Have you ever reached a point where your patterns and behaviors are painfully obvious, embarrassing, and destructive… and you’re losing hope? And because you don’t know how to break out of this cycle, you accept that your intuition will never be something you’ll have the self-esteem to befriend and act on. All you know is to follow your intuition until it’s gone nowhere and brush it off with self-blame. I know I’ve been there. But for most of my life, every time I thought I’d reached the point of best friend status with my intuition, I’d somehow find myself in a completely different situation with the same damned outcome: heartbreak, unnecessary drama, insecurity, jealousy, lies, blaming myself for everything, and being labeled as crazy. Years later, I discovered that these symptoms in my relationships were all signs of codependency.

“Am I codependent?” I thought. I didn’t even know what codependency was. All I knew was that I was in pain. The pain that overwhelms you makes you believe that you’ll never find a way out without a toxic partner to save you.

If your healing of your pain is entirely dependent on the decisions, actions, and behaviors of others, you are completely excluding yourself from being an active participant in your healing (and your life). By doing so, you are communicating to the universe that you are more comfortable being in a codependent relationship (with your triggers, the audience in your head, and other people) than addressing your codependent personality.

For me, the idea of ​​overcoming codependency seemed so much better than actually getting better.

Getting better was so scary. I didn’t even know where to begin to organize myself.

Denial and avoidance were so much easier.

And because the universe has a way of giving back to us what we put out, I just kept getting more and more of the same. At that point, I had given up on myself for so long, that my life had become nothing more than managing every relationship I had and every opportunity I ultimately sabotaged.

I was so hungry for validation; I was so busy trying to secure acceptance that there was no room for real connection or meaning in my relationships—starting with the one I had with myself. As long as you don’t know who you are, you will always look to toxic people/bankrupt sources to tell you who you are and what your value is.

This has been my reality for over 20 years of my life. Wash, rinse, repeat is degrading.

What is Codependency?

Codependent relationships are always one-sided. They have the highest highs and the lowest lows of all. While these relationships may seem very intimate (because the “us against the world” mentality is necessary for survival), they are the opposite of what true intimacy is all about.

The dictionary defines codependency as “an excessive (and unhealthy) emotional dependence on your partner.” It happens when you sacrifice your own needs and mental health to serve theirs and feel responsible for their behavior. In your bondage, you live outside of yourself but are always able to quickly shift gears and make your partner’s behavior revolve around you; how you are is somehow never enough.

Codependency is when one person (a psychopath) enables another person (a psychopath) to have poor mental health, addiction, narcissism, immaturity, irresponsibility, manipulation, sociopathy, avoidance, etc.

Signs of Codependency

Whether it’s a marriage, friendship, romantic relationship, or family relationship, the key to knowing how to overcome codependency is being able to recognize these things within yourself.

All of this used to be me…

People-pleasing People who seek to please others are easy targets for codependency. You’d rather do what you think will bring you the most validation/approval than follow your gut. Codependents like to listen to their hearts, their sexual desires, their heads… anything but their gut.

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Need vs. Want When I was codependent, I didn’t feel like I had any value without someone in my life who needed me. This leads to the damaging (and false) assumption that most codependents live by Need = Want. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are so needy that we begin to assume that just because someone needs us, that means they want us. There’s a big difference. Why do we go to people who need us? As I said before, it’s like taking out a bad abandonment insurance policy. As long as we’re with someone who needs us (and then uses/ignores us because we’re people-pleasers), we convince ourselves that we’ll never be abandoned because, well, we’re wanted. This confusion between need and desire sets you up for relationships with emotionally unavailable, narcissistic, sociopathic, and emotionally bankrupt (toxic) types. When you confuse need and desire, you project your low self-esteem onto others, forgetting that it will always come back to bite you. Who would fall in love with someone other than someone dependent on them, ignore the red flags, make excuses, and stay in a relationship with them? One partner in a relationship is generally based on pleasing/providing, while the other is based on “feeding”/consuming. One is the ATM, the other is the cardholder. Each is dependent on the other to complete the transaction—a transaction that is automated through unaddressed trauma and devoid of any real intimacy, connection, or meaning. What are you left with when you are unhealthily dependent on relationships? Abuse of power; two individuals who can’t stand on their own emotional feet because they can’t be individuals. They are just addicts—addicts to production and consumption. Guess what? You’re better than that. Codependency is a strain of desperation that prevents healthy communication, enforcing boundaries, and the ability to trust yourself or your partner. Codependency is trying to save the day. Codependents want to protect and “shield” others from the emotional distress they feel every hour. They like to be the emotional Red Cross for victims. They also try to protect others from any consequences for their behavior because codependents feel so guilty. That’s where the inability to hold their partner accountable for their actions lies. Chaos and complexity instead of continuing to ask, “Am I codependent?” Ask yourself… Am I getting involved in (or creating) unnecessary drama and chaos so that I don’t have to deal with the bigger problem (my inability to have my own emotional life, make my own decisions, and deal with my lack of self-love)?”

You are an emotional sniffer. You truly believe that you know exactly what’s best for others and feel abandoned and rejected when they don’t follow your advice. You do this because as long as you can control others, you don’t have to deal with the most terrifying quest to control the one thing that’s become overwhelmingly out of control: yourself. This is why many people with codependency develop severe OCD. They need to control everyone and everything because they are afraid. They don’t know how to control themselves and their lives. They can never follow their advice.

Fear of inadequacy is at the root of codependency. Acting out of fear makes it impossible to enforce boundaries and cultivate self-love. Living in fear (which eventually turns into shameful anger), and holding it in until it explodes, is a sign of codependency. Codependent individuals feel extremely isolated. Because of this, their default position is to put others down and, at the same time, put themselves down. They also feel intense resentment toward authority figures because these people embody everything they feel they can never be.

How to Stop Codependent Now

Take Stock of Everything (and Fire Everyone Accordingly) Take stock of all the people in your life who need you versus the people who want you. Remember, you are the CEO of your company. Make the decision to fire the people in your life who drain you. How do you fire them? Talk to them with your kind actions and stay on your white horse. If you can’t think of any people in your life who want you, start wanting a relationship with yourself and work toward it. You will eventually start attracting people who truly want to get to know you (the real you – not the weak, people-pleasing person that codependency has turned you into).

Set your standards (rather than letting others set them for you). Wherever you set your standards, the universe will meet you. At what point is enough for you truly enough? Never be so desperate to “have someone” that you allow your standards to be lowered. Everyone needs to set boundaries. What are your boundaries?
Be Aware of the Mechanism Once you commit to overcoming codependency within yourself and your relationships, know that it will show up somewhere else because it’s all you know. This leads to your biggest problem: your codependent relationship with your fears. If you’re codependent, fear needs you to exist and you need fear to exist. I spent most of my life acting out of fear. As scary as it was to take action to support myself, I ended up meeting my soulmate. Me.

I realized that I was the only one who knew all the secrets of my life; the only one who was there through it all.

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I was the only one who knew every ounce of pain. And despite all the humiliation, insecurity, blame, shame, and drama I had inflicted on myself and endured over the years…

My heart was still beating.

And in that moment, I realized that I had never given up on myself—even when I thought I had. I was still here, right next to me.

If that’s not the definition of a best friend and soulmate, I’m not sure what is.

Once you realize that you are your soulmate, you stop relying on someone else to label you as their soulmate.