Codependency is when you were not validated as a child which then causes you to seek validation through taking care of others, pleasing others or trying to fix them. This is very common in abusive and emotionally neglectful homes. When you are a child you crave your parent’s validation and when you don’t get it, you will seek it in unhealthy ways.
This lack of validation causes an empty feeling in your being which then causes you to grasp onto anything that can fill it. That could be sex, drugs, alcohol, relationships, work, not able to be by yourself, and constantly feeling the need to be around others or seeking constant validation from others. But all of those things only temporarily fill that void and you constantly seek those things to fill it which causes you to be in a feedback loop.
This can cause resentment, depression, and anxiety as you are unaware of yourself and your wants and needs. As well as you are more prone to narcissistic and abusive relationships since narcissists and toxic people seek codependents and people that are easy to manipulate. So you may wonder how do I deal with this? How do I heal from codependency? Let’s get into the 8 tools you need to heal codependency!
As a codependent, you have gotten lost in helping other people, and being who others wanted you to be that you never really formed a sense of self. You may be completely unaware of who you are, and what your wants and needs are. If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you may have done things to try to appease your narcissistic parent which then caused you to never form a sense of self. You have never been aware of yourself or your wants and needs.
It is important to discover yourself and become self-aware. Who are you? What character traits and flaws do you have? How about what you want in your life? What do you value? Your opinions on things? What do you enjoy? Sit down and ask yourself questions and do things to help you discover who you are.
Journaling can help with discovering yourself as well as becoming more self aware. Every night do a self check in and ask yourself how you are feeling. Jot down any thoughts you are having and events in the day. This can help you to become aware of your feelings, as well as your wants and needs. When you write about it, it gets out of your mind and onto paper and you can see patterns in your thoughts. Not only that but it helps you to not have built up emotion.
The main reason why you struggle with codependency is because you were never validated and that in turn caused you to not know how to validate yourself. Your parent did not recognize and acknowledge your feelings, opinions, thoughts, or wants and needs. This has then caused you to try to get validation through others.
You know need to learn how to validate yourself. That means no more dismissing your feelings or looking towards other people to tell you who to be, what to think and how to feel. You need to tell your self that you are allowed to have feelings, that you did a good job and that you love you. Start to validate yourself and stop looking for it from others.
As a child, you most likely did not hear very nurturing things or you did not hear the things you needed to hear. You may have been ridiculed, let down, hurt and you may have not felt like it was a safe place to share or have emotions. That hurt you as a child and your inner child is wounded. So you now have a stern negative voice in your head that always makes you feel terrible about yourself and you may notice it sounds similar to the caregiver that was not the nicest to you.
Now you need to heal that inner child, heal that inner wound. The way you do that is by telling yourself the things you wish and needed to hear as a child. Things like ” I am so glad you’re here!” or “you did a great job I am so proud of you.” or “I love you so much, thanks for being you.” And not only that but you want to be nurturing towards yourself so when you mess up you need to not beat yourself up or look towards your unhealthy coping mechanisms but rather tell yourself it’s okay and you got you. Nurture yourself the way you have always nurtured everyone else.
Like I had mentioned above, you constantly have negative self-talk. You reaffirm over and over terrible things about yourself like you are unworthy or you are undeserving or that you are not enough. So every time you say these things you strengthen that idea and belief in your mind.
You need to reaffirm the opposite so you strengthen your inner dialogue to be positive towards yourself. This in turn not only helps you feel confident and good about yourself but it also helps you to know your worth which keeps away unhealthy toxic things and people. You are changing your beliefs and reprogramming your brain.
The biggest problem with codependency is that in order to feel validated, you get urges to help whenever someone needs it. It is a beautiful thing to want to help but there is such a thing as overly being helpful. You may give unsolicited advice or offer help when the person wasn’t asking and they may not appreciate it. This then makes you resent them for not listening to you or accepting your help. It also can cause you to feel burnt out.
You need to recognize when you are trying to overly extend your help and stop yourself. You may notice you try to help others when you are feeling bad about yourself or you are trying to avoid your guilt. You’re trying to deal with past anxiety of needing to help cause your abusive parent made you feel like you had to be responsible for things you should not have been responsible for.
Understand you are not in that situation anymore and you are not actually doing anything wrong if you don’t help. Offer help when people ask or when a close loved one is in a situation where they need help. But accept that you do not always need to help.
Boundaries are just fences we need to put up to protect ourselves from things we don’t want. They are our way of letting people know what we will and we will not tolerate. If you grew up with a toxic, narcissistic, or even a codependent parent, you did not learn what boundaries are. And most likely your boundaries were disrespected.
It is important to identify and set boundaries. So if there are things that people in your life do to you that you do not like, make sure you let them know you don’t want that anymore. That could mean not having certain conversations, not doing certain things or not dealing with people crossing your physical boundaries.
When you are codependent, you put everyone before yourself. You never really learned how to prioritize yourself nor learned how to make your feelings, wants, and needs important. As well as the fact that saying no was not allowed. You feel guilty for saying no or you feel like something bad will happen if you say no, so you say yes out of fear. The fear of disappointing others, needing to please is strong.
You need to let go of the need to please everyone. That is an unrealistic expectation and you can’t do it. Someone will always be unhappy or just won’t like you and that is not your job to get them to like you. You are not responsible for other people’s feelings. Nor can you read minds. You can’t care what everyone wants because then you are not paying attention to what you want. If you think about what you want, you will feel so much less pressure because you are focused on being you rather then losing yourself and trying to be who everyone else wants you to be.
The next thing you need to do is to check in with yourself when someone asks something of you, first and see how you are doing. If you are not good if you are busy and stressed or if you just do not want to then the answer is no! You are allowed to say no. Give yourself permission to say no.
When dealing with codependency you will feel out of control a lot. And that is because you make your decisions based off of fear, guilt, and others/what they think. So you will notice yourself trying to gain control in any way you can. Usually, it is trying to control things out of your control. When you were a child you may have noticed you felt very out of control which contributes to your need to control now.
Start to focus on the things you can control. As well as let go of the things you can’t control. So you can not control the outcomes of things. You can’t control people or what they say to you. But you can control yourself, how you respond to things, who you talk to, what you eat and wear. Focus on yourself.
What do you guys think? Are you codependent or know anyone that deals with codependency? Leave it all in the comments below!
