an engaging conversation i don't have many people like this in my life i get attached almost immediately not exclusively to men with these traits but when they do act in this way i completely bulldoze my needs and listen to them in adoration i ask lots and lots of questions about every story opinion make myself overly available for them bend over backwards making their life easier but most destructively dedicate all my thinking time toward them and daydreaming of a future where we're together it's particularly in their absence where i fantasize and desperately wait for them around november i met a friend of a guy i also had this experience with but it never developed who i connected with we had a long conversation and he drove me home he asked to come up and i said no the following day i cooked a lot of vegetarian food he's veg and he was in the area so i offered him a takeaway box he tried to come to my house again but i said no and we ended up having a three-hour deep conversation mostly about him where he became very vulnerable and i was hooked after our first date we had sex and then proceeded to discard me short replies making excuses to not meet etc this was on the more extreme side but the pattern i found is that men who are not as available are placed on pedestals on the flip side when someone shows me interest it works for the first date but i begin resenting them after that quick example i met an intelligent and kind man who displayed a lot of interest in me we had an incredible first date but after i left i had a foul taste in my mouth about him he irritated me every time he tried to initiate something or say anything remotely flirty but i really enjoyed talking to him ultimately i found myself treating him like a friend and becoming severely avoidant every time he tried to push towards something more romantic albeit very respectfully i very quickly lost attraction and interest toward him and discarded him in a very regrettable way and without integrity on the lesser side my now best male friend who i maintain a platonic and emotionally enriching intimate friendship with was initially someone i pursued i really want nothing more than a relationship it preoccupies my mind and is the one wish i make when i get an opportunity it really bogs me why i cannot seem to enter one and why i constantly sabotage myself i think it's also worth adding that my most recent friendships have been very similar and in which the friends i felt most comfortable with were controlling and revolving primarily around them a lot of them have discarded me in the past year my question is this why do i instinctively wish to make a good healthy romantic candidate into a friend why in the face of every bit of logic do i keep abandoning myself when a man who is self-absorbed and or unavailable enters my life i believe i'm a smart person and i absorb a lot of wisdom from you and my therapist and other healers but this pattern keeps on happening and it really burns and then what practical steps can i take to fit to lift the veil of friendship even if i've lost interest in them for being available any advice or tough love is appreciated okay chloe i gotcha all right let's go through and i'll tell you what i heard i think this is kind of a challenging case i think this is a tough one so first of all when you describe your family this is so interesting okay you said that you grew up with a loving and providing and selfless parents but your father was and still is emotionally unavailable workaholic which is not loving or providing or selfless okay and your mother is an enabler codependent people pleaser also not loving not selfless you know that's that that's pretty disordered and it leads to a person like you not feeling heard and seen and you know i have a theory about that i don't there may be research about this but you know how mirror neurons are necessary to start learning to have empathy and to read other people and if a baby is neglected by their parent they don't get that reflection of like you know faces eyes the parent imitates the noises the baby makes that's how our brains develop and i think when we're seen and heard as babies and probably a little older that's also how we develop a sense of self we develop a sense of self and so my instinct about you chloe is that you have a delay i call it a developmental delay that's not really the word for it but it is where your sense of self is very late in arriving and that's what's missing here and that's why you're trying to borrow other people's selves that that feels like that thing that's missing in you that's my theory for you so let me tell you why i think so we'll keep going all right the person you go for tends to be someone who doesn't listen to you and only really talks about themselves which is what your father did and does and i know you know we have this kind of simplistic idea that we were trying to match what happened when we were kids maybe or maybe there really is like something neurologically nourishing for you when somebody does that that you can see somebody being very in touch with themselves and that feels good for you to be around because you haven't yet got it for yourself that they have sort of a an energy they're demonstrating for you something and immediately your idea of yourself can kind of leap into that and you can see how you would be if you develop that so that that's my hunch about you is that your spirit is crying for you to have that in yourself where you're very in touch with yourself you know who you are you hear yourself you see yourself and because you're visible and you're sort of like fully manifested like that other people can see and hear you too um what's the word materialize to materialize who you really are to really cut in your body in the person that people encounter that you are there that's what i'm hearing so you get attached almost immediately and not exclusively to men with these traits but when they do you acted you completely bulldoze your own needs and listen to them in adoration and you ask lots and lots of questions about every story and opinion and i'm just wondering i've known people who did this and i really didn't like it and somebody who um i think had similar traits of what you're talking about i had a friend like that who would always ask me questions questions questions and i assumed you you helped me to see that it might be something different than what i assumed i assumed it was because she thought that that's how you'd be a good conversationalist but that's actually like for me i get disregulated if i get peppered with questions i absolutely hate it i shut down i don't like it i like a normal amount of questions i like an exchange in a give and take but i don't like it when somebody keeps asking me questions because they think that's going to help but i would think i think in the case of this friend i'm thinking of yeah they had had a lot of trouble with narcissists and self-centered people and that was their way of relating to people they liked and admired was to go ahead and put them up on a pedestal and make it all about them and i'm just wondering like is it possible that the people who you're attracted to i don't know you you don't think so so probably not i defer to you but is it possible they're actually not that self-centered it's just that you're causing the conversation to be empty of anything about you if you're just driving it and driving it and you know like dale carnegie's book how to win friends and influence people pointed out almost 100 years ago everybody loves to be asked about themselves and i've talked about it in a video here but once my husband and i did an experiment we went to a party we were anxious about this party i didn't really want to go we said let's see what can we learn something at this party so we decided we would do an experiment we would not talk about ourselves unless forced to we would only ask people about themselves and we went to like a three-hour party where literally no one ever asked us a question about ourselves they talked about themselves what was interesting is at the end of it they were like oh we should hang out sometime and it was funny because i was sort of just like wow those people like really never asked about myself but i had doubts like should i be talking more about myself and i don't really have a problem with that obviously on this channel i talk easily about myself and i could easily do it too much but just like when i try to gauge like how right is it to like always let somebody talk about themselves i don't think it's right i think it's manipulative it's like trying to make somebody like you right so really showing up honestly is going to be a give and take that's going to be influenced by how extroverted or introverted or expressive people are or anxious you know personality and circumstances will influence it but a good relationship people will just sort of naturally reveal who they are and be interested in in each other and you haven't had that yet it's always one way or the other you know what else i want to say chloe i just think that um you are attracted to people who are full of themselves like that full of themselves and i want to put that in a positive way and i think that that's not necessarily like a terrible thing it's just that it's way out of balance without you showing up it's okay you know these guys that you're talking about who you know they like you and it turns you off well you're just not attracted to them and here's the thing you could go on dates with a hundred people and not be attracted to any of them that's normal and okay it's okay it only takes one for lightning to strike for somebody that you really would like to be with and it's mutual and it works out so most of the people that you hang out with in a dating way they're just not going to be the one so don't even worry i'm going to just give you a little validation attracted not attracted and you like a certain type of guy maybe it's like more of an alpha type guy you know maybe that's what it is it's not really some big sick thing it's just you like alpha guys and you have this misunderstanding that you need to dance around and people please them to get them to talk about themselves and you don't feel like you're interesting enough or good enough to be talking too and that's that's how you're kind of sabotaging i think i think the problem here might not be as global as you think it is you'll be the one to decide of course so you also say that um a negative side of when you sort of put a guy on a pedestal is you dedicate all this thinking time towards them and daydreaming of a future where you're together and it's particularly when they're not around that you do that well that's how it works a little bit of limerence there and again i'm not going to say that that's totally crazy or sick if you like somebody you know you're going to fantasize a little bit about them and think about the future a little bit of that is fine and of course you do it when they're not around because when they are around you're actually confronted with the real person and the real person is flawed and human and you know gets in the way and interrupts and whatever it is you know they're it's a harder to be limerent when a real person is right there in your midst but um many of us are you know hanging out and being just friends with people that we pine for or whatever that's possible but so i hear you it goes a little too far you fantasize and desperately wait for them so the pedestal the waiting you know you are describing a pattern you're describing a pattern and what i've noticed is that any kind of thing where we're putting people on pedestals and getting limerent about them it is a it's a known pattern that people have it comes back into focus when you begin to bring your life into focus and richness so i'm guessing you didn't tell me much about your life but there it is you didn't tell me like what do you do how old are you what you didn't even tell me about yourself so i don't really know i can just tell you need more fun and you need more fun that you have independently of whether some guy is around so i'll talk about that in a minute so you met another guy and he liked you and he wanted to come up and you weren't into it i thought it was interesting that this guy liked you and he drove you home and he came up and the next day you cooked him food and offered to bring it to him so i haven't gone on a date in a long time but when i did date i would not have done that unless i was absolutely really into somebody so i think it's interesting that you weren't into him and you did that thing i think when you're not into somebody like cooking them saying don't know i don't want to sleep with you and then the very next day cooking something for them and bringing it to them in a takeout box it's kind of codependent it just feels that way to me it's a little too much so i think that's interesting so that's your strategy to try to have relationships with people is like to overdo for them to be very nice to listen to them that's your strategy you're just still you know working on developing is who you are enough is it enough to just let some guy call you when he feels like calling you if he'd like to see you again and then show up and not feel like you have to cook for him or anything that's i you'd barely even know him you know but but yeah so then after that the next day you guys got together had sex and then he got weirded out and he discarded you and he stopped you know short replies so um you didn't describe that very fully but i'm just guessing if you liked him enough to have sex with him i think you might have done the thing where you were just like bombarding him with questions and blah blah and you know what when you're not you and you're trying to take your energy and push it into somebody else's mind it is not attractive to a healthy person that's going to be like off-putting so i think you know you kind of rushed in there with him and it pushed him away and i think you i think you're aware of that i think if you had been a little bit like more pace measured about it he did like you maybe that was going to happen but you know what if anybody really really likes you this sort of shenanigans it doesn't really get in the way so don't worry you're just dating it's going to constantly just collapse and turn into nothing because you haven't met the one yet so don't worry don't worry have patience on the flip side someone shows interest and you begin resenting them after that i know what that's like and you know it's a symptom that you're not yet emotionally available you can grow into someone who's emotionally available one thing you can do is to stop hanging out with guys you're not interested in if there's a non-mutual attraction there don't hang out i know it's radical but if you want to become emotionally available you get out of those like halfway relationships because what they do is they just they suck your availability out of you i'm all about like energy sucks this week you lose that beautiful radiant energy that's attractive to somebody who who might want a serious relationship with you when you're kind of just like leaking all your energy into all these quasi relationships i like him he doesn't like me he likes me i don't like him it's uh it drains you it drains you and keeps you from being from letting your cab light shine your cab light that's the phrase for you know like a taxi cab the light comes on when it's available you know how that happens sometimes like sometimes you want to be dating and nothing happens and then one day boom something happens and everybody's asking you out or at least one person is i never was in an everybody situation but you know it begins to happen and it's a little mysterious why it does but that's part of it because your emotional availability is sort of together right there and people feel that we can say anything we want we can ask them questions and pretend that we're you know so obsequious and listening to them and everything but people feel you and they feel when you if they can feel desperation they can feel resentment they feel it so no matter what you're saying and how you're acting that your vibe is just communicating where you're coming from the only people who can't feel are people who are like really intoxicated or very very out of touch with their feelings and i think that's one reason why people with cptsd who are functionally not emotionally available right now do end up with these broken people so often i know i did and i think that's why i wasn't trying to recreate my childhood it's just that somebody who was high was the only person who wanted to be around my difficult unavailable hedgy prickly personality you know i didn't really want to be there and they didn't mind they didn't mind so that worked for me until it didn't until i really you know grew into a place where i really wanted to i wanted to get married i wanted to settle down and i wanted somebody who really loved me and who was going to stay forever and there was a lot i had to change for that so you turn them into a friend you friend zone them but that's i don't think there's anything you can do about that i don't i think we don't always have control over who we're attracted to or who we fall in love with i think that the guys who are attractive to you i think with a little bit of healing you can meet halfway with them a little better i think that's how it's going to happen for you so you say you want nothing more than a relationship it preoccupies your mind and it's you know it's always what you think about when you think can i make a wish like what blowing out the candles i wish i would have a relationship i get that yeah so it's your heart's desire so that's good you have this pattern with friends too and that's what's great to know so you have this thing where you feel like you have to do that you learned it growing up you were growing up with parents who couldn't hear you or see you you didn't get a chance to like clarify your own being to yourself but now you're you're a grown-up and now it's time to do that so here's how i have had some luck with that i had um time i had chunks of like a year two years between relationships and a couple of them in particular were super developmental for me where i learned to spend time by myself doing things i loved like really really enjoying my life without having a guy in it and you know that i would have my days when i'd be like oh i feel so inadequate because i don't have a relationship and everyone else does which of course they don't but i discovered stuff that i really love doing and that was a lot of what was sad for me about not being with somebody is that you know i wanted to be able to go to like museums i wanted to be able to go hiking and camping do you know what i've gone camping by myself and it was fabulous it was really fun and i've traveled i've gone to all kinds of cities by myself and what's fun about that is when you don't have a companion with you you end up interacting with people there i totally stayed safe i know how to do that you know i was never in any kind of risk or anything but i went around to cities and i would end up having conversations on the subway or in a meeting or you know i just found people and i was so much more ready to engage and meet people and this made me interesting the second thing that made me interesting was i started to read challenging books and lately i haven't had time for that and i regret it because at the times in my life when i've read challenging books whatever that is for you i i was reading some stuff about philosophy aquinas for beginners and a book called after virtue by aleister mcintyre they're both like really dense the other one it says it's for beginners but it's really dense like thomas aquinas it was written a long time ago it's super deep and it was hard to understand but these are incredible books and just even reading them even the first day that i began reading them things would change my imagination opened up and when i would have a conversation with people i had something other than me to talk about i could talk about this is what a good conversation is it's not all about me or all about you we talk about an idea you know we talk about a goal there are things bigger than both of us that are really really deep and wonderful to talk about and that's how people are drawn out of themselves yes we talk about ourselves and self-disclose and ask questions but that's just part of it a relationship is built from a common goal or ideal or beginning with ideas that you talk about so i really encourage you to do that and i don't know if you read news news is really complicated that used to be something i thought was really important but the thing is it's so negative now that i think that bonding with people over negative feelings about stuff it's not really the best basis you can do that later so bonding over things that you're really really interested about that you feel excited and good about um or ideas that you're reading about or investigating that you'll that will completely change the character of the conversations that you have around you and you will begin to grow confidence that you are somebody worth talking to the third thing i would suggest to you is to be somebody who meditates maybe you already do but meditation if you take it seriously will deepen you it will start to bring you into your full self and i've meditated now since 1994 and i've had periods where i didn't and i just blew it off but it's been really helpful on so many levels as you may know i teach this thing called the daily practice it's a free course i i think now i don't know hundreds of thousands of people have taken it and it's delightful people all over the world are doing it it's a very simple set of techniques one is writing your fears and resentments and it's specific you should look it up in the course before you try this but it's a way to get free of those like thoughts you know anxious angry thoughts and that's a lot of what drives unhappy relationship behavior is fearful anxious thoughts angry thoughts and then sitting down in a very simple meditation and just resting now if you have cptsd and it sounds like you might you may get very disregulated you have a hard time being your grounded self especially under stress and you know what's stressful is being around someone you're attracted to so to be able to stay yourself and stay grounded and become somebody that like you're palpable in the room to somebody talking to you you might want to try these techniques there's always a link below there's a link down there it says free tools and on my website crappy childhood fairy free tools and there's stuff there that anybody can sign up for for free so you might want to try that your mission chloe if you choose to accept it is to become more fully yourself don't worry about the guys right now like take a pause on that and one reason i say take a pause is because the thing that you do where you discard people is hurting them and so the thing that's happening to you you're turning around and doing to other people i don't want you to have either of those experiences and it's just bad karma to be hurting other people so take a year or something take some time to try these new things of meditating getting to know yourself read challenging books go learn to do things by yourself that enrich you and give you joy and you will find the next time you're with a guy you're attracted to that your real self is starting to shine through in a very nice way now for those of you watching if you love this topic and you think that maybe your nice behavior is actually a little bit manipulative on other people you can check it out in this video i made right over here and i will see you very soon [Music] you

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 95,084

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Id: MUH4-qb2nh0

Length: 27min 3sec (1623 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022