Building a Fulfilling Life: Codependency Recovery Series Week 3

Hey there everybody. Welcome back to the Codependency series. This is week three and today we're talking about recovery from codependency. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. One of the important things, maybe not the first thing, but one of the important things to do in any recovery process is to define your rich and meaningful life. You've already identified the symptoms of codependency and the impact they're having on your life. So it's important to think about, when I am no longer codependent, what will be different? When I no longer use those behaviors, when I no longer feel unsafe and the need to protect myself, what will be different? Who's important in my life? What's important in my life? What experiences are important in my life physically? So let's just talk about this rich and meaningful life physically. Think about how will your, your health like your blood pressure and immunity and stuff. How will that be impacted when you are no longer using those behaviors? What about chronic pain? And that can be muscle tension or even chronic pain from autoimmune issues. How will that be different when you are using your energy to work towards your rich and meaningful life? What about your energy in general? Are you going to feel more energized or are you going to feel drained or is it not going to make a difference? What behaviors will you do differently? And I put this under physical because behaviors like sleeping all day or drinking too much or smoking too much are often responses to distress that people use when they are feeling unsafe and disempowered. So are there behaviors that you're going to change that will help you move toward your rich and meaningful life? And then what about our good old friend hyper vigilance? How will that change in your rich and meaningful life? How will you feel differently when you go into, when you're in relationships, when you go into public places, whatever. How will that hyper vigilance change when, when you are no longer fearful affectively, how will your emotional awareness and your ability to identify your emotions and what's triggering them, how will that change? Remember we talked about people with codependency are often unaware of what's going on inside them and they are so focused on people pleasing. So how will you become more aware, more able to identify your emotions when they happen? How will your ability to regulate and your emotions and tolerate distress change? That means moving away from dysregulation, that tsunami and being able to experience different grades of emotions like content, happy, ecstatic or irritated, angry, enraged. Instead of being either Flat or irritated too enraged and jumping over everything in the in the middle, how will your guilt be? When you've processed what's going on in your rich and meaningful life, do you see yourself being somebody who's riddled with guilt or not? In your rich and meaningful life, do you see yourself having more instances of positive emotions? And if so, what's going to cause those? What are you hoping you're going to be able to start doing and enjoying either for the first time or again? If you don't know what makes you happy, then maybe that's part of your rich and meaningful life. You start figuring out, hey, this is what I like cognitively again, vision envisioning that rich and meaningful life. When you are in your recovery, how are you going to be more aware of coping strategies for trauma triggers in the present, how are you going to be more aware of your traumas from the past and able to differentiate them from what's going on in the present? So you're again, so you're not constantly feeling like, oh, this again. You're able to look at each situation in context and go, this person at this time is safe or this person at this time ain't safe and I need to get away. When you're in your recovery state of mind, how will you be able to more effectively use balanced fact based reasoning? Remember, fact based isn't just looking at the good or what you should do, quote unquote. It's balanced. You're looking at the good and the bad aspects because everything has positives and negatives. So how are you going to be more able to move out of emotion based reasoning or fear based reasoning and actually look at the facts in context and make a decision in your wise mind? How will your thought accuracy improve when you are experiencing distress or codependency? You may be more likely to use cognitive distortions like extreme thinking and personalization and mind reading and jumping to conclusions. So in your recovery state of mind, in your rich and meaningful life, how much more accurate are your thoughts? How much more on point are you in this rich and meaningful life? What is it like in your head, that inner critic that is probably really loud and obnoxious right now? What's your relationship with that inner critic in your head? They're not going to go away. So you got to figure out what that relationship's going to be like. What about ruminations? These are thoughts that get stuck in your head and just play over and over and over again like a stuck record. For those of you who remember records but are you going to have as many ruminations and in your rich and meaningful life, how will you handle ruminations? These thoughts that get stuck, Are you going to evaluate them in terms of the facts in the current context? Are you going to get support from others to help you figure out how to deal with it? How are you going to deal with those thoughts? When people are experiencing codependency, they ruminate a lot, usually about what if, what if this person did this, or I wonder what they're doing and they get on this catastrophic thought role. So it's important to figure out how are you going to handle those ruminations in the future and what's your outlook going to be? Are you going to continue to be somewhat pessimistic, or are you going to have a more balanced outlook, recognizing that sometimes people are going to do bad things, sometimes bad things are going to happen. You know, we want to be tragically optimistic, as they say, but are you going to be able to have a more balanced outlook so you can actually notice the positive things Environmentally, when you're in your rich and meaningful life, what's it going to be like to be in your house, to be around people? Is it going to stick, still be as tense? Are you still going to be on edge on pens and needles all the time? Or is it going to be more relaxed and less tension and less second guessing? Are you going to have improved organization? A lot of times when people are so worried about controlling another person, other stuff falls apart because they don't have enough time and energy and hands to do everything. So how are you. Is your environment going to improve? Just the energy in the environment as well as the organization and cleanliness and that sort of thing. And is there any other way that your environment's going to be impacted? And then finally, relationally, how are you going to feel about yourself in this rich and meaningful life? Are you going to continue to feel a about yourself as you are right now, which is probably not 100% good, or are you going to be able to be more accurate in recognizing your strengths and your contributions and your goodness as a person, even if you make mistakes? Are you going to be more aware of your relationship needs? Are you going to have a stronger connection with your inner child, that little voice inside you that wants to come out and play sometimes, or that little voice inside you that gets scared and says, tell me it's okay? Are you going to have improved assertive communication? In codependency, people tend to vacillate between being passive. Whatever you want, just don't abandon me, whatever you want to aggressive and trying to control everything and stop, you know, kind of stomp all over other people's boundaries. But there's no assertiveness. And remember, assertiveness says your thoughts, wants and needs are equally as important as my thoughts, wants and needs. Assertive communication can be really scary because it means telling people what you think your thoughts, wants and needs, which can make you feel vulnerable to rejection. But it also means allowing them to have their thoughts and wants and make their own decisions without trying to control them. And that can also be terrifying. Are you going to have a reduced fear of abandonment? Well, hopefully in your rich and meaningful life, you're going to start feeling better about yourself. You're going to start recognizing the people in your current context and being able to more effectively develop trust with them and recognize which people are safe and which people aren't. And are you going to be able to identify boundaries, set them and then maintain them for yourself as well as respect other people's. And that goes along with assertiveness. But it's more than that. And if you're not familiar with boundaries, I've got multiple other videos about boundaries on the YouTube channel. But it's important to recognize that in codependency, it is likely that you were trying to control other people and violating their boundaries, telling them what they needed to do or what they had to do. So thinking about all of these things, about all of the ways your life is going to change once you start addressing the symptoms of codependency and developing health, healthier ways to help you feel safe and empowered and trusting yourself and others. So the activity Review this presentation and develop a clear vision of what you hope will be different. When you've healed yourself and your relationships, envision this new you and new life every morning. Which is why I really like this, the vision board. Because you can wake up, open your eyes, and it's right there and then reflect on your progress every evening.