Loving People Who Push You Away

Loving people who push you away and then blame you for not loving them enough is frustrating. Partners who doubt their self-worth, project their unworthiness onto others and can sometimes unfairly push those that love them away. If you love someone who is codependent and pushes their caretaking upon you even when you don't want them to, this episode is for you. Listen in as Lisa A. Romano Life Coach and Codependency Expert teaches you about this unfair and unnecessary relationship dynamic.

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 loving people who push us away.

Have you ever been accused of not loving someone enough even though you love your partner,

Even though you love your best friend,

Even though you love your parent?

Have you ever had the experience of trying to get someone that you love to really believe that you care about them,

But no matter what you do for them,

No matter how many times you validate them,

No matter how many times you thank them,

The person that you love comes back eventually,

And usually during a time of stress,

Where they accuse you of not loving them enough,

Not complimenting them enough.

Have you ever been in a situation where you're baffled by the person that you love,

By their perception of you?

And have you been wounded by someone who you suspect might be wounded themselves?

This is often the case for those of us who love people who are struggling to believe that they are good enough,

Specifically people who are struggling with abandonment trauma and an anxious attachment style,

People who exhibit codependent tendencies in their adult relationships,

And what it means for those of us who love people who have these deep maternal wounds.

And oftentimes,

And is most of the time,

People who struggle with these issues aren't even aware that they're having these issues.

So it's really difficult to tie this down.

It's really difficult to have conversations that are cathartic because oftentimes the people who are behaving this way don't see themselves as having a problem.

They see themselves as good people.

They are confused because they tend to take on a lot.

They tend to care a lot.

They tend to anticipate the needs of their partners and their family members a lot.

They tend to be rescuers.

They tend to be fixers.

And extreme case,

They can take on martyrdom where they throw themselves on the sword and their identity is tied to how much struggle they can handle and how much they can take care of the people that they love without cracking,

Without breaking,

And without asking for help.

These can lead to unnecessary problems in a relationship when someone is struggling with abandonment trauma,

When someone is struggling with the consequences of childhood emotional neglect,

Especially when the person who is struggling has no idea,

Has no consciousness,

Has no self-awareness around how their childhood has impacted them.

This is often the case with grandchildren of alcoholics.

And I see that.

I see it all the time in my friends and my family and in my coaching practice where once I start to do a discovery call and we get down into family history and we start connecting the dots,

Oftentimes what we discover is that in this person's history,

There is a grandparent,

An uncle or an aunt,

Someone in the family that struggled with either an alcohol addiction or some type of a gambling addiction or some chemical dependency that affected the family system,

Which causes the family to go into denial.

It causes the family to not tell the truth,

To carry a lot of shame.

And the family dynamics are then all focused around the person with the addiction issue and the children of the family,

Their problems go ignored.

And the children are picking up on these denial patterns.

They have very difficult time accessing their emotions.

They can't tell the truth.

They tend to stuff their emotions and think that the answer to life is to just pretend that they have no problems.

So even though you can be from this type of a family,

You can take on these traits and not even know it.

So if you love someone who has an anxious attachment style,

Or if you love someone that you just feel is needy,

If you love someone who is insatiable,

No matter what you tell them,

No matter how often you try to reinforce this idea that you love them in times of stress or out of the blue,

This person accuses you of not loving them enough.

This can be super frustrating.

When this is happening,

It's hard for the person who is trying to be reasonable and trying to be fair minded because it's difficult to look into the eyes of someone that you know is struggling,

That you know is taking care of you,

That you know is empathetic,

That you know is hurting.

And it's difficult to stare into their eyes and try to say to them,

You making me your savior is too much for me,

Because the persons that you're looking into,

The eyes of the person that you're looking into,

Really doesn't have any clue that that's what they're doing.

And it's really like being stuck in a corn maze.

And in my coaching courses and in my private sessions,

I teach my clients this idea about varying levels of consciousness.

We can be at level one consciousness,

Which means I am in the corn maze,

I am running around in circles,

But I'm not getting anywhere.

And I'm frustrated,

But I don't know that I'm in a corn maze.

And so I just keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over again.

It is the definition of insanity,

Doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

That's why people who are codependent can end up feeling like they're losing their mind because they're programmed to do this,

To stuff their emotions,

To be a fixer and to make someone the center of their life.

And they really do believe that if they do that,

That means that they're a good person or they do that because they think that the other person,

The person that they've made the center of their life is going to validate them and make them feel good enough.

So they're seeking this sense of worthiness outside of themselves,

But they don't know that they're doing it.

They don't realize that they really are making their partner responsible for their happiness.

And so if you love that partner,

Of course you feel overwhelmed.

You feel like you're under a microscope.

You feel like it's your job to make sure that your partner feels okay.

And no matter what you say to your partner,

It's never good enough.

So at level one consciousness,

The person who is struggling with abandonment trauma,

Who their behavior is manifesting as codependent,

Meaning they need to be needed and they think that's a good thing,

Meaning that they see themselves as a fixer,

As a rescuer,

And they think that's a good thing,

Meaning that they take on all the stress of the family.

They don't have the,

They don't feel like they have the right to ask for their needs to get met.

In fact,

They can't access their emotions.

They tend to only express emotions when they're overwhelmed.

But day to day,

These are people who really don't know how they feel.

They have a difficult time expressing and identifying their emotions.

And below the veil of consciousness,

At level one consciousness,

They really are looking at their partner as if all you have to do is love me and I'll be okay.

And I'm just going to anticipate your needs.

And if there's a problem,

I'll fix it.

And if something's wrong,

I'll fix it.

And like I said,

Below the veil at level one consciousness,

Outside of self-awareness,

Outside of understanding the self and what's motivating this behavior,

That person really does make their partner the center of their universe.

And if their partner's happy,

They're happy.

Someone who is struggling at level one consciousness,

Who is codependent and doesn't know it,

Really does change when their partner changes.

What I mean by that is that this is someone whose mood is affected by the moods of their partner.

This is someone who can't emotionally regulate if things outside of them aren't perfect.

This is someone who will feel physically ill when the people around them are unwell or when the people around them are anxious.

They can't center themselves.

They can't hold onto themselves.

They don't know how to do it.

They enmesh with the people that they love.

And it's beautiful to know that people have the ability to be that empathetic,

But that person without boundaries is going to sink,

Sink fast,

And push people away.

The other issue that is really sad and it's unnecessary is that people at level one consciousness who are struggling with this type of abandonment wound,

Whose self-identity is tied to rescuing and fixing and being the good one,

The one with no needs,

The one who stuffs their emotions.

Over time,

They build resentment because below the veil of consciousness,

They are doing all of these things in the outside world and they're expecting their partner to anticipate their needs in return.

They're expecting their partner to know what they need,

Even though they don't know what they need.

They're expecting their partner to validate them in a way that they can understand.

So someone who is at level one consciousness,

Who's struggling with abandonment trauma,

Who is codependent,

Will below the veil,

Expect their partner to validate them in a way that makes sense to them.

And if you don't validate that partner in the way that they think you should,

In other words,

If the present that they give you,

Which is validation,

They'll take care of you.

If you don't return the validation in the package that they can recognize,

Below the veil,

They begin to build resentment for you.

So in a time of stress,

Guess what happens?

This person acts irrational.

They become very emotional.

You don't love me.

I know you don't love me.

And they're actually pushing you away,

Even though they're accusing you of pushing them away.

And so the way that they're seeing things is skewed.

So you love someone who is below the veil,

Who you know is a good person,

And you can't help them because no matter what you do for them,

They oftentimes can't receive it because it's their false perception of self.

It's their inadequate perception of self.

This person needs to have the awareness to recognize that the way they're living in the world is not helping,

That they're actually pushing people away,

That they are making other people responsible for their happiness.

And that's unfair.

And building resentment over time will slowly erode the quality of the relationship.

And the codependent then will begin to feel like a victim.

And this is called the drama triangle.

And this is unnecessary.

So at level two consciousness,

This is someone who is now able to recognize that,

Uh-oh,

This is a pattern from childhood.

My mother stuffed her emotions.

My mother took on all the stress of the family and never took care of herself.

My mother blew up and blamed everybody for why she was stressed.

My mother never told the truth.

My mother is where I learned this from.

So watching my mother,

My mother was married to an alcoholic and never set a boundary with him or her or her.

We didn't talk in our family.

Nothing was out in the open.

Everything was stuffed.

Everything was denied.

And so I'm acting out of that program.

So at level two consciousness,

You recognize,

Uh-oh,

I'm in the corn maze.

You still don't have the solution.

You still don't have the roadmap.

You still don't have the life skills.

But at least you know,

Uh-oh,

I'm in a simulation pattern.

At level three consciousness,

You are above the corn maze.

At level three consciousness,

You can see the patterns in childhood.

You can see where you're messing up.

You can see where you are.

Your mood is changing when your partner's mood is changing and you're feeling responsible for it.

And like,

It's your job to fix your partner,

Right?

You can see it.

Okay.

I'm seeing how I am enmeshing.

I'm seeing how I am.

My mood is changing.

I am seeing how I want to fix this.

I am seeing how anxious I'm becoming because my partner's upset.

Okay.

I see it.

And what I'm going to do now at level three consciousness is I'm going to take a deep breath and I'm going to allow my partner to have his or her experience.

I'm not going to make it about me.

Now,

The reason someone makes their partner's anxiety about them is because they feel so unsafe when things aren't perfect.

So this is someone who grew up in a home that was unpredictable.

This is someone who grew up in a home that was very anxious,

But the parents didn't do a very good job about sorting it out.

They didn't do a good job about expressing it.

So this is often the case when our parents are married to an alcoholic or our parents are married to an explosive person or one or more of our parents can't emotionally regulate and the other one is constantly stuffing their emotions.

And then what happens,

Let's say it's your mom who stuffed her emotions not to upset dad.

Guess what mom wants you to do?

She wants you to stuff your emotions.

So what do you do?

You stuff your emotions.

My mother was the adult child of an alcoholic.

Both her parents were alcoholics.

My mother taught me to stuff my emotions because as the unrecovered adult child of an alcoholic,

What did she do?

She saw my father as her savior.

She lived her life trying to please him.

And so the minute my father's mood went up or got a little bit erratic,

My mother got very stoic,

Acquiesced and looked at us like,

You better not upset your father.

So the only person that mattered was my father.

What did that program me to do?

To do the same thing.

Did I know that below the veil of consciousness,

I thought that was the answer to all of my emotional problems,

All of my emotional problems or all of my emotional needs?

Did I think that I was acquiescing?

No.

Did I think I was making my partner responsible for my feelings?

Absolutely not.

I thought I was being a good wife.

The problem that you'll have as a codependent lots of the times is that if you marry someone who is highly narcissistic,

This person doesn't care how you feel.

So your needs will be exploited.

And here's the difference between a codependent partner and a narcissistic partner.

A codependent partner really wants to make you happy,

But they don't feel worthy.

They don't feel good enough.

And so they find these ways to make you happy.

So they go out of their way to do things for you that maybe you don't expect them to do.

Like they rack their brains over,

How can I take that off his plate?

Or how can I,

How can I show her that I'm thinking about her,

Right?

But below the veil,

That person is really trying to get their need met.

And they hope they don't know,

They don't know they're doing this.

They hope that by taking care of their partner,

Their partner will then give them what they need.

But yet a codependent person doesn't even know what they need.

So you can see how unfair that is.

If the codependent marry someone or attract someone who is not narcissistic,

Who understands that this person might be a little bit needy and is making me responsible for their feelings.

You can see how this can become messy.

When a codependent is in a relationship with a narcissist,

This runs out over a lifetime until the codependent says enough,

I'm being exploited and the narcissist is taking advantage of me.

And no matter what I do,

It's never enough for the narcissist,

Right?

That's one scenario.

When you're in a relationship with a narcissist,

The narcissist really doesn't care if you're happy.

A narcissist feels entitled to eating bonbons on the couch and having you work all day and come home and mop the floor.

Not so with a healthy partner.

So a healthy partner will actually feel when a codependent is stepping over the line and trying to make them responsible or doing things for them because they're seeking a sense of validation.

A narcissist,

On the other hand,

Will exploit that in a codependent.

A codependent partner actually cares how their partner feels,

Even though they might be trauma is pushing their partner away and suggesting to their partner that they don't love them enough.

Even though the codependent person with trauma really does care and has empathy for their partner.

They really do.

The problem is boundaries.

The problem is enmeshment.

The problem is a lack of self-awareness.

A problem is habitual thinking.

The problem is faulty,

Negative childhood subconscious programming.

The problem is they are modeling their parents' behavior,

But they don't know it.

When you're involved with a narcissistic partner,

The narcissistic partner is empathy impaired.

And so you,

If you have a narcissist,

Marry a codependent,

It is the narcissist is the king of the castle or the queen of the castle and everybody else is just a minion.

The narcissist won't care that the codependent is distraught and the codependent is tired and the codependent is exhausted.

That's the difference.

So if you're a codependent and you've attracted a somewhat of a healthy partner,

Your partner is going to struggle because you are struggling.

This is what can happen if a codependent marries another codependent.

So there can be a codependent that actually is seeking validation and the other codependent can be more avoided and want to be chased.

But the minute the pursuing codependent says,

I'm enough,

I'm not chasing you for approval anymore and they back off,

That's when the more avoidant codependent begins to show interest and chases the codependent until the balance is restored.

So however,

The other scenario,

Which is the topic of this session,

Is when a codependent person unbeknownst to them is codependent,

Has abandonment trauma,

Has an anxious attachment style and really is below the veil trying to get their partner to validate them and make them feel good enough and they don't know it.

And they've attracted a healthy partner who sees what's going on,

But is exasperated as to how to help the person recognize that they are really loved.

Well,

We have to understand those of us who are codependent on,

Because we have to address this from the codependence angle and then the person who loves the person who is codependent and is struggling.

A,

As a codependent person or someone who recognizes that we tend to not feel good enough and we tend to overdo and we tend to feel like victims when our partners don't respond to us the way we want to.

First of all,

We have to see that that is very immature,

That it is unfair to our partners and in healthy relationships,

We just don't do this to our partners.

We do for our partners because we want to,

Because relationships are 100,

100.

You give 100% of the time and your partner gives 100% of the time.

You give because you want to,

Not because you're expecting a certain result,

Not because you're expecting your partner to treat you a certain way.

If your partner is kind to you,

Is good to you,

And you love this person and you know this person's a good person and you know that you're enough,

The more you know that you're enough,

The less you need to be told that you're enough.

The more you have worth,

The more you validate the self,

The more you stand in yourself,

The less you need someone to tell you,

Which is liberating.

I know because that's the transition that I made.

It was the inner transformation that I made me as far as I'm concerned.

My first relationship while my marriage was,

I was severely codependent below the veil of consciousness,

Very immature,

And I married someone who I believe from my perception,

I'm sure he feels differently,

But from my perception had high narcissistic traits.

There was empathy impairment.

There was a lack of empathy and it wasn't just with me.

It was other people.

It was with our children.

There was a lack of accountability,

Tremendous lack of self-awareness.

So as far as I could see,

We were that codependent narcissistic couple.

And like many codependents,

Once I understood what was happening and,

And I understood that my need to be needed was being exploited.

I was done.

Once I could see it clearly,

I knew that it had to change.

And I knew that I had to change.

I was done because I understood no matter what I do,

He's not going to change.

My needs are not going to get met in this relationship.

Now I have to work on me.

That's where the inner transformation came from.

How do I look within?

How do I access these wounds?

How do I heal my inner child?

How do I put this to bed so that I don't need validation?

And I am not putting myself behind the eight ball emotionally anymore to get taken advantage of by people and lucky for me,

However,

It really isn't luck.

It ended up being tremendous dedication,

A tremendous patience with myself,

Going through the shame of being codependent,

Going through the childhood wounds of the past,

Like meeting my abandonment trauma head on with compassion and grace,

Falling on my face,

Making a mistake,

Humbly seeing in myself,

Like you messed up,

Like,

What are you going to do about it?

But learning to talk to myself with compassion eventually led me to a place where I don't need my husband's validation.

And it is so liberating.

And it's wonderful because my husband,

I feel like I have his validation,

Whether he validates me or not.

And sure,

The woman I am,

It'd be nice to get a few more compliments once in a while,

But I can't tell you how liberating it is to know that I am enough.

Whether Anthony says that I am,

Even though he does say that I am,

And even though I feel on an intuitive level,

We have deep conversations.

We like a lot of the same things.

We have very similar value systems and belief systems,

Which I think is part of the reason our relationship works.

But my point is that as I worked on loving myself and honoring myself,

As I worked on seeing myself as valid,

As worthy,

As I learned to honor my emotions and then to set boundaries around what I was experiencing.

And that was really wobbly because I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning,

But eventually it worked out.

And I got to a point where it really rang true.

My subconscious mind finally believed it.

I'm enough,

Despite these childhood wounds,

I'm enough.

And I don't want to need your validation.

I don't want to need anyone's validation.

I don't want my sense of worthiness and my sense of self to be contingent on what's happening outside of me.

That's my ego.

And I don't want to live life through my wounded ego.

And so codependents are living their life through their wounded ego.

At level four consciousness,

We experience serendipity.

We experience synchronicity.

We're free from the matrix.

We're free from the simulation.

Childhood patterns will create this virtual reality experience in you,

And you won't even know you're doing it.

If you imagine a codependent who's suffered abandonment trauma,

Living their life with these virtual reality goggles on,

And there's this video game playing in their head,

They don't love me.

He doesn't love me.

She doesn't love me.

He doesn't love me.

I did that for them.

Keeping record,

Keeping score,

I did that for them.

They didn't appreciate it.

They didn't say thank you.

They're mean to me.

They're not nice to me.

I'm nice to them,

But they're not nice to me.

This is the video game that they're watching.

And they're projecting their childhood wounds onto their partner who may actually love them very much.

It is so important on the healing path,

On the spiritual growth path,

On the spiritual growth journey,

That we recognize the responsibility that we have to the self,

To love the self,

And to not make it anyone else's responsibility to love us enough to the point where we're able to feel like we are enough.

We are enough at our core.

You have to know that you were born of the divine.

You have to know that despite of never feeling loved or despite being brainwashed to behave inappropriately or in an immature way,

That that's not your fault.

And below all of that programming is the divine self.

You have an inner being that is absolutely enough and knows that you are enough.

And the first part of our life,

We spend it unaware that we are unaware.

But the minute we have a conversation such as this one,

It's very empowering.

My life changed when my psychotherapist said,

You're codependent.

You've been raised by essentially two alcoholics who were raised by unrecovered alcoholics.

You were taught to stuff.

You were taught to deny.

You were taught to seek worthiness outside of yourself.

And here I was.

I wasn't even aware that I was doing it.

But no wonder I was so unhappy all the time because I attracted people who exploited it.

And then I felt wounded when people didn't love me in return or when I couldn't get a sense of validation.

I was so codependent.

If I walked into a deli,

I expected the deli guy to validate me.

So I would compliment him or I would say,

Wow,

This is a great deli.

It might have been a terrible looking deli,

But I didn't realize that I was looking to feel seen and I was doing it in a way that was very immature.

So I would laugh when things weren't funny.

That was part of the way that I buffered relating to people because I really was afraid of people.

And coming through the veil and being able to see myself that way and to recognize the immature way that I was showing up in the world was extremely liberating.

If you're codependent,

That's not your fault.

You were raised to believe that you should stuff your emotions or you were raised by a martyr or you were raised by another codependent or you were raised by a narcissist or maybe a codependent and a narcissist.

Maybe you were raised by people who didn't know how to access their emotions.

You were raised in a home that was full of denial,

Full of lies,

Full of make believe,

Full of pretend.

And maybe the way that you get through life is by taking care of other people.

And maybe you do go over the line.

Maybe you do extend yourself.

Maybe you do acquiesce.

Maybe you're too agreeable.

The problem with that,

Dear one,

Is that if you're not honoring yourself and you are taking care of other people,

Expecting them to respond to you in a certain way,

That's very immature.

And you might,

Unbeknownst to you,

You might be pushing people away without you even realizing it.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

There is a better way.

You can love yourself.

You can heal.

My path and the path that I took and the path that I teach my private clients and those who opt in to participate in one of my online courses is that we teach about childhood trauma.

We teach about the brain science of trauma.

We teach about CPTSD,

The consequences of having that divine connection go awry,

The consequences of feeling invisible as a child,

And how that brainwashes you and actually neurologically wires you to seek approval and not even know it,

And how your ego gets involved as well,

And how you can feel psychically and spiritually,

Energetically depleted and feel like a victim when you are giving and giving and giving.

And from your perspective,

People aren't giving you what you think you deserve.

It's a very immature way of relating to the world.

And dear one,

You deserve better.

You need to know that you're enough.

And if you're playing these games with yourself and other people and you don't know that you're playing them,

Then this is a super empowering conversation.

And I encourage you to share this information with someone that you think might be struggling with this.

Because when we don't feel like we're enough,

We look to the outside world for ways to feel good enough.

This is one of the reasons that gangs are so powerful,

Because children who come from homes that are dysfunctional,

They find another family out in the streets.

And these gangs very much,

They mimic a family system with a hierarchy.

And so you have a mother figure or a father figure who takes in this person into their family and they're guaranteed protection.

And so it takes on the form of this family relationship.

So it's very,

Very important that those of us who are struggling with this recognize that if we felt invisible,

If we felt unloved,

If we felt disconnected to,

Then we are struggling at a deep level.

It is neurological.

You're not even doing it on purpose.

It is by default.

It has become part of your default mode network.

It is subconscious.

So we have to reach you at the level of the subconscious.

This has to go very,

Very deep so that you can get to the root cause of why you're showing up this way,

Why you feel like you're not good enough,

And why no matter what anyone says to you,

Even if you have people that you believe love you,

You will perceive them as not being able to love you enough.

And you,

Because of these unhealed wounds,

Might be pushing them away.

And that is just not necessary.

It's completely unnecessary.

You deserve to be loved,

And the people that love you deserve to love you in return.

And they deserve to feel like you think that they're enough.

Even though they don't show you or they're not acquiescing all day long to your needs,

And they aren't becoming the person chasing the carrot,

That's not fair to do to anybody either.

Right?

So it really is up to us to heal our wounds.

Now,

I am not referring to people who are in relationships with people who are highly narcissistic because a narcissist will never care what you think,

And they will exploit your needs.

But it's also fair to throw this conversation into the ring of toxic relationship conversations because we can be in a relationship with someone that we are pushing away because of our trauma.

We could be destroying a relationship outside of consciousness with someone who really does love us,

And we could see them as not loving us because of our codependency,

Because of our abandonment issues.

And if that's the case,

It's up to us to come into full consciousness around that and to do what we can to heal so that these relationships can have a much more natural order,

And they can be balanced,

And our partners get to be who they are.

We get to be who we are.

We get to love ourselves.

We get to love other people.

So we go from being codependent and enmeshed to independent or interdependent.

We get to go from being codependent and enmeshed to being able to lean on one another in a healthy way.

Recently,

Someone wrote me and asked me,

Why is it wrong to need a partner?

There's nothing wrong with needing a partner.

There's nothing wrong with doing for a partner except when it is at the detriment of the partner or the detriment to you.

So if you're my partner and I need you to need me,

That is a detriment to you because now I'm making you responsible for how I feel.

You become my savior.

You become my God.

And now if you don't love me the way I want you to love me,

I get to persecute you.

I get to cry foul.

That's detrimental to you,

And it's also detrimental to me.

If I'm catering to you,

If I keep taking care of you and keep taking care of you,

Throwing myself on the sword and I'm not speaking up and you just keep taking and you just keep taking and you don't say enough,

You don't have to do this,

Lisa.

You don't have to do that.

You don't have to do that.

I don't want you to do that.

I want you to take care of yourself.

If I keep doing and doing and doing,

Then that's to my detriment.

So taking care of someone at the expense of yourself is dysfunctional.

Treating someone and expecting them to need you in return or expecting them to validate you enough because you need them,

That's detrimental to you and to your partner.

So I hope this has been enlightening.

I hope that if you're struggling with any of these issues on either side of the equation,

Either as a codependent or someone who loves someone who has an anxious attachment style,

Or you love someone who is highly codependent and doesn't take care of themselves,

And you can see the,

You can see the beginning of the frustration of that person,

Or you're starting to hear the language of,

You don't love me.

You don't love me.

You don't care about me.

And you can hear the cry of the inner child inside your partner.

I hope that this has helped you understand them a little bit.

And maybe with this type of awareness and this honest conversation,

The two of you can have a transparent conversation because what a codependent needs to know is that their partner is in it with them,

That their partner loves them and their partner wants them to take care of themselves.

And that could be really scary for a codependent because that means that if I take care of me and I stopped taking care of you,

That was my safe place.

Like I feel safe taking care of everything.

And so the codependent is going to struggle when their partner says,

No,

Babe,

I want you to take care of yourself.

And the two of you,

If you navigate this in a healthy way,

You can get through it.

Dear one,

You are enough as I bow to the love and light that is absolutely in you.

Know that you are enough.

Goodbye.

Until next time.

Reviews

This was very helpful! I have an anxious attachment style from parental emotional abandonment. My friend was constantly flaking and standing me up. I started to grow in my worth and I spoke up that it hurt my feelings, being abandoned/ditched, and she threw codependency in my face. She said she didn’t like that I would follow a time when she skipped out on our plans with a message that it had hurt my feelings. I can see me being too attached to her. I have been healing and see how she enjoyed me being the backup doormat friend. Once I started speaking up for my needs of not wanting to be stood up, she blew up at me. This talk was helpful for me to see my enmeshed tendencies. Thanks.

Its not only gangs who target codependants, but so do some churches, and religious institutions. Got to be real careful, since going to Church is socially acceptable and most people wont even think twice about it.

Very informative and inspiring talk. Thank you Lisa

Spot on!! 💜