Overcome Codependency with Healthy Boundaries – Terri Cole – 339

How do you set healthy boundaries in a relationship?
If you’ve struggled with boundaries in the past (or still do), this episode is for you.
Terri Cole and I talk about the danger of codependency and how you can overcome it by being a “boundary boss”.
They are essential to draw a clear line between what’s ok for you and what’s not. They’re a shield to protect your energy, self-esteem, and well-being.
Without them, you’ll sooner or later feel exhausted, hurt, or even resentful towards your partner (which means a break-up for 95% of relationships).
What is codependency?
A codependent relationship is when one partner is dependent on the other (who also needs to be needed). The codependent’s self-esteem only comes from pleasing their partner, the enabler. Without doing that, they’ll feel unhappy and worthless.
Here’s a list with symptoms. Do you recognize yourself or someone else?
– keeping the relationship alive even though the partner is hurtful
– doing anything to please the enabler (no matter the costs & consequences)
– always feeling anxious because they might not be happy
– not expressing one’s own needs & thoughts because they’re seen as less important
As you may guess, this type of relationship is unhealthy and one-sided. How do they develop?
Codependency is a behavior we learn during emotionally difficult situations in childhood. These can be:
– unhealthy child-parent relationship
– abusive family or relationships
– living with mentally or physically ill family members

As the child experiences these situations, it learns that its own needs are less important because it should care for others instead.
Does that mean codependency is permanent? No, it doesn’t.
As it’s a learned behavior, you’re also able to unlearn it. Terri and I talk about two ways to do so: Boundaries and Mindfulness
You need boundaries in your personal life, as well as in your relationship. They range from emotional ones like what others can say and expect from you to physical ones like who is allowed in your personal space.
In her new book „Boundary Boss“, Terri shows how to set healthy boundaries in a relationship without feeling guilty or shameful. And in today’s episode, she shares useful techniques as well as her own experience as a recovering codependent person.
Among other things, she reveals her method to avoid giving an „instant yes“ when confronted with an urgent matter. If this is something you could use, this episode is gold for you.
Low self-esteem is one of the main factors leading to codependency. Because you’re not able to accept yourself, you have to depend on your partner’s love to do so.
Practicing mindfulness helps you to overcome this and cherish yourself as you are. You’ll learn to love yourself and thus won’t depend on romantic partners anymore for their love.
Deeply knowing yourself is a great way to start the healing process.
Become aware of how your past childhood experiences may still affect you today. But instead of feeling angry, sad, or resentful, be compassionate with yourself.
You’ll prove yourself you’re worthy and your needs are worthy to be met. Your inner child will heal.
Terri shares plenty of useful tips on how you can work on your mindfulness to become a happier person. Not only in your relationship, but in general.
If you want to find out Terri’s tips and how to become a boundary boss yourself, listen here:

Shownotes:

4:00 The relationship between codependency and boundaries
8:40 High-functioning codependency vs regular codependency
11:20 The cost of high-functioning codependency
20:10 Codependent Relationship dynamics
26:20 How to overcome codependency by setting boundaries
35:40 Action Step

Useful Links:

What Are the Two Main Insecure Attachment Styles?

Relationships are complicated—but they’re not impossible to navigate with some effort. When you and your partner take the time to learn about yourselves and each other, it can make a world of difference in the way you relate to and communicate with each other.

One of the things you can study and learn about is our attachment styles—the relational blueprint that we learned growing up. It’s essentially the template for the way we approach relationships in our adult lives. Many of us don’t have too much specific memory of that, but it’s hardwired into us by our caregivers and our experiences with them.

There are a few categories of attachment styles, but here are the two main insecure types. First, let’s take a look at exactly what “insecure attachment” means.

What Is Insecure Attachment?

Having an insecure attachment style means that you feel insecure in some way in your relationship. Insecure relationships are characterized by anxiety, a lack of trust, and a lot of fighting or distance. Maybe you worry that your partner is going to abandon you; maybe you’re afraid they will judge you, condemn you, or be unaccepting of you; maybe you feel like they might suffocate you and take over your space or try to control you. Whatever the cause for anxiety, it comes from the way you attached to your primary caregivers growing up.

Here’s a quick video about insecure attachment styles:

Insecure Ambivalent

Psychotherapist Stan Tatkin categorizes the insecure ambivalent attachment style as the “wave,” because it can be very up and down. Waves tend to feel lots of emotions and maybe express themselves quite a bit.

The insecure ambivalent “wave” style comes from a history of inconsistent attachments as a child. That could mean that maybe a parent was physically there only part of the time and you never knew whether you could count on them. You probably felt anxious when they weren’t around. It could also mean that maybe the parent or caregiver wasn’t always emotionally available to be there for you and you probably felt rejected by them. What made it confusing was that they were there some of the time too.

In your adult relationships, you probably feel anxiety when your partner withdraws—maybe you feel somewhat needy or helpless when that happens.

Insecure Avoidant

Insecure avoidant, or in Dr. Tatkin’s terms, an “island,” is someone who grew up in a family that didn’t place a lot of emphasis or value on relationships in general. Your caregivers probably didn’t take a lot of time and effort to build a relationship with you, and you were on your own quite a bit. As a result, you learned self-preservation as opposed to relying on others.

In this environment, you learned that relationships weren’t going to help meet your needs, so you withdrew to deal with stress and issues on your own. You probably told yourself that you couldn’t rely on anyone else and that you could only trust yourself.

This can get complicated because in adult relationships, you typically end up with a wave, an insecure ambivalent. They just want a connection with you, but your style is to withdraw because that’s what you’ve always done. You might even get irritated with them when they approach you, but it makes you anxious because you don’t feel you can rely on them. That leads you to avoid the one thing that would actually lead to connection with your partner—talking and working through the issue. Since you haven’t yet experienced a relationship where you can rely on someone, it can feel scary (or annoying) to you when your partner asks you to.

Take a Risk

If you identify with either insecure attachment style, you might feel like it’s just easier to be single. But most of us would rather have a partner in life, to experience connection and to be known. When you take the risk of allowing the other person to know you and face them to work through issues (or give them a little space if they withdraw), it leads to a fulfilling and secure relationship. Don’t get me wrong—it’s going to take some work. But once you know how you’re wired, you can be sensitive to your partner’s style and learn how to communicate and be a team by balancing each other out.

If you’re in a relationship with a man who withdraws, check out this free training for three secrets to pull him back.

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Photo Credit: Everton Vila – Unsplash

How to Own Your Space with Healthy Aggression – Kimberly Ann Johnson – 338

Have you ever wanted to say something, but decided not to say it because you were afraid to?

If that’s something you’ve struggled with, you’ll want to listen to this week’s podcast where I talk with Kimberly Ann Johnson on how to own our own space as people and learn to communicate better by breaking gender barriers.

We talk about understanding our natural selves by discussing how our physiology affects our connections and reactions to things in relationships especially with things that cause conflict.

Here’s a simple truth, we are all animals with nervous systems that are conditioned in certain ways. Understanding that gives us power and space.

It’s important to understand that there’s a whole range of influence that comes from outside of domestication, it comes from our primal, natural selves. We are animals and we need to own that to really own our space and get inside of ourselves.

In my podcast this week, you’ll find that Kimberly sheds a lot of light on topics that are traditionally very difficult to traverse. For example, most of us are so thoroughly domesticated by our sense of culture and civilization at this point, we have become very disconnected from our natural selves as animals.

To own your space, you have to understand it which means you have to get inside yourself. Try this simple exercise, it’ll help teach you more than Kimberly’s perspective and also about yourself as well.

Imagine a wolf, and a rabbit and think about which one you identify with. The wolf chases the rabbit and is very aggressive and predatory while the rabbit displays freeze or flight responses. The rabbit either runs from the wolf or freezes. When you think about it, you can see that the different behaviors of these animals relate to our own behaviors in relationships.

While men are typically characterized as wolves while women associate with rabbits in that they are more likely to back down in an argument at their own expense. Kimberly Ann Johnson and her book, “How We Heal Trauma Awaken Our Own Powers And Use It For Good Call of the Wild ” helps women take ownership of their space and embrace a new type of animal, the jaguar in order to harness their inner strength.

So what does all of this mean in terms of relationships? For one thing, women feel pressured to always be placating and are often afraid to stand up in an argument. During my podcast, Kimberly shared her belief that men react harshly to women when they have pensive faces, ambition, or stand up for themselves in an argument.

In spite of this sentiment, she urges women to embrace ambition, to speak their mind, and stand their ground, in other words, to be a jaguar rather than a rabbit.

Another major truth that you’ll learn from my podcast with Kimberly is that it’s not about competition, it’s about connection. Men and women alike need to learn the importance of maintaining a connection even when you’re in disagreement.

As a result, many women struggle to harness their power and say the things they need to say during a conflict because of these pressures and conventions. Kimberly urges women to embrace their inner jaguar and learn how to stand their ground, get their point across.

If this sounds like something you would like to learn more about, check out this week’s podcast!

Shownotes:

5:35 The predator-prey dynamic
16:25 A healthy predator role for women
21:25 How our genders are perceived around these dynamics.
34:40 The unhealthy side of the predator
41:35 How to get in touch with your healthy predator
52:35 Final Advice
54:15 Action Step

Useful Links:

Attachment Styles and Romantic Relationships

No intimate partnership is free of problems—they’re unavoidable. In fact, any relationship is subject to issues, but it’s even more noticeable in your closest partnership since that’s where you spend most of your time.

It’s completely normal to go through the “honeymoon phase”—however short or long that may be—and suddenly you start to see some patterns emerging in your partner that you hadn’t seen before. This may be the point you wonder whether you know the person at all, or they may wonder the same about you—but all of this is normal as well. Essentially, it all has to do with attachment styles and the way you were raised. What are attachment styles and what do they have to do with your adult romantic relationships?

Childhood Shapes Your Life

There are a few different ways to categorize attachment styles, but first, it’s important to remember that everyone experienced some type of relational challenges in their childhood. No one is perfect, so you can expect to look at yourself, your past, and your partner and see some type of issue because we’re all human.

And partnering with someone as an adult will wake up past issues that you maybe thought you left behind, but they’re still there because they were engrained into you. If you spent a minimum of 18 years with your parents or other caregivers, that’s quite a long time to learn from them and adopt what I call the “relational blueprint”—the foundation for any relationships in your life from that point forward.

With that in mind, understanding attachment styles is key because it will benefit you in relation to your own behavior and emotions as well as in your relationships.

Here’s a short video on attachment styles and relationships:

Attachment Styles: Seek and Avoid

To break it down as simply as possible, there are two main insecure attachment styles: the type who seek and the type who avoid. Seekers would be someone who, as a kid, would go to a parent or even a sibling in times of difficulty to talk or work through a problem. A person who seeks probably experienced a childhood where family relationships were sometimes good and sometimes bad.

Avoiders would be someone who avoids when under stress because they felt that their relationships were not supportive. Maybe the parent or sibling didn’t want to deal with things or left the child alone to figure stuff out, so that person learned that “going it alone” was the best thing to do.

Attachment Styles: Islands, Anchors, and Waves

Psychotherapist, relationship expert, and author Stan Tatkin has created his own categories for attachment styles, and he discusses three main types:

Islands, which are the avoiders and like to be left alone. Islands process emotions internally and tend to find ways to self-soothe rather than asking for help from others.
Anchors, which are the seekers who look for justice and fairness—most likely because that’s what they experienced in family relationships growing up. Anchors are skilled at tuning in to the other person’s tone and expression.
Waves, which are in between islands and anchors. Waves may have experienced inconsistent attachments in childhood, varying from neglect or complacency to focused attention at times. Waves tend to rely on others for help when they need soothing.

Attachment in Adult Relationships

Being able to categorize your own attachment style and your partner’s can go a long way in your relationship. It can help you understand behavior and the reasons behind actions rather than judging your partner or writing them off as either too needy/clingy or too withdrawn.

So, the best way to avoid more sabotaging behaviors? Understand your attachment style. Even better news is, once you understand attachment styles, you can create a secure attachment together in a relationship when you’re both willing to work on yourselves and your styles. Learning and effort in this area will help set you up for a successful relationship and give you a strong relational foundation to build upon.

If you’d like to learn three keys to communication and conflict, check out this free training.

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Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema – Unsplash

One Path To More Meaning In Your Life – Jayson Gaddis – 337

Have you found yourself feeling completely disconnected from meaning in your life?

Everyone should have a sense of purpose and meaning in their life. That said, there are hundreds of thousands of people out there that still haven’t found meaning in their life. I’m here to change that.

If you haven’t found any significant meaning in your life or sense of purpose, this podcast is for you. I’ll show you how to create genuine, authentic meaning in your life and find a sense of purpose that will ultimately guide you to a happier, more fulfilling life.

I’ve found that the single biggest source of meaning in anyone’s life comes from their relationships with other people. This includes professional relationships, romantic relationships, and friendships.

The first thing I want you to do to start your journey towards a meaningful life is to take a look in the mirror, both physically and figuratively. Now ask yourself what you’re bringing into the relationships that you have.

What conflicts are you involved in with other people? What insecurities do you have? What do you ultimately want out of life? Once you’ve answered those questions for yourself, I want you to ask yourself how many of those conflicts, insecurities, goals, and desires you’re bringing into the relationships that you have. More specifically, how are those things affecting your relationships?

If you’ve just been coasting through your experiences and bringing all of that baggage into your relationships it’s time to take a step back and find the meaning in those things. One thing that I really want you to understand is that you can and should find meaning in conflict and suffering.

People that just rip through conflict after conflict without ever taking the time to find the meaning behind those conflicts will invite more conflict throughout their lives. Likewise, people that don’t find meaning in their suffering will suffer harder.

For example, if you lost your job and then picked yourself back up and found a new job that you genuinely enjoy more than your old job, there’s meaning there! Every failure whether it’s in a relationship or another aspect of your life is an opportunity to learn more about yourself and the world you live in.

Many people suffer from depression when doing lots of things while disconnected. In other words, financial success and accomplishment won’t bring you true happiness unless there’s genuine meaning attached to those accomplishments.

Meaning makes people inspiring, it makes them more interesting, and it makes life more rewarding. When you start looking for meaning and purpose in your life, look beyond conflict and suffering. There’s a lot to learn from those things to be sure, but your ultimate purpose should come from outside of that.

Your sense of purpose should come from whatever means the most to you in your life. This sense of purpose can come from your children, your spouse, your partner, your colleagues, or your friends. The commonality here is that for most people, their ultimate sense of purpose derives from their relationships.

The fact that most of us need to have other people around us is no accident. Meaning is compounded by sharing with people we care about.

If you’re ready to learn more about creating meaning in your life, check out my podcast and take a listen: