Show notes
Even after largely healing from the trauma that started Brian down the path of codependency, he was still left with the behaviors that formed in response to that trauma. So although the source of the codependency had been removed, the symptoms, the habituated behaviors, lingered and kept showing up in his relationships in the form of a default sense of powerlessness. In this episode, we discuss what he is doing to finally kick the powerlessness habit. Get even more guidance in healing from codependency. The paperback, audiobook and eBook is now available on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYB1K31V Transcript 0:00 Hey Hello, this is Stephanie and this is Brian. Welcome to our podcast the making and the remaking of a codependent mind. Brian 0:13 This is season two, episode four. And we've kind of come full circle at this point to back to the topic of codependency itself. Stephanie 0:21 So this episode entitled healing codependency, breaking the powerlessness habit, we are going to discuss the specific behaviors, again, that make up the phenomena of codependency, behavior habits that form in response to trauma, abuse or neglect, and how you are trying to break those codependent behavior habits, Brian 0:47 right for me, those behaviors were formed in response to that five year childhood friendship that we talked about several times throughout this series from when I was about four years old to when I was about 10. And how those behaviors were reinforced, or really kind of amplified by my family dynamic, specifically, my dad's behavior. Stephanie 1:05 And then as you moved into adulthood, you brought those behaviors into pretty much every interpersonal relationship you had, you would assume responsibility for meeting other people's needs to the exclusion of acknowledging your own needs or feelings. And when the other person had a disordered personality, for instance, a narcissist or narcissistic tendencies, it had especially disastrous results. Yeah. Brian 1:30 And although, you know, even when I was trying to relate to so called Healthy People, the behaviors didn't really serve me well, then either. So let's go back Stephanie 1:40 to episode one of season one, that list of behaviors that you read out, in the very first episode that form this phenomena of codependency. Brian 1:54 Yeah, okay. There is the feeling of responsibility for the emotions and actions of others. There's caretaking, people pleasing, struggling to set boundaries with other people. There's low self esteem and self worth, usually kind of a denial of autonomy or even identity. There's a trouble expressing emotions, kind of a fear of emotions really, or again, it's kind of back to this denial of autonomy. Did I have emotional autonomy and notional autonomy in this in this case, yeah. And then there's denying big picture or even situational problems like so there's where the storytelling and the dishonesty and compartmentalization come in. And then finally, enmeshment. In relationships with personality disordered chemically dependence or other codependence are really impulse disordered individuals. So people who trigger all these above behaviors, or at least somehow don't challenge them, when I come in contact with these people. Stephanie 2:52 Hearing that list, again, it strikes me that the previous three episodes of the seasons of the first three episodes of this season really dealt with what you did to address the last four items on that list. So that's again, low self esteem, like denial of identity, trouble expressing emotions, fear of emotions, denying big picture, you know, it's developed, as you said, storytelling and normalization, and then investment in relationships. So these first three episodes, we talked about how you recognize and remove yourself from abusive relationships, how you repaired your emotional system and got over your fear of certain emotions and reconnected to your emotions, and then how you rewrote the stories that were keeping you in denial, and keeping you in meshed really, with disordered people, even when they weren't in your life anymore. Brian 3:51 Yeah, so that kind of lays the groundwork for the healing really, more or less. But then what we're left with here is really the first four items on this list. So let me read these again, that feeling responsible for the emotions and actions of others, caretaking, people pleasing and struggling to set boundaries. These kinds of needs require us a different approach than then what we talked about in these first few episodes, Stephanie 4:15 in that they were unconscious habitual responses, yeah, that you had to other people. And again, when those people were narcissists or other disordered people, they immediately exploited those tendencies. I want to go back to something we talked about in the first episode of the whole series, the word codependency itself as a kind of problematic word, as we said, coming out of addiction literature, so you had people who were seen as chemically dependent or alcohol dependent, and then people who were in relationship with them, and were enablers of them. Were caretaking them they were seen as codependence right kind Brian 4:57 of like, as if these people became dependant on the caretaking itself. And really that's all it came down to in that early description of what codependency was. Stephanie 5:07 Some of the issues are that the word dependency suggests a need. And then addiction we often see the word addiction and use that word is kind of proxy for intense craving, or desire. Right? And neither of those were really applicable in your case. In your case, you were replaying that original abusive relationship. Brian 5:33 Right. Yeah, it isn't really accurate for me to say that I was addicted to these types of relationships, or even that I was somehow attracted to these type of people like, like, I think this is a common thing that people say, in response to codependent people, what it came down to, for me was that, because of my lack of self awareness, anytime a person came along, that basically triggered my trauma responses and or activated my codependent behaviors, I would just lean into those behaviors because I would become overwhelmed by the subconscious responses. So those behaviors would take over. And I would put all my efforts into essentially taking care of those people at whatever cost because, as you said, I was replanting the G relationship Stephanie 6:13 in this habitual, unconscious way. Yeah, we had a whole episode on shame. Because it was so central to keeping you stuck, replaying that relationship, and it is one of the most painful emotions. And I guess powerlessness is not technically an emotion. But feeling powerless is super painful, in that it creates a whole cluster of these painful emotions. Yeah, you know, fear possibly being the primary one. It's really terrifying to feel powerless, right. But it can also generate shame and despair, all of these debilitating emotions. And it's potentially at the root of what makes an unpleasant or awful event into a traumatic event. That feeling of powerlessness in the face of what had happened. Yeah, exactly. Brian 7:05 I definitely felt powerless in that childhood friendship. And then the echoes of that powerlessness kind of just took over from there. And it just infected everything from there forward. Stephanie 7:16 And these behaviors, the caretaking, the people pleasing, were this effort to get out of this terrifying powerlessness state. Yeah. So habits, even benign ones are hard to break. Yeah, right. But you're faced with breaking these behavior habits, that were so critical in making yourself feel safe as this young child in this perilous situation. So how do you stop doing these behaviors? When, for so long? They were a source of a sense of safety for yourself, Brian 7:57 seemingly anyway. Well, one of the big things that we've mentioned several times throughout this series is this idea of personal agency. Stephanie 8:07 Yes. So being tied to personal power. These two concepts go very closely together. If you have a sense of agency, you have a sense of personal power, you have a sense that you can enact changes in the world. Yeah, so you desire, Brian 8:22 right, it really goes hand in hand with regaining power. So this feeling pervasive feeling of powerlessness that I felt all those years becoming an agent, as we call it, is regaining that power. So the idea of becoming an agent involves several things, it isn't just a matter of, oh, suddenly, I feel powerful, you know, it requires first self awareness. Like, who am I? Stephanie 8:48 There needs to be an agent there. Yeah, you need to? Yeah, you need to be able Brian 8:51 to identify what the agent is, what are my values? What are my core values that really, I had been denying myself for so long, just kind of ignoring them? You know, because I felt like I had no power to really enact or work towards my values. And then what types of relationships do I want? What What kind of people do I want to be involved with, you know, not just romantically, but just in general, like, Who do I want to associate with? And then following that, what are my emotions telling me then? So part of what we talked about in one of the first three episodes here is being able to read the signals that my emotions are giving me, but I need to know who I am to know what those signals are otherwise, like, I don't, if I feel angry, great, I'm identifying that I feel angry. But what am I angry at? Why am I angry? I need to know what it is that I'm supposed to be acting on here. So one Stephanie 9:37 of the things you have done to break this powerlessness habit is to think about who you are and what you want, from your life, what you want from relationships, and to articulate that consciously and repeatedly to yourself and to the people in your life. Brian 9:53 Yeah, and just kind of keep that in mind. Like sort of not not like I have to keep telling myself like reading it every morning or something but just kind of just leaving it feeling it, although for a while Stephanie 10:02 you had your kind of your core values posted above your desk just to kind of be a reminder that you were a person that wanted to act have both have values and act on values as an agent in the world, Brian 10:15 right? Because that's that is reprogramming my habit of not having them or ignoring them. So yeah, kind of getting used to having it in the back of my mind at all times. Stephanie 10:27 But even with that, there are these habitual behaviors that you bring into relationships, including our relationship, again, coming from this posture of powerlessness. Yeah, that was imposed upon you and your child, but then continued forward in all of your relationships. So almost really, in every relationship, professional, personal, this social, yeah, you're default posture would be the other person is more powerful than I am. Yeah, Brian 11:00 the more work we did on all of this, the more painfully obvious that became, with so many different things. Stephanie 11:07 So let's talk about one way in which that powerlessness is expressed in your relationships. And that's this curious phenomenon we identified as matching the need to match, Brian 11:18 right, what we're talking about with matching here is, is not like, oh, I want to wear the similar outfit or something like that. It's, it's kind of, I mean, it can, it can mean that, but really, it's like matching to the core, like, I feel this kind of anxiety, if I don't match someone's emotions, even, you know, so somebody could be expressing anger or something, and then like, I just get sucked into it in a way. And immediately, that becomes the most important thing. So I'm matching it, if someone's sad, I've matched their sadness, if someone's happy, I matched their happiness, even if I don't understand why they're happy. Stephanie 11:52 And I think this is a very human trait, we're, you know, we're extremely social animals. And all of us get a little uncomfortable if we don't match a group of people. So you think about see, if you walk into a room, and everyone's dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns, and you have ratty t shirt and shorts on, you're going to feel uncomfortable, because you don't match and you're not sure what's going on. So I mean, there's, you know, there's quite a bit of actually psychological research that, that shows the extent that people will go to kind of match a group, but with you, it kind of went to the pathological Yeah, so that you can get anxious, say, if you don't like a movie, that the person you with likes, yeah. Or someone's wearing long pants, and you were in shorts. So it's just a, it's been a Brian 12:47 musical tastes, you know, I'll match that, you know, I have plenty of my own autonomy and what I like, but when it comes to trying to match up with someone else, like, I'll stop listening to certain things permanently, right to match the other person Stephanie 13:00 you have, right? Brian 13:01 I have. Yeah. Stephanie 13:02 Like you said, you had this level of anxieties, this habitual anxious response, yeah, to a seemingly disconnect between any person that you're talking to or involved with. Brian 13:14 And in this kind of it, one thing that I think about here is, is with a lot of these behaviors, like we've talked about several times, is there's there's usually a healthy version of it. And I would say a healthy version of this matching would be empathy. You know. So, feeling and relating to some absolutely, yeah, you know, someone's sad, you may feel sad for that person or something, Stephanie 13:34 right. Empathy is so critical to relationships and social situations, but you weren't, in fact, experiencing empathy. It was more about just trying to get close to whoever was in power. Brian 13:45 Yeah, line myself up the person to try to keep myself safe, right. Stephanie 13:49 And there's kind of a somewhat funny way that this has shown up in our relationship where I have a tendency to start sentences and then pause in the middle of them. We've spared the listeners of this podcast that experience by taking out some of those pauses. But so I'll do that. And you rush in and finish my sentence. Brian 14:12 Right. And so and so what's funny about it is it's not necessarily the fact that I'm finishing sentences. I mean, that's, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to keep conversation going, you know, but what we found to be problematic is the way I finish sentences that the context of it, like the matching the Finishing Sentences, thing is definitely anxiety and trauma base. It says if I'm anticipating disagreement or something like so I'm kind of trying to preemptively line myself up. So it's a version of the matching thing. So you'll be starting to say something and I think I know where you're going with what you're saying. I might not agree with it, but I'm going to try to line myself up with it anyway, like, or I can tell that maybe I think you're going to disagree with something that I'm about to say or something so I would step in and finish your sentences completely wrong. That's not actually what you were gonna say at all. But I'm just trying to, like, set myself up to be in line with you, right, essentially, with with these Finishing Sentences. Stephanie 15:13 So it's both the kind of volume you have done it, but sometimes it seemed a little excessive. But then also, as you say, it became most obvious when maybe we're having a disagreement about whe…
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