[WHOOSH] So in this video, we're
going to be talking about the characteristics
of codependency because in my opinion, I
think codependency is rampant. It's just to what degree. So there is a spectrum
that we have to consider. But in this video,
we're going to be addressing a couple of things. Number one, characteristics
of codependency. And also, I just
want to touch briefly on some of the root
causes of codependency. So if you grew up in
an unpredictable home, and unsafe home, if
you grew up in a home where there were problems but no
one talked about the problems, right, so you don't
trust yourself, what's really going on,
if there was alcoholism, if you are the child
of a narcissist, if you were raised
by abusive people-- so unproductive, chaotic
homes where you're not allowed to express
your feelings. It's a very rigid environment. You get the idea that
you're not enough unless you do what your
parents want you to do. You're not allowed to
express your true feelings. There's a lot of criticism,
a lot of blaming, a lot of condemnation,
a lot of negativity. If your home was
chaotic, you may have had to learn how to be a caretaker. If your parents
were very emotional, if you had to manage
their emotions, then you've learned
to become a caretaker to other peoples' feelings. You've also learned that the
people that you love the most might not be there for you. So trusting people
is a big issue. Feeling the ability to
accept help from people-- huge issue for people who
suffer from codependency. There is a lack of
intimacy because the people that you loved hurt you, right? So you've got to keep
people at a distance. There's an inability
to trust yourself because you aren't encouraged
to talk about your feelings. You don't trust people. You don't trust
that you're worthy. You have low self-esteem. So let's get into
the characteristics of what it means to
suffer from codependency. A huge red flag for
somebody who might have come from a home like that,
if you tend to feel like you are the person who has to fix
everybody else's feelings. You are what I call "the mop
and the broom of society." So you're at work and you
see someone struggling, you feel like you have to
go in there and rescue them. In relationships, you have
to focus on your partner's problems and you have to
come up with a solution to fix the problems. Another characteristic
is that you absolutely believe that you know what
is best for this person. It's like you are so obsessed
with what is happening outside of you, right? And rather than focusing on
yourself and your problems, you're the person-- and I so relate
to this-- you are the person, the friend, the
employee, the whoever that can fix everybody
else's problems and has a solution for
everybody else but yourself. If you suffer from codependency,
you lack boundaries. So you offer advice even
if it's not offered to you. It's hard for you
not to offer advice. You'd be in the
grocery store and you hear people talking about a
recipe, and then you butt in. You haven't been
asked to butt in, but you just butt in, right? So you're coming from this
place, at least on the surface, it looks like, you want to
collaborate with people. You want to help people. But there's
something else that's going on below the surface. Oftentimes when
codependents offer help, and they offer
advice, and they spend all this time talking
to someone on the phone, giving them all this advice,
after they get off the phone or whatever, they
feel better, right? Then they hear that their best
friend is still with this guy or their brother is
still with this girl. Whatever, right? And codependents feel
wounded because they offered all this help to this
person that they love only for it to be cast away. So when you suffer
from codependency, you're very much out
of focus, other focus, trying to help other people. And you really are offended when
people don't take your advice. Another characteristic,
if you feel emotionally drained, emotionally
exasperated because you're not taking care of yourself
and your other focus, this is a huge red
flag of codependency. How could you not
be exasperated? You are the person
in society that is looking for people to help. It is not commonplace for you
to pay attention to the self. And so, yes, you're
going to get exasperated taking care of everybody
else but yourself and attracting people
who need to be fixed. Huge red flag of
codependency is the need to be validated
outside of the self. So when we suffer from
codependency, we're not-- our sense of self isn't
coming from within. We've come from
chaotic homes, right? So we don't have
a sense of self. That's not our fault.
It's the result of childhood dysfunction,
what happened in our homes. And that need to feel
seen doesn't go away so we continue on
seeking validation. We-- as people drive
past us, we want them to see us and notice us, right? Everything that we do for
the most part is linked to, can you see me? Do you value me? See how good my vegetables look? Look how good my garden looks. Look how good my kids look. Look how clean my house is. So there's always this
can-you-see-me thing going on. Codependents-- a
characteristic of codependency is being highly, highly
sensitive to criticism. So we suffer great
low self-esteem and we think we're trying so
hard to help other people. And so when we feel
rejected or abandoned, or maybe someone
says, get out of here. Leave me alone. I can take care
of myself, right, and someone refuses to
allow us to fix them, we feel mortally wounded,
completely rejected. That triggers our abandonment
and attachment trauma. We stay in unhealthy
relationships long past the time
we should have left. And we know we're in an
unhealthy relationship, but we don't know how
to get out of it, right? We're other-focused, right? We've got this addiction
to taking care of people. We're in denial. We have no self-esteem. We don't know how
to set a boundary. Our borders are very, very weak. We don't know who we are. So in order to end something,
I have to know where I begin. And so if you suffer
from codependency, you're going to stay
in a relationship long after you should have left. Deflection-- this
is another huge one. So rather than a codependent
pay attention to their spouse has a drinking
problem, or lies, or is a shopaholic, or a
gambler, or whatever, or is having an
affair, codependents will deflect the
truth, right, so they don't have to deal with the
emotions of this experience. So they will actually
lie for their partners and lie to themselves. Oh, it's not that bad. She only does this
once in a while. It's OK that she
lies about this. It's OK that he
cheated on me once. He said he's never
going to do it again. So we deflect because
we don't know how to deal with our own emotions. Codependents avoid
confrontation and really confronting their own feelings. Kind of leads into
the last thing that I just said
about deflection. But we have this true
avoidance of being able to confront the issue that
we really need to confront, whether is my husband makes
fun of me when I'm out with my friends and
I don't like it, and I don't know to tell him. Or my sister just drops by
whenever she wants and she just takes stuff out of my closet. She expects me to watch her
kids whenever she wants to. We don't go to the
heart of the issue. We don't know how to. Codependents can
be manipulative. So because they don't know
how to get their needs met and everything
is kind of done to get a need met-- in other
words, taking care of somebody is so that I can feel seen
and taking care of someone is so that I can find
a sense of worth. And when we feel like
we've been slighted, rather than-- because we just
don't have the tools to do it. I grew up with my mom
watching her do this-- my dad had high
narcissistic traits. My mom had high
codependent traits. And rather than tell my
dad that he upset her, my mother would just shut down. She would stop talking. Or she would take
the credit card and she would go buy a
new comforter for the bed. Or she would be very
sarcastic to him. This is how she let him know
that she was pissed off. But what she should
have been able to do was accept how she
feels, set a boundary, and then expect him to
change his behavior. And if he didn't, well,
then that's the next step. That's understanding
the consequences of setting a boundary. OK. So how it shows up, we
lack a self-care routine. We will spend all
our time making sure that our kids have
what they need or our mother has
what they need. We'll pamper other people,
but we won't pamper the self. In our daily life, we take
on way more than we should. So we're taking
care of our house, and now our kids
just bought a house, and now we're over in our kids
house pulling out their weeds. So, again, there's
this lack of boundaries and how we permeate into
the lives of everyone else without our own perimeter. At work, we are taking on
the work of other people. In the house, we're
taking care of things that other people should
be taking care of. We shouldn't be making the
beds of adult children, right? We shouldn't have to
do things for adults if they can do for themselves. But it doesn't matter. If you suffer from codependency,
in your daily life, you are exasperated because
you take care of everyone else and you're not taking
care of the self. In your daily
life, you ruminate. You ruminate. Your mind is going
1,000 miles an hour. You're worrying
about who needs what. You're worrying about
how you can say something to someone to help their life,
help them work their life out. You are worried about what
other people think about you. You are trying to
manage and control how other people see you. And so in your daily
life, your mind is ruminating about all
of these different issues. And what we fail to
realize as codependents is that we're not
focused on the self and what we truly need at all. We value other
people's feelings. So we know how
other people feel, but we don't know how we feel. We know what other
people like to eat, but we don't know
what we like to eat. We have a difficult
time making decisions when it comes back to I. So
we go out to dinner and-- we go out to dinner
with five or six people, what would you like to eat? We're waiting to see what
everyone else is going to eat. We're waiting to see if
everyone's having water, or are they having
a glass of wine? If they have water,
we'll have water. If they have a glass
of wine, maybe we'll have a glass of wine. And so there's this
constant inability for us to be anchored in the self
because we don't have a-- well, there is a self. We're just so obsessed with
other things and other people, and our lives have
become so unmanageable because we take on
stuff from other people that now the self that we
have is lost in this abyss. Huge thing for you if you
suffer from codependency is you can't identify a
single emotion, right? So it's like you can't
identify how you feel. And if you can't
identify how you feel, you can't set a boundary. And you can't create
dreams in your life if you can't identify
how you feel. You can't tell people
what you really need. And you can't satisfy
your own needs if you don't know how you feel. You minimize yourself. If you suffer from
codependency, you minimize your accomplishments. You never feel good enough. You could paint the
house inside and outside, and have the most beautiful
garden in the world, you could be really
thin, and you could be-- your face
could be perfect, and your kids
could look perfect, you might have the perfect
car and the perfect job, but you still feel worthless. There's nothing
that you are doing allows you to feel good enough. You minimize your
accomplishments. So you have a wonderful job,
and you have healthy children, and you have-- maybe in your case,
you have a relationship that is really,
really functional, but it doesn't matter. You'll never give
yourself credit. You'll never see the
good in your life. And in the back of your head
and in the pit of your stomach, you're always not good
enough so you will always devalue yourself. Very difficult for you
to accept a compliment. And you will minimize
yourself day in and day out regardless of
what you've achieved. You don't see
yourself as lovable. Yeah, you take
care of everybody. Yeah, you take
care of the house. Yeah, you're a nurse. Yeah, you're a fireman. Yeah, you're a doctor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You join the Peace Corps, right? And you have all these
wonderful, empathic qualities, but you don't really
see yourself as lovable. So it's sort of like
in the back of our head it's like, I hope
they see value in me. If I do this, they'll
see value in me. If I do this, maybe I'm lovable. If I do this, maybe I'm worthy. You don't have
empathy for the self. You have empathy
for everybody else, but you don't have
empathy for the self. You'll say to your
neighbor across the street, you shouldn't do
that for your kids. They're 35. Or you know what? Your daughter-in-law talks
to you like you're nothing, and maybe you need
to set a boundary. You'll have that empathy
for your neighbor, but in a same situation, put
you in the same situation, you'll have zero
empathy for the self. You will be exasperated,
and exhausted, and full of angst
and guilt worrying about what your
daughter-in-law thinks about you because you said no. Or you'll be afraid to
tell the grandchildren no. You can't you can't
drink in my basement. You're 16 years old. You can't bring your
friends through the window and drink in my basement. You're 15 years old or whatever. Anytime you need to set
a boundary for the self and show up for the
self, you're not going to be able to do it
because you lack empathy for the self. Ugh. Huge-- you can't ask for help. You don't feel worthy
of asking for help. You've been programmed
to worry about everybody else but yourself. So this idea that you are
permitted to ask for help is completely foreign to you. You don't have the
programming for it. You see yourself as the broom,
as the mop, and the dustpan, and the garbage pail. You are the person who
takes care of everything. Nobody takes care of you. You have a difficult
time finishing projects. You can start something, but
you have a difficult time finishing it, right? So there's
procrastination involved. Well, you know what? When you're not used to being
the center of your life, it's hard to finish a
project for yourself. But if your next
door neighbor had needed to clean out a
closet, you'd be there and you'd stay there
till sundown making sure that her closet was cleaned out. One of the saddest things that
we deal with as codependents is that we fear intimacy, right? At our core, there's
so much shame, and there's so much
guilt because we came from unpredictable
homes where we were programmed to feel
unloved, right, because of the chaos in our home. Our parents weren't
paying attention to us. They weren't nurturing us. So there's tremendous
emotional neglect. There is tremendous
unpredictability. There's abuse by
commission, which is a violation, an overt
violation, perhaps hitting, sexual abuse, that
type of abuse. And then there's
abuse by omission. And it's really,
really difficult as a codependent
who's come from a home where we can't point to
the actual abuse, right? So we feel like it must be us. My mother didn't love me so that
must mean that I am unlovable. And these ideas get
impressed before the age of seven lots of the times. And it can take a
lifetime to undo. And so one of the most difficult
things that we struggle with is this inability to get
close to people, right? I've coached so many
men and women who have had mothers and fathers. And we all sort of
say the same thing where there's always been
a pane of glass, right? So if you're a codependent,
you're very loving and you're trying
really, really hard, but you might have a
pane of glass between you and your own inner child
or you and your own self. You just can't break
through this pane of glass that prevents you from merging
with your authentic self. And it's difficult because
when it's difficult for us to consciously break
through that pane of glass, right, which are all our
patterns and our programs-- and breaking through
that can be very difficult-- it's
very difficult for us to connect to other people. And so what we do is we have
this pane of glass here. And we're just caught up in
these behaviors of being. And people aren't able
to get close to us. And lots of times, people
can feel that, right? And so we want to be
loved in an authentic way, but we struggle with it. And we attract people
who are very oftentimes emotionally unavailable. We attract people
who need to be fixed and who want to be catered to. And so we end up with the short
end of the stick in childhood and adulthood. But here's the thing, right? We're all born asleep, and the
only person who can fix this is you. The only person who can
fix this for me is me. So healing from
codependency, there are plenty of things
that we can do. But I think the
major step that we have to take today, for
anybody who is suffering or thinks they might be
suffering from codependency, is recognizing the symptoms
and the characteristics of codependency so that you
can identify as being someone with codependency. And so now that if this
resonates with you, now at least you know
what was wrong. It's not you. It's just your programming. And now at least you're on the
path to emotional recovery. You can learn more about
codependency in my book The Road Back To Me. And if you're
interested in learning about how to break
through some patterns, you can check out my book
"Codependent Now What? It's Not You, It's
Your Programming." I also have a 12-week
breakthrough coaching program that helps you heal
from codependency that I moderate along with a team. And we host that twice a year
in August and in February. And you can register for the
next class now if you like. Do not despair. Dear one, I can tell you that
when my therapist told me that I was clinically depressed--
but he said, well, you're clinically depressed
because you're co-dependent-- I was excited as I was confused. What? I thought codependency
just had to do with people who had alcoholism
and the spouses who took care of the alcoholics. And boy, was I wrong. Boy, was I wrong. So this is an exciting time. And dive in to learning
more about codependency. And know that you can join CoDA. You can join Al-Anon. These are free support groups. You can find a support group,
I think, almost anywhere in the world. And that would be a
great place to start. So thank you so
much for being here, and I hope you're enjoying
my channel, dear ones. And you can actually-- if you
click the Subscribe button and the notification
bell, you will be entered to win a
one-year-long membership to my breakthrough
warrior membership site all about healing from
codependency and narcissistic abuse. So as always, I'm bowing to love
and a light that is absolutely in you. Bye for now.
