Codependency & Love Addiction
Do you feel anxious in relationships? Do you feel obsessed about a relationship in your life? Do you love someone who copes with alcohol, other substances or other behavioural addictions? Are you in a relationship you know is not good for you and you keep going back anyway?
Codependency is the ongoing investment of your self-esteem in the behaviour or emotional states of another person - even in the face of adverse consequences to yourself - and taking responsibility for another’s needs to exclusion of your own.
Codependency is a set of behavioural patterns that is developed in childhood intergenerationally or if your caregivers provided an unstable environment - link to blog here.
Living with codependent belief systems, your worth is based on you doing for others rather than for simply being yourself. Your expectations in relationship are:
If you behave in the manner you want to be treated by the other person, then they will reciprocate to meet these expectations.
Chances are you are constantly being disappointed and, in fact, resentful in your important relationships. You do not feel safe in expressing your needs for fear of rejection or abandonment.
But having codependent coping patterns doesn’t necessarily mean you are codependent if these behaviours are new to you in a certain problematic relationship such as with a narcissist or antagonist.
Your healthier coping skills that exist in most other relationships seem to go offline with this narcissistic or antagonistic person.
It could be your healthy coping patterns have lost perspective.
My approach, in addition to my Inner Strength Boundary System: A²LDS - link to blog here - is to use Parts Work techniques where current unhelpful coping patterns are identified and explored. Each aspect has their light and shadow side, and they always have the best intentions for you – to protect, manage or eliminate threat.
Working together, you will learn to embrace these coping patterns and reclaim your internal sense of self or wise mind to take charge again while creating acceptance and awareness for all your parts.
We will also make the connection with the body’s sensations and nervous system regulation to break the habitual state of flight, fight, freeze and fawn in response to your external world and relationships by building a somatic toolkit to support yourself when needed.
Grief and loss can be a part of this process. Much of our grief comes from non-death losses – link to blog here. Some of us are experiencing anticipatory grief, bracing for the worst pain to come. Some of us are processing a realized loss of a death of a loved one. The only way out is through. When we find safe ways to connect with and express our grief in a way that works for us, we can reconcile our relationship with the loss and move toward healing. Exploration of losses, both non-death and realized, helps us tap into our inner resilience, create ways to express the grief to integrate it and find meaning in our challenging life experiences.
If your are experiencing despair because your adult child is struggling with substance use disorder and mental health challenges, click the link to the blog here.
Counselling sessions can help you explore your relationship patterns and begin to feel an internal sense of safety and connection with yourself.
Click here to schedule a 30-minute complimentary Consultation Call.
