10 Tips to Keep from Relapsing Into Codependency | Addiction Recovery Tools

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on 10 tips to keep from slipping back into codependency. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. If you're a counselor and you need ceus, ceus are available@allce.com cod ceus so let's start talking about how to prevent backsliding. If you've recognized that you have codependent tendencies or you've acted in codependent ways, then it's going to be important to figure out what do you need to do differently. A lot of people with codependency struggle with attachment issues and struggle with feeling safe, especially if they're not in complete control. So the first thing is to create a sense of safety and regularly assess, do I feel safe in this environment with this person in my own skin? And make sure that the especially the places you spend a lot of time you feel relatively safe in. Identify what you do and do not have power over and how to accept that. It's important to recognize in codependency, you may have been trying to control everything in order to prevent your world from crumbling around you. That's what you learned when whatever relationship taught you that if you let go of control, if you loosen the reins, things went to hell in a hand basket. So now it's going to be important to step back and start trusting that you've done what you need to do and the other people in your life can and will do what they need to do. And if for some reason things take a left turn, you're going to be able to cope. So creating a sense of safety and recognizing what you can and cannot control kind of go hand in hand. Because when you're trying to control something that's out of your control, guess what? You're not going to be able to do it, which is going to cause you to try even harder and feel even more out of control. Kind of like struggling in quicksand. You just keep sinking deeper and deeper. So recognizing what you do and do not have control over and how to accept that. And you may recognize in your daily life the things that you have control over and that you don't. But then you start recognizing this feeling of anxiety or anger, frustration or something in the pit of your stomach, and that's your inner child or your memories from the past saying, if you're not in complete control, things are not going to go good. So it's important to figure out how can you accept the fact that you can't control everything and you can still deal with that even if you're not in control of everything, you can survive and you are safe. The third tip, I guess, is to learn how to set and maintain boundaries. And this again goes. We're building on, on skills from creating safety, identifying what you do and don't have control over, and then setting boundaries. You do have control over your feelings. You have the ability to choose when you have a feeling, what you do with that feeling. You have the ability to control who you let in your physical proximity. You have the ability to control a lot of things to help you feel safe and to improve the next moment. Setting boundaries means putting those boundaries there and saying, I am choosing to or I am choosing not to let you into, into my house, into my space, whether that's your mental space or your physical space. Additionally, people with codependency tend to violate other people's boundaries all over the place. Not maliciously. You're trying to quote, help them. Again, going back to the environment that created the codependency. If you were not in control, if you were not caretaking, if you were not doing things for these people, whoever those people were, oftentimes they wouldn't do it for themselves even if they could, and it ended up having negative consequences for you. So you learned somewhere in the back of your mind, you develop this schema that people are overall incompetent and it's your responsibility to take care of everyone. And that's one of those schema that it's going to be important to reprogram. Not stepping into people's boundaries, not protecting them from the natural consequences of their actions, not doing things for them that they can do for themselves. Now, of course, it's nice occasionally to help somebody out if they need help with something or they're overwhelmed and you can pitch in. That's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about with boundaries is not regularly doing things for people and infant infantilizing them, doing things very paternalistically and not letting them choose and do things for themselves. So stepping back and saying, I'm here if you need help, ask for it, but I am going to let you do what I know you're capable of doing. It's also important during this time to connect with and comfort your inner child. That inner child that grew up in this environment created codependency is probably going to be screaming from the rafters. This is not safe. You cannot trust people. You cannot let go of the brains. And it's important to step in and go, I'm an adult. Now, I can take care of you little inner child, and I can take care of me adult me. I don't have to take care of the other adults in my life. So it's important to comfort that inner child and let them know, hey, I got this. In the past, your caretakers were not responsible, were not willing to do what they needed to do, and maybe not able to do what they needed to do. That's not the case. Now I, as an adult and the caretaker of my inner child, and I've got this Develop self esteem. People who have codependency often feel loved for what they do, not for who they are. And they feel like if they're not indispensable to somebody that they are going to be abandoned. So it's important to develop self esteem and recognize why you're lovable, for who you are, and why you deserve to be treated with respect. And that is going to take time. For a lot of people, that takes, you know, months or years because they've been so programmed that their thoughts, wants and needs don't matter and that they are not important when what they do is important. So we need to sort of flip that script and addressing abandonment anxiety. When you start setting boundaries and letting people do things on their own, they become more independent, which means they may not need you. For the person with codependency, that may translate to you're at risk of being abandoned. So it's important to recognize the difference between somebody needing you or thinking they need you and somebody wanting to be with you because you're just that awesome and abandonment anxiety. I've got multiple videos on the channel on that talk about how to address abandonment anxiety. I even have one that's cognitive behavioral therapy for abandonment anxiety. But it's totally important for somebody who is in recovery from codependency to address these abandonment issues and learn how to develop secure attachments, get support. It is really difficult to make all of these changes. And since insecure attachment and fear of abandonment and low self esteem are at the core of most codependency issues, it's important when you start making these changes to have other people there that can encourage you, that can be consistently responsive, attentive, validating, encouraging, and help you feel safe. Get people in your life who can help create that secure attachment. Now, that may be a support group, that may be other people who have codependency issues that they're working on and understand what you're going through. It may be a therapist, it may be a pastor, it May be a significant other who is willing to learn and willing to help you work through these things. But get support. If you try to do it all by yourself, it's going to likely be a terrifying journey and I dare say probably not very effective. Increase your awareness of where you have been and where you're going. Look at where you are right now in your life, okay? Just take a good inventory of where you are in your life. If you're watching this video, you've likely started to work on your codependency issues, which means you've moved forward towards the life that you want, towards your rich and meaningful life, which is awesome. Look backwards and see how far you've come. Whether it is two steps or 2,000 steps, it doesn't matter. You have moved forward and getting unstuck, untethered from that codependency was a huge part. It's like taking a hundred pound rucksack off your back. How much lighter, how much more energetic do you feel? Make a list of your codependent behaviors and patterns and identify their functions. If you tend to do things for people that they can do for themselves, you know, what's the function of that? Again, a lot of times it helps the person feel indispensable. If you feel like you need to rescue people, you need to jump in, then what's that function? It may be because in prior relationships, the people that you needed to protect, you weren't able to do it for themselves, so you had to be the parent. Then identify alternate ways to meet those needs. If you are needing to be the parent, well, you're parenting your inner child, so recognize what does your inner child need? What do you need? And identify the functions of those other behaviors. If you need to feel indispensable, how can you do that in a healthy way? How can you feel secure in your relationships without creating this dependency dynamic? And define your rich and meaningful life and ways to use your energy toward that. Who is important in your rich and meaningful life? What people, what things and experiences are important in your rich and meaningful life? And what can you. How can you use your energy if you free up from trying to rescue and control and manage all these other people? If you free up that energy and say, you know, I'm going to let them take responsibility for themselves and I'm going to use that energy to move toward my rich and meaningful life? And that may mean again, unhooking from somebody who is in the throes of addiction or mental health issues and saying, you know what? Here are Some resources. I can't be your only lifeline. I am here to be supportive, I'm here to be encouraging, but I can't fix it for you. You need to be responsible enough to do that. Practice morning and evening mindful, compassionate awareness. And this is super important for people in recovery and ideally anybody, but definitely for people in recovery. When you wake up in the morning and right before bed, assess what are the my vulnerabilities? What things might make me more likely to be triggered or backslide right now? And what are my needs? What do I need right now in this moment? Do I need sleep? Do I need a hug? Do I need, you know, water? What is it that you need? Triggers. Be aware of the helpful and unhelpful triggers in your environment. Morning and evening, take a look around, whether it's mental, a look around in your mental space and a look around in your physical space and think about what unhelpful triggers, what codependency triggers are there and how can you address them. But also what helpful triggers are there? What things are there in your life that say, hey, you got this and you want to use your energy to move towards these things and not get all caught up in somebody else's circus thoughts? Identifying reviewing your healthy and your codependent thoughts and addressing those codependent thoughts with healthier ones. Instead of thinking I need to do this because they can't do it for themselves, thinking to yourself what is it that they need and what is it that they want me to do? Recognizing the difference. They may want you to do it for them, but what do they need? How can you be encouraging and supportive without enabling? And what are your healthy thoughts? Your thoughts about your power, your safety, your self esteem? And take an inventory of your behaviors. What healthy and codependent behaviors are you in the morning feeling the urge to engage in and in the evening look backwards and say what codependent behaviors did I engage in today or did I kind of start dipping my toe into? Why did I do that and what can I do differently? And what healthy behaviors did I do today? It's important to regularly address the helpful and the healthy to remind yourself that, hey, I was, I did really good today. 85% of the time I was engaging in helpful and healthy behaviors. All right, 15 not so good. So we're going to work on reducing that. So 99 of the time, eventually I'm doing healthy and helpful. We would say, likely like to say 100% of the time, but that may not be really achievable. Most people will have the occasional thought, the fleeting thought, the fleeting urge. It doesn't mean you're relapsing, it just means you're having a a fleeting thought or a fleeting urge. Set smart goals and review them every morning and night. Recognizing based on your rich and meaningful life, how do you want to use your energy to move forward towards those things that are important to you, to nurture those relationships in a healthy way, including your relationship with yourself? In the morning, completing the sentence Today I will use my energy to and in the evening, review your progress. Did you use your energy for that? If so, great. What were the consequences? If not, why not? What happened? What might you need to change in order to get unstuck or get back on the right track? If the videos on this channel have been helpful for you, please support us in our mission to make high quality, practical content available to everyone. You can donate@doc snipes.com donate join the channel@doc snipes.com join or purchase a thanks on any videos you particularly like. It's easy to slip back into old habits, so mindful awareness in the morning and the evening and hopefully throughout the day is one thing that is going to be really important. The other 10 tips that we talked about are things that you probably can consider working on in order to feel more secure in your recovery. More videos on relapse prevention are available at Docsnipes.com relapse or codependency@docsnipes.com Cody.