The Brutal Reality Of Being Codependent And What To Do About It

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 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 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 receive 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 to 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 bugs 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 unseen and you know I have a theory about that um 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 we're 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 what's the word materialize to materialize who you really are to really come 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 I think had similar traits of what you're talking about I had a friend like that who would always ask me questions questions and I assume 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 um 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 a 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 to 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 I 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 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 [ __ ] 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 and you friend zoned 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 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 oh 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 you know if you're being codependent or if someone in your life is getting all codependent on you let's talk about some signs these are some things I've noticed codependent people do all right codependent people second guess themselves when they feel like they've been mistreated a little Loop kicks in and makes them distort what they're seeing and so instead of thinking ah you know what I don't accept this they instead think that person needs to change so that I don't feel hurt and instead of accepting other people and accepting by the way it doesn't mean that you condone bad behavior accepting people just means you see things how they are and you realize that's how they are and you don't put all your effort into trying to make other people be different you accept that's how they are so instead of setting a boundary walking away from people who you accept do not meet your standards then you end up holding on tighter or maybe even like seizing on that person because leaving for a lot of people with PTSD it doesn't feel like an option that abandonment wound makes it it makes leaving a relationship feel like you know one step lighter than death just very hard to do and so a codependent will end up pushing and pushing and pushing to convince the other person you have to change you must change what you're doing they don't think that's what they're doing of course they think that what they're doing is you know her encouraging helping right and if the other person doesn't want to change or be helped then the codependent increases the pressure again they don't leave but they stay and the pressure starts to go up and up and it can come out at the extremes of like shame and threats and manipulation you know I'll leave you I'll hurt myself I'll tell everybody what you did now if you've been with somebody who does this kind of thing makes threats you probably once you know reacted to it then you stopped taking it seriously then you kind of shut down to the person threats are very destructive to relationships sometimes people do mean it when they make threats and that's very serious but that's not what we're talking about here codependents are are very likely to come to harm for themselves in a gradual manner later in life because of stress because of anger and very significantly because of a lack of self-care they're starved for self-care if you want a quick way to test your own self-care look in your underwear drawer is everything old and tattered and shoved in there and ugly and shameful for you that is what a lack of self-care looks like you want to know an easy way to be self-caring about underwear go down to Target you can get six nice pairs nice colors for 10 or 12 bucks that is self-care same goes for regular Dental visits same goes for paying your taxes on time keeping your car tidy even if your car is cruddy and old having it tidy inside shows that you care about yourself when those things are out of order when there's just a big mess out there but all the time instead of working on it a person is fixated on how some other person or a group of people are a kind of person or the government or their parents did them wrong and parents might have done them wrong but if it's like an obsession and it's gone on for decades and it's taking the place of any kind of appropriate self-care keeping life in order you know pursuing happiness the belief that if someone would change even a person who hasn't been alive for 20 years is the obstacle that's like saying you know I can't be expected to be happy not ever now another thing about codependence they aren't straightforward about their motives and in fact I don't think they usually know their motives they want to feel better everybody does but they have they have this understanding of what's causing the pain in the first place and they know that when they ask for what they want which is for you to change it doesn't tend to go well so their criticisms are masked as like you know little observations that you know you didn't do the thing that you were supposed to do and they'll say it with a really cheerful voice oh you know and deny that they're pressuring you but of course we feel each other's energy you can feel a criticism even when it's disguised with a nice little voice it's a nice little comment you can feel it and because a codependent can't admit to themselves that they're criticizing it can be crazy making to interact with them on this you can't really talk it through you can't solve it really because there's some there's something amiss that's in their head they think that you can fix it but it's usually not something you can fix for them so they remain unhappy the pressure continues the motive for a codependent is generally to feel happier right but they're working with trauma wounds and Trauma wounds give all of us a blind spot toward what actually can make us happy in the case of codependence what a codependent struggles to see is that the happy thing would be to develop themselves to allow relationships to form naturally with good people who care about them who show up and gradually give more to the relationship they don't have to be forced and it's sad but a codependent will go through life without ever experiencing that you know someone just volunteering to love them so instead of forming happy relationships codependents will often attach to dysfunctional people which offers the opportunity it when they're feeling that sadness and emptiness to have something come in and like you know sweep away that sadness and it's that little fixer engine inside of just like somebody with a problem I know what to do I know what I know what to do and that feels good for them you know it it they feel the energy of it and it distracts them from everything that's missing in their own life now what's missing in a codependent's life what's missing is love connection Financial stability a vision for their own future they wait for another person to come along and Define those things for them and if it's not looking good from the outside it's it still has something they can use the dysfunctional relationship because it's an opportunity for them to throw their energy into another person's problems rather than to sit there with that energy and face themselves about what's missing and you know begin to do something about that a codependent likes to feel like the responsible one the Wise One the poor suffering one who holds everything together even though people have almost never asked them to play this role but it's how they find meaning it's a substitute for meaning so another thing about codependence the importance they place on seeming to have it all together is huge and it often prevents them from connecting with people or asking for help when they need help and I've had my own bitter experience with that my pride you know just feeling uncomfortable asking for help a codependent finds it hard to admit personal failures and worries things that most people feel from time to time when they're feeling down thoughts like you know I'm not really sure anyone really likes me or I thought I'd be further along in my life than I am right now that's pretty common but codependents can't go there they they feel pain they feel anxious about those things but they'll only be able to see it as something that someone else did or failed to do they feel like all their relationships just happen to them they have a hard time seeing that they signed up for most of their relationships and it's so understandable how a person could develop this aversion to seeing themselves fully codependent starts in childhood when external problems may have been so extreme that the person never had a chance to focus on their own life or in a lot of cases they were neglected badly or this is a big one criticized by parents like to the death and they had to buffer themselves from those thoughts that they were so bad just to get through it and then like the rest of us there's a need to undo those survival strategies you can thank your survival strategies for getting you through childhood you had to figure out some kind of Genius to do that but now it no longer serves you survival strategies if they're getting in the way it's just time you know it's time to start healing them codependents feel frustrated a lot of the time though because they feel so ineffective they don't get people to change their life projects don't tend to turn out and when they express themselves what they say tends to be more what they believe will be effective at making others care or change there's that Distortion that Loop going so they struggle to just say what they think directly and honestly and then so they don't get what they want they they don't have the experience of just letting the chips fall where they may and finding out that it's actually going to be okay they don't have to like Drive everything or control everything you might want to try that sometime you know just to express yourself honestly I'm not talking about hurting people but just say how you really feel about something and then just let everything see what happens just see what happens and I'll tell you that in my experience it was a long time ago very early when I learned my daily practice the techniques that are very calming that I teach everybody when I first started doing that I experimented with the radical proposition that life would not fall apart if I didn't manage everybody I just kind of had this Epiphany that that's what I was doing I was so afraid that everybody was leaving me that I was kind of working them all the time I was always being slightly unreal with them you know trying to charm them or convince them or guilt-trip them there was always something going on with me and then I just decided I don't know if they're going to leave they'll just leave and I just kind of relaxed and I was myself and you can imagine you can guess what happened you know people came a Little Closer not it wasn't perfect but it totally like turned the tide on what at that time in my life had been like a big Retreat from people the tide was going out of people in my life and then that calmed when I just let people be how they were that tendency to place all that power in another person you know to to make you happy can be so automatic such an unquestioned part of yourself that you can end up doing it when you don't even know you're doing it like for example to somebody you've only been dating for a couple weeks you know ah you're already in there like you know trying to affect how they see you and what they think of you and that may feel natural to you but it's actually not natural what's natural is to be yourself and see if somebody sort of is drawn to you so it's fun at first it's fun at first to get into kind of a fixer project with somebody before there's any bitterness before there's any anxiety about getting left it's like a fun project something fun came into your life it's like making a pinata and then even when you see what you're doing and you want to stop it's weird codependents can feel it can feel like a force of nature like it's always conforming you and your relationships to that same pattern like you try to break the pattern you get sucked right back into it patterns like always choosing Partners who have some limitation like they can't be with you or you get to be their intermediary their teacher their interpreter I knew somebody like that who was always dating people who didn't speak the local language and was always explaining the culture and the language to them but it was like every relationship right that looked to me like a pattern a negative one but codependent wants to be helpful that's what kind of you know gives them juice but because they're forcing a situation rather than responding naturally to the occasional need for help that others have codependents often end up feeling resentful they feel taken for granted because they do so much more than the other person it's not reciprocated no one asked them to do it but in in a codependent's mind it's like it's mathematical I did this you owe me and and the other people don't appreciate or value what that codependent is doing for them they might not even like it the codependent can't see this is their project they weren't asked to do this they're the ones who wanted to be seen and to feel themselves as like the hero the one who understands I understand you the one who defends the underdog the one who makes excuses for them because you know they're just so empathic and kind-hearted and codependent and this gives a codependent you know that feeling of like helping and saving people who can't help themselves or who they think can't help themselves you know it gives a sense of purpose it's an identity at least for a little while because you know why is that necessary because there really isn't that identity in there they never got a chance to develop it when they were little and it makes it way too easy to settle for something that's not really any good now so codependence is not a happy way to live life it often brings on health problems money problems problems on the job you try to show what a good job you can do and it never gets appreciated that's that's how it works that can happen because of other people that's possible but it can also happen when a person isn't able to be self-reflective and acts like a busybody or a critic or gets controlling with other people that doesn't lead to success on the job it's not a good energy for working with the team it's like having an addiction though I'm not sure that codependence and addiction are really the same thing it's subtle it's hard to put your finger on and like all forms of emotional healing trauma healing recovering from codependence requires an a just an astonishing capacity to face honestly what's happening to tolerate the unfolding of life in all the ways that you can't control that you couldn't see before that sometimes is a little unpleasant you might not feel good about yourself in certain cases but you need to be able to tolerate that and look at it and go okay yeah I did that and I'm interested in changing to heal you need a way to be able to see what's happening in your life where you may be forgetting to care for yourself or you may be dumbing down your integrity as a person you know or throwing all your energy away on some project person hurting your relationships you can use calming techniques that make it safer to just face where the problem might be is it someone in your life is it you is there something you want to change these are good questions to ask yourself they often don't have simple answers they require reflection talking to others seeking support they're honest questions and healing comes when you can gently open up to ask them and to set to work on healing what you find dear fairy I was married to the father of my children for 18 years I discovered seven years ago that he had been a sex addict throughout the entire marriage I had known he had an issue with drugs but the sex addiction Discovery came as a complete shock three very traumatic years went by and eventually we divorced as the addiction issues were not going away during this time I was lucky enough to get into a 12-step recovery program for codependency this program saved my life I'm going to use my fairy pencil I'm going to circle things I want to come back to when we do the second reading but let's read Alma's letter all the way through and then I'll go back and see if I can help you Alma okay I tried to do my healing work the best I could in the context of 12-step prayer living a healthy lifestyle Etc fast forward to 2020 and I decided to take an opportunity to go and live in Africa I know part of this was my adventurous Spirit but part of it was driven by the trauma of my divorce and the loss of my father the following year I was in a different country with a new culture and language I was somewhat gullible partly due to my cptsd it was at this juncture I met the most dashingly handsome guy who seemed like my dream person we started to have the most Fantastical passionate love affair he declared his love for me and had asked me to marry him but after just two months he very quickly lost all interest and started putting me through the most brutal and devastating devaluation cycle it became clear very quickly that all he wanted was money from me at this point I was so trauma bonded addicted and completely insane that I would give him money whenever he needed it if I ever refused he would punish me by withholding affection or giving me the silent treatment in fact after the first two months he gave me even less than crumbs and stopped all sexual intimacy he was sloppy in terms of his other relationships with other people mainly younger girls in their late teens he's 43 and I'm 53. the last time I slept with him was a year ago even though I ended the relationship if you could call it that I initially remained polite and said hello in the street when I saw him as he lives in my neighborhood however last summer I went no contact when I realized he was a narcissist and possibly even a psychopath he had spent 10 years in prison on and off for some very bad crimes I've not spoken to him in nine months now but I see him on the street almost every day I'm planning to move back to my home country in three months what I now know is my father was definitely on the narcissist spectrum and was a sex addict my mother was painfully codependent and treated so very badly by my father I have pretty much repeated their marriage in my relationships as an adult I also know I suffered deep abandonment wounds as my parents handed me over to my grandmother when I was four when my parents were around they were not emotionally present both my parents have passed away and I've made peace with what they were not able to give me however I'm left with a residue of trauma and specifically cptsd I have four children one who is severely autistic all my relationships in my adult life have been with addicts and narcissists and I honestly feel it's too late for me I feel like such an old fool I'm not dating anyone nor do I have the intention to do so I have turned to prayer and contemplation and know that my higher power will choose what is for my highest good I just want to get away from the cptsd that runs my life via a subconscious programming and I'm so very tired of it I look in the mirror and tell myself I'm old and ugly especially after this last relationship I feel so triggered when I see him with young beautiful girls because that is also what my ex-husband used to do and he married someone 20 years younger last year who has three children from a previous marriage can you give me any advice on how to get over the last horrific relationship and how to believe that there are good men out there I'm just so scared of meeting anyone ever again I want to be able to trust again in myself as well as others I also know I have so much love to give and I'm authentic courageous and kind it would be lovely to share my life with someone special sending you love may God be with you and that's from Alma thank you Alma let me see if I can help all right I'm going to go through Alma's letter again here and go back to some of the things I've circled and let's I just want to talk go over what you told me Alma because it's very telling sometimes when you write it and I read it back to you you'll be able to hear what you said and I think you're going to hear something that is going to help you all right so you had a marriage for 18 years and had had four kids and seven years ago you discovered that he had been a sex addict throughout the entire marriage and you also knew he had a problem with drugs but that part was new and it was yeah and it got you into a 12-step program for codependency and that program saved your life so okay right there you had something positive happen when you found out the truth of your marriage of the truth of what your life was about which was you are with a guy who was a drug addict and actively in sex addiction and you say later he was seeing lots of younger women and it was all a lie this is so devastating but you did something positive you went to the 12-step recovery program for codependency and you say it saved your life so that's fantastic all right so let's just put that as the foundation Alma you went and got recovery and it saved your life I tried to do my healing work best I could in the context of 12-step prayer living a healthy lifestyle Etc fast forward to two years ago and I decided to take an opportunity to go and live in in Africa I know part of this was my adventurous Spirit but part of it was driven by the trauma of my divorce and the loss of my father the following year so then you say I tried to do my healing work the best I could in the context of 12-step prayer living a healthy lifestyle fast forward to two years ago and I decided to take an opportunity to go live in Africa I know part of this was my adventurous Spirit yes very adventurous but part of it was driven by the trauma of your divorce and the loss of your father the following year so that makes sense to me I don't think it's crazy to go you know go on a two-year Adventure when you've just been through a lot of loss that's that's okay so you did that I was in a different country with a new culture and language okay but you know what else it was um it was another country where 12-step programs are rare so I think it's very likely that you did not have access to your codependency 12-step program so I just want to say like 12-step recovery and codependency are not the kind of things that you graduate from you kind of need to keep going and you didn't mention that and especially in the context of the just you know like the big repetition of the pattern that you had had before which is you know having done that before myself it's the kind of repetition that just happens like big time when a person leaves their 12-step program so you know that's what it sounds like to me okay so uh I was in a new culture and language I was somewhat gullible partly due to my cptsd and it was at this juncture I met the most dashingly handsome guy who seemed like my dream person and it's interesting that's often the first thing that I hear in a relationship that gets very limerent or obsessive or exploitative you know that it was like so incredible dream person we started to have the most Fantastical passionate love affair he declared his love for me and had asked me to marry him but after just two months he very quickly lost all interest and started putting me through the most brutal and devastating devaluation cycle yeah so that's a really fast like love bomb and discard cycle two months for someone who is 53 who's gone to the 12-step recovery program for codependency I think you mentioned in your letter that it was for partners of sex addicts so that would be pretty you know pretty intense that I know there's like codependence anonymous but if you weren't going to that and you got you got into this sudden instant relationship with your dream man I'm you know somewhere some voice was telling you whoa we know you can't do this this is like you know in 12-step recovery this is a well-known phenomenon we're vulnerable if relationships happen instantly we're on thin ice and so the reason we go slowly is because of what happened and I know you know this you know this but I'm going to go over it I'm going to say it out loud to help you just like let it in it takes time to get to know somebody and whether they're a good person and whether they deserve to be your partner okay so talking about marriage any this whole thing happening within just two months it sounds like not only uh there was you say he's a narcissist and a and a psychopath it could be it sounds like he's a con artist all right it just sounds like he's a con artist and it's so sad because that suggests that the whole thing was a manipulation and what this is for you is really good information that When You're vulnerable and sad and especially after this divorce and without your 12-step program somebody could just walk up and be like oh I love you I want to marry you and your need for love is just so raw and tender that you would open your heart to that I totally understand so many of us have been in your shoes but you wrote to me and so you know what I want to help you do is just kind of get your eyes wide open about this you got conned so he started to ask you for money and at that point you were so trauma bonded and addicted and completely insane that you gave him money whenever he needed it so yeah very codependent which you know from going to your program if you ever refused he'd punish you by withholding affection and giving you the silent treatment wow wow okay so in fact after the first two months less than crumbs then he stopped all sexual intimacy and to me it's just a little it's a little disturbing that when you look back you you're like he you know he wouldn't talk to you he would withhold all affection if you didn't give him money and then it got worse and that he took away sex so there's a vulnerability for you that you would still that like when you're in your disease of codependency you would be still willing to have sex with somebody even though they're abusing you with trauma bonding and discarding you that you would still be willing to that's a boundary you can make you know and you know where I'm going to go with this I'm going to be encouraging you to get back into your program and then to really set a boundary on this about going slowly in relationships and never ever giving money that money is for married people right and even then you have to have boundaries but hopefully you would get that recovery before you made a decision to get married talking about marriage anything less than 12 months to talk about marriage is premature it's premature it's really important to get to know somebody um so those are some of the red flags if it's really fast it's so passionate and he was 10 years younger and that is a red flag because while it's not unheard of that younger men older women combinations will form it's a really common pattern for con artists and catfishers is for a younger man to you know just fall madly in love with an older woman and because we're vulnerable we can believe it they make us believe it right okay so the last time I slept with him was a year ago yay even though you ended the relationship you were polite to him at first and said hello when you saw him as he lives in the neighborhood however last summer you want no contact and when you realized he was a narcissist and possibly even a psychopath and he spent 10 years in prison on an offer some very bad crimes I don't know if you knew that when you were together with him but that's pretty horrifying you know I usually think oh don't throw labels around but I mean if somebody's doing cons like this and going to prison on and off for bad crimes there you I think you could be right about personality disorders here but whatever you call it he treated you terribly so I've not spoken to him in nine months now but I see him on the street almost every day I'm planning to move back to my home country in three months oh get out of there yeah you've had your adventure um and sadly the the little town where you've got yourself settled is completely tainted with what happened and I think getting out of there is just lovely you now know your father was on the narcissistic spectrum and was a sex addict okay mother was painfully codependent treated every treated so badly by father I have pretty much repeated their marriage in my relationships as an adult that's okay that's okay Alma because you know that's what we do that's why we're healing that's why we get into recovery it's really normal to repeat the pattern it's okay um I also know I suffer deep abandonment wounds because your parents handed you over to your grandmother when you were four yeah it's so hard that'll do it that'll do it and then the abandonment wound will make it feel impossible to leave a relationship even when you know it you're in the middle of a nightmare it's very hard to leave I totally understand when my parents were around they were not emotionally present both my parents have passed away and I've made peace with what they were not able to give me however I'm left with a residue of trauma and specifically cptsd that's okay that's normal so you have four children one is severely autistic that's that's kind of a big thing severe autism I take it this child doesn't live with you and was back in your home country um while you were in Africa but all all your relationships in your adult life have been with addicts and narcissists and honestly I feel it's too late for me I feel like such an old fool okay so I know you say I feel like it's too late for me but later in the letter you said I want to know there's good men out there so I think you're worried you're fearful it's too late for you but you're also hoping so let's deal with the hope I'm going to plug into your hope that you would like to have a nice relationship one day and that's that's a totally good and normal heart's desires to be loved and to love that's good and you know what you're not a fool Alma you're not a fool you've done what everybody has done who has abandonment wounds which is be vulnerable be vulnerable to people who exploit I think you had the bad fortune to run into somebody who was genuinely vicious in that regard trying to get money you know doing intense manipulation like not speaking to you but now you know you've had the benefit of your experience and now you know and you can you can totally change the pattern now all right um I'm not dating anyone nor do I have the intention to do so I've turned to prayer and contemplation and know that my higher power will choose what is for my highest good I just want to get away from the cptsd that runs my life via a subconscious programming I'm so very tired of it while you're still in Africa I'm hoping you can get on Zoom and start going to the 12-step meetings that you were going to back in your home country and the minute your plane hits the ground back home please get back to the meetings you are vulnerable you know sometimes it's tempting for us to think that like the codependent side of things like the addict is such the bad guy and we're just like the nice codependent but the thing is we can absolutely destroy our lives as surely as an addict or alcoholic can we can destroy our own lives you can ruin your chances at happiness and I know you don't want that so get your best chance get your best access to Healing keep yourself together with your fellow Travelers who are also working on codependents and who help keep you each other on the path have a sponsor work the steps again you know do what you can to overcome this this deadly codependence it'll suck the life right out of you um and so that's my suggestion for that you've told me here I look in the mirror and tell myself I'm old and ugly especially after this last relationship you know 53 meh yes you've got so many years ahead of you and you know I'm older than you and I I think it's a wonderful age to start over again to live your healthy lifestyle and to begin to change your Baseline and change your understanding and put some guard rails on your dating life so that love becomes possible for you I have a dating course you might want to check it out one of the things that that has you do is in my course the very first thing you do is you write down your vision of like what would be your ideal life and who would be your ideal partner and you get to be very specific in fact I push you to be very specific we don't always get what we want but by being specific we suddenly kind of move into a new realm of knowing what we want and it starts to make the the people in the relations ships who don't fit that they just stop resonating so much anymore when somebody does fit it then we're like this is somebody I might be able to date it's almost like you have that parent that you never had who's sort of with you helping you make that decision who should I date so by writing it down when you're not dating you have put your wisdom on paper to guide you when you're not in your wisdom when you're dysregulated when you're elated or excited because you met somebody who just seems so great and the dating course also teaches you how to go slowly how to slow it all down how to do it very consciously and intentionally if you go to that 12-step program engage your sponsor to help you with the dating process have somebody you trust who can help you stay accountable to a slow and structured dating plan and what slow dating looks like is you don't rush in as the person who's likely to be codependent you allow the other person to do the asking at first you don't take you don't accept dates like on the spur of the moment you it's a plan date it also is not a long date at first you might have coffee or a lunch tops keep it short you don't talk on the phone all the time you don't text all the time you don't let online relationships turn into long texting things very quickly it turns into a face-to-face meeting and then it goes slowly from there and at first you don't date more than once a week at a certain interval you move up to twice a week but not more and you don't even have to tell people you're doing that when you're not rushing into the relationship just kind of opening up all your time all your emotions even your bank account your home all of that when you don't open that up to somebody what it looks like to another person is self-respect and sometimes while we're building our self-respect we act as if we have self-respect because acting as if we have self-respect is it it creates boundaries and that's what a person healing from codependency is trying to build Clarity boundaries understanding here's what I need here's what I don't put up with and you are in the perfect position to do that you get this Fresh Start when you go home to your country and your fellowship is waiting for you there so you said it was so invalidating for you that he went for young girls and your husband had done that um there will always be men who are most interested in the youth and beauty of women and those are not your guys all right they're not your guys there are plenty of Great Men Who are interested in good women who are about the same age as they are and that's who is in your circle of possible people to date they're there and the people who aren't into that I mean think about this nobody's going to fall in love with some fake version of you so who you really are with all your experience and the lines that's who you are and that's who gets to be loved and yes people our age do get to be loved and people much older than we are get to be loved too so it starts with the self-acceptance of where you are really this guy who's a con artist who tried to get money in who's always involved with teenage girls I know you know this but I'm just saying it out loud obviously there's something terribly wrong with this picture I'm so glad you're getting out of there it's toxic so then you told me I'm just so scared of meeting anyone ever again I want to be able to trust again in myself as well as others so that's I think you'll be able to trust other people more when you have learned to trust yourself and how you're going to learn to trust yourself is by acting with Integrity setting up boundaries and letting in mentorship from someone like a sponsor who you can check your decisions with before you decide anything because otherwise with the codependents running underneath in the cptsd you're just going to be vulnerable to impulsive decisions and sometimes all you need to do is tell the truth about what's going on like if you find yourself in a dating situation where you feel like you have to hide what's going on it's shameful to you then you know Red Alert and that's where mentorship comes in so if you like you can also come into the dating course we have coaching for dating we have programs here whatever you do become active in putting your recovery first you are so worth it of all the red flags I've learned to detect there's one that really makes my uh oh radar go off and that's when a grown-up man or woman says they never want to grow up my name is Anna Runkle also known as the crappy childhood fairy and maybe you've tried to date someone like that who doesn't want to grow up or maybe one of your parents was like that or maybe and I hope I'm not offending you maybe you're someone like that and I think I understand what you might mean when you say you never want to grow up I think what's meant is you want to feel carefree and authentic and not turn out bitter and burdened like maybe a negative parent figure in your life but if you're having a hard time creating happy stable relationships and if you're spending a lot of time broke or angry or disappointed with other people or like you're unfairly rejected or overlooked all the time I want to help you detect if it might be possible that childhood trauma has actually kept you stuck in some old childhood mindsets and whether that might be blocking you from having functional and equal relationships with the people in your life now like a lot of you I had to grow up really fast in some respects I was exposed to a lot of things that kids are not supposed to see grown-ups using drugs hitting sexual stuff a kitchen with no food in at half the time I had to help out with child care Sometimes Late into the night because the adults were you know out until morning and long before I was even a teenager if I wanted to have any money I had to earn it myself even for basic stuff sometimes clothes food taking art classes at the community center so I started this whole series of little kid businesses to pay for that and I'm proud of that there have been a lot of good things that have come from that but the funny thing is what they call growing up fast is not really growing up it's toughness but it's not maturity and so that's why I sometimes call childhood PTSD a kind of developmental delay now usually that term refers to a long timeline for learning things like how to talk how to walk how to read but for those of us with childhood PTSD we sometimes have a long timeline to develop emotional maturity we can be hugely Street Smart very intellectual but still a little vague on how to take responsibility for the direction of Our Lives some of us stay in a never-ending battle really with our parents kind of an extended adolescence where we're trying to get them to see how hurtful they were we're trying to get them to make right what they did or we try to drag out of them the approval and the love that never came while we were kids healing from that is part of maturation too it's hard but it doesn't have to take a lifetime it starts by just opening up your mind to the possibility that the hurt kid in you is compromising the adult you need to be today so how would you know if this were happening well there are a few markers of adulthood and we can start by asking questions about those so the first question is do you have an identity that is independent of your parents or their influence now we might choose to live in a similar way to our parents same values same affiliations with churches or politics or whatever they're into and there's nothing wrong with that but part of adulthood is that we find what we really believe and how we really want to participate in the world even if it's different and it doesn't have to be done with anger or criticism of your parents you might have criticisms but now that you're an adult you're free they're free everyone gets to be themselves now some of us stay in a childlike State through dependence on our parents whether it's for money or a place to live or just emotionally we're very caught up from day to day and what they did what they said how they judged us or disapproved of us in the past or or just last week now if you're holding on to that stuff and it's affecting whether you can be happy or not today I'd say the child in you is blocking you from Full adulthood you can spend your whole life very focused on those hurts but to start enjoying the freedoms of adulthood it's important to start facing not just what happened but our own limitations that may be connected to that it's not our fault that we got hurt as kids but today if we want to start having a good you know real fulfilling connection to other people we've got to climb up out of that identity of a person at war with the past and yet a lot of us get stuck in the psychological bonds and beliefs that what happened in the past still dictates who we are now and it can be this never-ending fantasy that it's the parents who have to do something so that we can get free even when we're 30 40 50 years old we think they have to apologize or they have to acknowledge what they did or they have to help us get on our feet because the trauma was so debilitating that is a war where whether you win or lose you lose there is a tiny chance that your parents will change or give you the love that they couldn't give you in the past and if they do it's going to happen through some shift in their own hearts and it's definitely not going to be because of pressure from you fake apologies they never hit the spot do they the miracle that you're really looking for is the one in here where you're free of what happened and you start making the happy life you deserve now for a few people that means cutting ties with parents but for most people that is not necessary at all when you have less fear and resentment and in my courses I teach exactly how to achieve that you have more flexibility to enjoy people who just used to piss you off and I'll be honest with you Everyone likes you better when you put down your sword when you stop trying to make anyone apologize or compensate you or validate you or change in any way they are who they are and we are who we are and everyone just wants to be accepted and we can make requests but we can't force change and that is a core meaning of what it means to be an adult we work on ourselves so adults have freedom to change or not change and to create their own identity distinct from their parents and that's a very powerful Freedom there are the simple freedoms of doing what you like behaving how you like you don't have to be polite or cooperative even right you have that freedom As Long as You Follow the law you can wear t-shirts that have the f word on them you control people on the internet you can eat junk food all day if you want and if people in our lives don't like it we are free to push them away I don't know if we want that but that is a certain kind of freedom and it comes with adulthood let's call it casual freedom it's not the kind of Freedom that I'm suggesting you stretch out of your comfort zone to obtain what I'm really talking about is the kind of Freedom that comes with a cost that always entails responsibility and this includes adult privileges like having sex earning money creating a home forming a partnership or even a family serving your community right if you long for those things but you can't seem to have them then it could be that the child in you is controlling the adult in you and it may be time to take a step up and into those responsibilities and the freedom that come with setting the past behind you so that you can blossom as your full autonomous grown-up self and I think consciously we all want that but what can happen with childhood PTSD is we're not doing what it would take to get there it feels like just too much sometimes the responsibility is too exhausting even to think about right and what if you try it and totally fail what if you succeed but then make some mistake and all those eyes are on you and you feel humiliated or what if your childhood PTSD symptoms overwhelm you but you've taken some big job and you don't have the option anymore to just stay in bed all morning or get in your car and drive a thousand miles to get away from it all just flat out a void you know whatever it was that was too painful to face now everybody feels this way sometimes especially people with childhood PTSD it's part of it but the quest to avoid that triggered Feeling by avoiding responsibility it takes too much away from us there comes a time when what happened in the past doesn't explain all the problems anymore sure we have obstacles we can be socially awkward we have money problems a lot of us missed out on a full education we've got health issues we've got depression or ADHD we don't know the right people we don't know how you're supposed to act in a job or on a date and that's real and it's not our fault we grew up in that void but you know what we can learn and every day that we spend just throwing up our hands in helplessness and feeling left out is a day wasted you want to know how to do a job interview you can watch a YouTube video like today you can read a book on dating or actually you could take my online course on dating and relationships because it's just for people with childhood PTSD you you don't need to give up you can learn your instinct for self-protection really has served you well but right now it's keeping you from becoming your real self so now we can protect ourselves in a new and better way by opening up those capacities and practicing and learning and reaching those Milestones of adulthood of work Financial Independence learning and social participation and intimate relationships and a family if that is your heart's desire now there's no guarantee that you'll achieve all these things in your life or that you'll handle the responsibility without some bumps but don't let your good self collapse into bitterness and helplessness you can reach for your own Freedom you were made to grow and take your place among the strong people who lift up our lives all over the world it's hard and it takes emotional courage and it's going to be triggering sometimes thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 112,861

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Id: 8FWlgWMK07Q

Length: 73min 23sec (4403 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 18 2022