Codependency Isn't Sexy

Codependency in relationships isn't sexy and conquering issues related to being codependent are incredibly challenging. Codependency is often related to emotional trauma tied to childhood abandonment and neglect. Feeling invisible, uncared for, and unseen arrests a child's emotional growth. Feeling abandoned, a child assumes it is their fault, which causes shame. Below the veil of consciousness, shame causes the ego to live in a defensive state, skirting around abandonment issues.

Things like people pleasing, enabling, caretaking, and looking to fix others, can be tied to expectation, disappointment, anger, and even rage. And because codependency is rooted in the subconscious mind, we often don't even know we are codependent until our lives become unmanageable.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about some healthy and unhealthy behavior.

If you're like me,

Chances are that you are interested in personal development work,

You are interested in personal growth,

Spiritual growth,

And coming out of denial about who you are and what has shaped you.

You want to know the truth.

You want to know who you really are.

You want to know if there's anything in your life or about your life that you can change and therefore improve your life,

Which is really not easy to do because in order to do this we all have to stop,

We have to look,

We have to listen,

And we have to feel.

If we don't have conscious conversations such as this,

Then we stay on the karmic loop,

Which is basically a hamster's wheel.

Karma is basically the law of cause and effect.

In the quantum world it is known as the law of causality.

We know that quantum enmeshment or quantum entanglement is real,

That two particles in space can affect one another instantaneously regardless of how far they are apart.

And so when we think about these ideas,

Einstein would say that this is spooky,

That the fact that this happens in space is actually a phenomenon,

If you will.

It's something that is spooky because the human mind cannot understand it,

Cannot put a framework around it.

I bring that up because essentially all of us will wake up every day and do everything we did yesterday without much conscious thought at all.

We will react to the thoughts that are in our head,

We will react to the emotions that we sense in our being,

And we won't give either of them much thought at all.

We will react to our thinking,

We will react to our feeling.

Thinking and feeling will become fact and we will operate this way in the world without much consciousness at all.

And I don't know about you,

But I have lived most of my life living below the veil of consciousness without any understanding of childhood programming,

Of how neurology comes into play,

And how neurology basically mirrors the thoughts that we've thought over and over and over,

And the feelings that we've had over and over and over,

And we've never questioned.

And if we come from a sick family system,

Then we are immersed,

We're marinating in toxic ideas and unhealthy behaviors.

Everybody is reacting to everyone else.

No one is thinking,

Dad has no control over the ship,

Mom has no control over the ship,

Our siblings have no control over the ship,

And we are marinating in chaos.

We grow up thinking that this is the way life is.

We have acclimated emotionally,

Mentally,

Spiritually,

And vibrationally.

We are emitting a frequency,

We have a frequency signature that we're not even aware of.

We could be the most unhealthiest reactive person and not even know it.

We could feel victimized by how other people think about us or what other people say.

We could have no awareness around,

Perhaps it's a wound within us.

Perhaps,

For instance,

We are taking on the role of the codependent people pleaser slash martyr who does things for other people expecting a return.

I know that's really hard to hear,

But when we are talking about codependency,

We are talking about those of us who see ourselves as peacekeepers.

We see ourselves as the givers in a relationship,

And the reality is we are.

And it is also true when we say that codependents are oftentimes in relationships with takers,

And this is a true phenomenon.

This does happen.

Narcissists,

For instance,

Love hanging out with codependents who have a low sense of self or have a loss of selfhood,

Who struggle to say what they mean and be what they say,

Who have a high need for validation or a high need of approval,

Who can become easily enmeshed with other people and take on the responsibility for others when it comes to their emotions,

When it comes to their financial situation,

When it comes to their happiness.

A codependent will enmesh with other people.

Why?

Because we have a lack of boundaries.

Why?

Because we were raised in homes that didn't have boundaries.

To us,

Love is painful,

And we have learned that if we do not show up as our true self,

If we instead focus on the needs of others,

We can avoid pain.

We can at least have some sense of connection to others,

Albeit a one-way connection where it's a self-sacrificing connection.

Unfortunately,

However,

In lots of the cases,

Those of us who are still below the veil,

Who are codependents in action,

And who tend to be those of us who will do for other people things that other people haven't even asked us to do.

We will cook for other people even though we haven't been asked to cook for people.

We will take on the role of scheduling appointments for people even though we've never been asked to schedule appointments for people.

We will show up at people's homes with a pot of hot soup even though no one asked us to show up with a pot of hot soup.

I remember one instance in particular where I was asked to make about 30-35 cupcakes for my son's kindergarten class,

And I showed up with 200 cupcakes for my son's kindergarten class.

And below the veil,

At the subconscious level,

The wounded me was really looking for a pat on the back.

I really wanted to be seen.

I wanted the teacher's validation,

And I wanted her to see me and see my son in a good light.

In reality,

It was a manipulative move.

I was looking for something in return.

And classic codependent,

I was a little annoyed when she didn't offer me the validation I thought that I needed.

It was completely ego construct stuff.

I was below the veil of consciousness.

I was operative from ego.

I was a wounded little girl,

And I didn't even know it.

Unfortunately,

There are many of us out there who behave this way,

Where we see ourselves as givers,

And we take it upon ourselves to take care of other people who can take care of themselves.

We don't recognize that this is coming from a place that is of shame.

We don't feel good enough.

Now here's the thing.

We don't know that we don't feel good enough.

This has become a way of life for us,

And if we don't stop and smell the roses,

And if we don't go into the silence,

And if we don't have conscious conversations,

Well,

Dear one,

We're simply going to get up and do the codependent thing again.

We will take on responsibilities that we don't have to,

And when people don't respond to us the way we want them to,

Or they don't take our advice,

We will get angry.

We will feel wounded.

We will take on the position that other people are just taking advantage of us,

Or other people don't appreciate us.

This played out in my life when I married my ex-husband.

My ex-husband was in the construction business,

And his family decided that they wanted to help us build a house.

I did not want them to help us build a house.

I was adamant about not wanting them to help us build a house.

In fact,

I thought he and I should start off in a little apartment somewhere and rely on one another to do the tough things that young couples do to make an apartment in a home.

I was very young,

But I already had the intuition that this was not a good move,

And over time what ended up happening was that house was shoved up my you-know-what every opportunity that they could think of.

Every time they had an opportunity to remind me that I was living in a house that they helped build,

To remind me of all they had done for me,

They took it,

And it became my ex-husband's narrative.

Look how you live.

I rescued you.

You'd be nothing without me.

This was not a house that I wanted.

This was not a situation that I wanted,

But I was being tortured by a gift,

If you will,

Or a situation,

If you will,

That I didn't even want.

Now from the outside,

I looked like I was ungrateful.

That was not the case.

I was grateful,

But this house came with a lot of strings attached to it,

And that's how codependents behave many of the times.

This is why we often feel so wounded,

Because we are giving so much,

And we don't know how to put the reins on giving.

We don't know how to let go and let other people fall flat on their face.

We sort of look into the future and know that if we don't do this X,

Y,

And Z thing,

This person is going to suffer,

And we don't want them to suffer,

So we take on the responsibility of reminding them of all their flaws.

We take on the responsibility of paying their tax bill.

We take on the responsibility of buying the couch that they need or buying whatever it is that they need that they have not asked us to buy,

And although on the surface it looks like it's coming from a good place,

And maybe it is.

We really want to help people,

But it can become convoluted when we don't control that within us,

When we don't pull the reins back on stepping into people's lives who are adults who should and can take care of themselves,

And we take on the responsibility of their happiness.

It's sort of like we love people who are drilling holes in their boat,

And we can see them sinking,

And we jump into the boat,

And we say,

No,

No,

No,

You can't keep doing this.

Let me put a cork in it,

And let me put a cork in it.

Oh,

And you just drilled another hole,

And let me put a cork in it.

This is particularly difficult if you're a codependent mom who has a child who maybe has a drug issue,

Or a codependent mom who has a child who has a spending issue,

Or you are the codependent mom of a daughter who's in,

Or a son who's in a very toxic relationship.

You want to naturally get in there and help and fix,

But you really don't know where the line is,

And that can become a really messy place,

Because we begin to hear ourselves say,

Well,

I just,

I love them,

And I just want to help them,

And it can feel like it's coming from a good place,

And I believe in most cases it is,

But when you're dealing with codependency,

You have trouble with boundaries.

The other really interesting thing about codependency is that you can show up as this controlling person who wants to help one person in your life,

But you might be able to hold the reins back with someone else,

So the person in your life that you see,

That you deem needs your help,

That you think is making a mess out of their life,

Is the person that you're going to try to fix.

It's the person that you're probably going to enable,

And I'm speaking from true experience here,

Dear one.

You know,

This is not coming from some book.

This is my life.

I've lived it,

And it is a constant battle inside my head to manage my own codependency,

To manage what I see,

To manage my perception,

And to manage my role in the lives of the people that I love,

Because the world is full of people that we can look out into the universe and see,

Like,

Well,

He should be doing that,

And she should be doing that.

According to who?

According to me?

Well,

That's narcissistic.

If I think you should be living your life according to Lisa,

Then that's narcissistic of me to do,

And if I'm not aware of it,

Then I can take on the role of a very controlling person in your life and continually tell you what I think that you're doing wrong.

Now,

It might be coming from a good place.

It might be coming from a place of experience.

I've been there.

I've done that.

I see the pattern that you have,

That you're following in your life,

And if you don't do this,

Then that negative thing is going to happen again.

The codependent in me will get in there and try to avoid that thing from happening for that other person.

A healthy person,

On the other hand,

Is going to perhaps offer some suggestion.

Someone who is healthy is going to probably tell you,

Hey,

Listen,

I think you should be aware of this thing.

A healthy person who is in a situation,

Perhaps,

Where they're at a table and they're experiencing unhealthy dynamics in a dysfunctional family,

That healthy friend or that healthy partner is going to say,

This is what I saw.

I don't like it,

And I'm not going back there again.

I'm not putting myself in that situation or I'm not exposing my children to that.

Barring that the person,

Now,

We're assuming,

For this to be true,

That the person who is actually saying this to you is actually healthy.

It is not uncommon when you're dealing with someone who is highly narcissistic,

As it is in the case if you're living with someone who is NPD or does have narcissism or is highly narcissistic,

Where they want to isolate you from your family for the sake of isolating you from the family so that they can control you and you are no longer under the influence of a family that loves you and could see through your relationship dynamics.

Certainly,

A narcissist who recognizes that your father sees through him or your mother sees through her,

Certainly that narcissist is going to pick up on that and they are going to want to isolate you from your family.

However,

A healthy spouse is going to confront you based on what they see as being dysfunctional.

Perhaps there's a lack of boundaries.

Perhaps your parents put you down.

Perhaps your sister drinks way too much and becomes belligerent and becomes really nasty to your children.

Or perhaps one of your brothers is really unbelievably emotionally dysregulated and causes a fight every time you and your partner visit.

And your partner says,

Listen,

I don't want to bring the kids around that.

You know,

I'm putting my foot down and I don't think we should go there anymore.

A healthy person is going to confront you if they feel like you are in a dysfunctional relationship.

A healthy person is going to confront you about your behavior because they love you,

Because they can see the pattern.

And a really healthy person who loves you is going to let you make a mistake.

They're not going to jump in and fix it without you wanting their help.

What a codependent does is,

I'll get in there and I'll fix it.

I'll go in,

I'll pay that bill.

I'll go in and I'll do this.

It makes them feel better about the situation because codependents have a very difficult time with chaos.

They have a very difficult time with the unpredictable mess.

It's sort of like the the shoe is going to drop analogy or the other shoe is going to drop.

If you're a codependent,

Chances are you grew up in a home that was very unpredictable.

In my case,

I remember being a little girl and remembering this feeling like,

Oh,

It's three days.

The house is going to blow up because my mom was a rageaholic.

And if the house was calm for more than two days,

I actually knew,

Like,

It's coming.

Tomorrow is going to be a bad day.

And generally it was.

And so I learned to live as if I needed to walk around on eggshells.

When is mommy going to explode?

And part of my makeup was,

Well,

Figure out how to please her.

Figure out how to stay away from her.

Unfortunately,

Staying away from her,

Sometimes it worked,

Sometimes it didn't work.

And what worked the most was just getting quiet,

Becoming invisible,

Stuffing my emotions.

And that set me up for all sorts of trauma and drama because if you can't trust your feelings,

You can't navigate your life successfully from the authentic self.

You are a feather in the wind for a very long time and you will very easily enmesh with people.

You will very easily focus on the needs of other people.

Why?

Because you were groomed to do that.

You were groomed to focus on the needs of other people.

So this really is a codependent program.

It's a subconscious program.

It is neurological in fact because what you think over and over and over and what you feel over and over and over is wiring your brain with neurological pathways.

So think about it this way.

Every thought that you have is also mirrored neurologically to the point where your brain is actually wired to think and hold thoughts a certain way.

So if you think about it that way,

I think about neurology as a roller coaster.

That what I've thought over and over and over,

What I've experienced over and over and over has become now a neurological program.

And now below the veil of consciousness,

My conscious mind,

The small piece of my mind that is operating at all above the veil,

Which is only about 5%,

Is still below the veil responding to that which is subconscious.

But I don't know it.

And that's why when I coach someone,

It's all about having conscious conversations about why we feel the way we feel,

Where those programs came from,

How they came to be,

And what we can do to continually break those patterns.

Because let's face it,

If we're not breaking patterns,

Then we're just recreating patterns.

And that's the problem.

When we are codependent and we are in unhealthy dynamics with our children,

With our loved ones,

With our family,

Brother and sister,

And we're taking care of everybody else,

Then we are delaying that other person's growth process.

And it can be so difficult to watch a child that you love or to watch a sister that you love hit a wall.

But unfortunately,

Unfortunately,

Depending on how you look at it,

That's how human beings learn.

It is when we hit rock bottom that we start to ask different questions and also the desire for change to happen.

And as long as we keep allowing other people to escape the consequences of their own actions,

Then we prevent their emotional,

Spiritual,

And cognitive growth.

They play out their pattern and we're a part of it.

And so it is unhealthy for us as codependents to take on responsibilities that other people haven't asked us to take on.

And then take on the role of the martyr even.

Look at all I do for you.

Look at all that I've done for you.

Look at all the ways I've tried to help you and you're so ungrateful.

It's sort of like handing someone a diamond bracelet that they didn't ask for and then being insulted that they didn't thank you for it up and down.

I didn't ask for it.

So why are you so upset that I'm not like kissing your butt because you gave me this bracelet?

I never wanted it and I never asked for it.

So something else is going on.

There's so much shame inside a codependent that we're trying to mask by giving.

There's so much shame in a codependent that we're trying to mask by becoming hyper vigilant and trying to take care of someone else.

And when we don't receive,

Again this is all below the veil,

When we don't get the hit,

The validation,

Or the appreciation,

Or the acknowledgement from the outside person,

That triggers this wound within us.

Some might call it a narcissistic wound or a narcissistic injury.

And let's face it,

Narcissism is narcissism.

And there is such a thing as healthy narcissism.

And if you're a codependent,

If you are an unhealthy thinker,

Then you have this narcissistic injury.

That doesn't mean that you have NPD.

In order to be considered NPD,

You have to have this pervasive pattern.

And in addition,

Narcissists in general lack self-awareness and they lack self-accountability.

A codependent,

On the other hand,

When presented with this information can hear it and might not know how to fix it,

But they can feel the remorse of it and they can feel like,

Oh I don't want to be that person.

That sounds very controlling.

That is the difference between someone who is narcissistic or highly narcissistic versus someone who is codependent.

And so the hope really is that if you are codependent,

Then you hear something like this and you want to make those changes.

That you understand that it's coming from shame.

So it starts with self-compassion,

Uprooting this,

Like getting to the root source of why this is the way that you are and understanding,

Dear one,

That it could be no other way.

It's not you,

It's just your programming.

You didn't create the psyche.

You didn't create the id or the ego or the super ego.

So understanding that it could be no other way is really,

Really helpful.

When I realized that I was programmed and conditioned by external experiences that I could not control,

I was just a little bitty baby.

And I was raised by two adult children of alcoholics who,

On the outside,

Everything looked great,

But our home was very dysfunctional.

It was very toxic.

There was a lot of rage.

There was a lot of control.

There was a lot of minimizing,

A lot of dismissing,

And a lot of gaslighting,

A lot of name-calling,

A lot of verbal stuff going on,

A lot of emotional stuff.

But my parents knew how to turn it on and turn it off,

So no one would see that.

So all of this stuff was inside of me.

I could not trust my inner reality,

So I couldn't trust myself.

Yet here I was,

This aching human being,

And I wanted to be loved,

And I wanted to be able to love other people,

And I just couldn't figure out how to do it.

And the only thing that was within my control was to stuff my emotions and to focus on other people and try to please them.

But as I aged and I became a little bit smarter,

At least I thought so,

As my ego began to really,

Really develop,

That became all convoluted.

And I thought,

If I did something for you,

Then you should appreciate it.

But what I was missing was I was doing things that you didn't even ask me to do for you.

And it was quite the humbling experience to see that in myself and to realize that is controlling behavior,

And then to set out on a path to really heal that within myself and to heal that inner child that didn't know that this is what she was doing,

That didn't know that she was engaging in this behavior.

And what I walked away with eventually was,

Wow,

I got myself off the hook,

And I got everybody else off the hook.

And I learned that that wasn't really love,

That when you give,

You give without expecting anything in return.

Now,

When you give as a codependent,

You are giving from emptiness,

And eventually you will be completely empty.

And at the end of codependency,

In the latter stages of codependency,

You're talking about complete burnout,

You're talking about depression,

You're talking about severe anxiety,

You're talking about even health issues,

Because you have just depleted yourself of energy.

So when we're codependent and we're giving,

We're giving from an empty place,

We're coming from shame,

And we're looking to the outside world to fix us and make us feel better,

To alleviate some of that shame.

When we are healthier,

We give because we want to,

And we have no expectations.

We give from a full cup.

We've learned to,

First of all,

Stop giving from this empty place,

And we start giving to the self in a way that we've never done before.

So we start giving ourself that self-compassion.

We start giving the self self-forgiveness.

We start understanding the self.

We go on the interpersonal inner journey.

We begin to self-actualize,

Begin to integrate the inner child with the wounded ego.

And if we're really lucky in this lifetime,

We're able to even transcend the constructs of the ego world and all of the limits,

And we're able to live in harmony,

In peace,

And beauty,

And abundance.

And the beauty that we found in our innocent self,

We're able to bestow that same type of grace onto other people.

So I definitely encourage anybody out there who is codependent to stay on this path and to never give up,

And to really investigate and have an honest conversation with yourself.

Do I do that?

Do I give with expectations?

Am I giving to be liked?

Am I giving because I'm coming from shame?

Do I have any shame issues?

Do I use guilt to make people feel sorry for me because I've done all these things for them,

Even though they've never asked me to do these things for them?

That's a really hard conversation to have with yourself.

But if you don't have that conversation,

You'll never know.

And without self-awareness,

There really is no long-lasting change.

And I can tell you that this,

In my opinion,

Like healing from codependency,

It is the cover word for enlightenment.

Because when you're codependent,

You're below the veil and you don't know it.

And once you begin to be honest with yourself,

And you're willing to investigate the root causes,

And you're willing to put in the work to change yourself,

Then your world really does begin to shift.

And you begin to feel connected with everything in a way that you never had before.

And when you're codependent,

You feel so disconnected from everything and everyone,

And so even dissociated from yourself.

There's this lack of selfhood.

And as you really stay on the codependent recovery path,

You begin to learn what it means to feel integrated and to feel like you are completely within the self,

Like mind,

Body,

And soul.

Your heart is totally integrated with your brain,

Like you get it.

You were never not part of everything.

It was just your programming.

And you understand what it is to love people from a healthy place versus an unhealthy place.

And it really is a beautiful transformational journey,

Not an easy one.

Ask any person who has ever taken one of my courses,

And they'll tell you,

This is not easy,

But it is worth the journey,

And it is worth the ride.

So if you've listened to this this far,

I really want to salute you,

And I want to say thank you for being willing to be honest with yourself and to be more realistic about how you show up in relationships.

And if you don't recognize the hole in the wall,

You can't fix it.

And I can tell you that seeing unhealthy behaviors in myself was very sobering,

And it was very humbling,

But it also changed my life.

Now I'm going to say everybody has a bow to the love and light that is absolutely in you.

Bye for now.

Reviews

I was putting off listening to this for the longest time, and I honestly believe after reading the synopsis of it I subconsciously knew that it was going to be rough for me to listen to. You were spot on with everything. I'm 55 years old and just Recently have begun to understand how toxic things have been in my life. You have really helped me on my journey. Thank you so much for your healing words.

with every talk you do on codependency you give me the tools to live well and make good choices 🙏

Great Podcast Lisa! 💖