Revealing the Connection Between Codependency and the Wounded Inner Child

Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video where we look at the connection between codependency and the inner child. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. We're going to talk about the symptoms of codependency, but I want to help you connect those to the inner child and how you developed those particular behaviors. Behaviors don't just emerge out of nowhere. Behaviors are things that we do and if they're reinforced, if they're rewarded, then we'll do them again. If they're punished or they're ignored, then we're probably not going to do them again. The person who grew up in a chaotic environment, who has a wounded inner child often learned a lot of these behaviors as a way to stay safe. And these behaviors continue with them in into adulthood. And that's their inner child trying to control. The adult saying, this is what you need to do to stay safe. What we need to do is take control as the adult and say, I'm powerful now, I don't need to do this and you're safe and I'm going to make sure you inner child can continue to feel safe. Now. I can't change the past and what happened back there was awful and we can move toward our rich and meaningful life. So let's look at some of these characteristics. Poor boundaries, difficulty saying no and feeling responsible for others emotions. A lot of people with wounded inner child children have difficulty setting boundaries because if they set boundaries in their family, it wasn't safe. Safe if sometimes they had boundaries that just had to be completely permeable because if they set boundaries against a caregiver, it was unsafe. So they learned that it's not okay to set and maintain any boundaries. Other children may have learned that it's not safe to let anybody in, so they have these huge walls around them and their boundaries are just incredibly rigid. But either way, people with poor boundaries learned that in relationships it wasn't safe to have and maintain healthy boundaries. And as an adult, when you get into relationships, those lessons you learned as a child come out and say, you know, people aren't safe, people aren't trustworthy and we need to protect oursel in this way. Hypervigilance is another characteristic of codependency and it's also a characteristic of trauma. Being overly attuned to others emotions and taking them on as one's own is very common in chaotic environments. In the addicted family, the buzzwords are don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. You're not allowed to feel differently. Think Differently do differently than the person with the addiction in these chaotic environments. And it doesn't have to just be substance abuse. You can have a caregiver that has a mental health issue and everything revolves around them. And you may not be able to predict. There may be a lot of inconsistency in what's going on in life based on that person's feelings. If they're depressed, if they're happy, if they're angry, if they're drunk, whatever. So you learned to be hyper vigilant to their feelings. Ooh, you know, caregiver is kind of grumpy today. It's going to be an ugly day. You learn to be hyper attuned to what the feelings are of the people around you, and that controls how you respond. And a lot of times the child, the only safe thing for the child was to take on that caregiver's emotions. If the caregiver was angry, they may have gotten angry and wanted to protect the caregiver. Sometimes it went in the opposite direction where if the caregiver was angry, the child learned the best thing to do is become submissive and kind of blend into the wall. But hyper vigilance is prominent regardless of how the person responded. The child learned the safe way to respond, and they learned that safety involves being hyper aware of everyone's status around you besides yourself. Besides yourself. Excessive caretaking is another characteristic of codependency and a wounded inner child. In excessive caretaking, the person puts other people's needs before their own and feels overly responsible for solving other people's problems. Now, yes, we want to help people. There is a difference, and it's on a continuum. There's helping, there's being a good friend, there's being compassionate, and then there is going overboard. There's excessive caretaking where you're doing things for people that they could or should be able to do for themselves. In the chaotic household, the child may have grown up having to parent the parents because the caregivers were just unable to do it. They the caregivers were passing out drunk. The caregivers may not show up. They wouldn't go grocery shopping. There are a lot of situations in which the caregiver may have failed and at caretaking of the children and the child had to step up and do it. And that's how they learn to stay safe. As an adult, you may believe that other people can't be trusted to take care of themselves. Therefore, it's your job, because if you don't take care of them all Hell's going to break loose. Low self esteem Another characteristic of both codependency and inner child. When people have low self esteem, they don't perceive themselves as lovable or worthwhile and seek external validation in a chaotic home environment. Children who don't get regular praise, children who don't have boundaries, children who don't have caregivers that are consistent, attentive, responsive, encouraging and safe are not going to feel good about themselves. They're always going to be worried that they're going to get rejected. They're worried that they're going to be criticized. They're worried that their caregiver is not going to take care of them. Because in a lot of cases, one way or another, because the caregiver fell down on their caretaking needs, the child felt abandoned and internalized. That as I'm not worthy of love. People with codependency and wounded inner children have difficulty expressing emotions and needs. They struggle to communicate feelings and personal needs effectively because they were never taught how. We are not born knowing how to communicate these. We're not born with an emotional vocabulary or emotional intelligence. That's what we learn. And going back to that secure attachment again, the consistent caregiver is responsive to the child. When the child is having a good day and is really excited, the caregiver says, I see you're excited. Tell me what's going on. What's making you feel so happy today? Helping the child articulate things. When the child is upset or irritable, the caregiver says, it seems like you're feeling really upset today. Can you tell me? Do you want to tell me what's wrong? And if the child doesn't know, the caregiver asks questions to try to help the child figure it out. When they figure out what's wrong, then they figure out how to deal with it. If the child is feeling upset and terrified and just kind of they're melting down, they're spiraling. The caregiver is. Is there to put guardrails on, so to speak, to help the child recognize you're safe. You can have this emotional meltdown right now, that's okay, and I will help keep you safe and then help the child figure out how to downregulate and move into the problem solving phase. But if we don't have caregivers to help us learn these skills, we don't learn them. We don't learn how to express. I'm feeling really out of control right now and I need you to xyz. I'm Feeling very powerless right now. And I need you to give me a hug. I need you to do this thing for me. Sometimes when I feel very overwhelmed and I'm just like, I can't take one more thing, I'll tell my husband. I'm just, I'm overwhelmed. I'm completely over it right now. I need you to do this. And a lot of times it's some administrative tasks because I can't stand administrative stuff. But I'm able to articulate that I can't take on one more thing. And it would be helpful for me if you would do this. But again, somebody with codependency very rarely is going to ask for help. Because growing up and as a they often if they asked for help, it was rejected or they were criticized for it. So that inner child learned it's not safe to ask for help. It's not safe to communicate that you need anything or you've got a weakness. And, you know, nobody taught them how to talk about feelings or even really identify them. A lot of people with wounded inner children have a very limited emotional vocabulary. I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm happy. But there's not a lot of in between. People with codependency and a wounded inner child may fear abandonment or rejection. They may often compromise their values to avoid rejection and feel anxious about potential abandonment. This is underlying constantly this undercurrent of I grew up not knowing if my caregiver was going to be there for me, was not not knowing if my caregiver was going to accept me or reject me. Therefore, I expect everybody else to behave the same way, therefore. Because I desperately want to be loved, because I desperately feel like I need to be loved. And I don't love myself because I never learned how I am going to do whatever you want me to do to avoid rejection. I am going to be the hero, I'm going to be the savior. I'm going to make myself indispensable so you can't abandon me. And people pleasing behaviors, which is a little bit different, in which the person strives for perfection and does everything possible to be liked or loved. They try to succeed at everything they do. They're very perfectionistic because they've learned along the way that the image they project is what gets them loved. Not who they are, but what they do, what they look like, what they achieve. And instead of feeling lovable as a human being. And that inner child picked up those messages from their caregivers and ran with them in healing the wounded inner Child. It's really important to evaluate the messages that you got as a child for their accuracy. Is this true? If the child believes that they were rejected because they were a difficult child, they may have even been told that by their caregiver. Okay, well, let's look back at that. Were you a difficult child? Maybe you were, maybe you weren't. I don't know. Were you loved despite being a difficult child? And should you, if you were the caregiver, would you have loved the that child even if they were difficult? So we want to turn the script a little bit and try to challenge some of those all or nothing, egocentric, personalized beliefs that that wounded inner child developed. Difficulty making decisions is also very common in people with a wounded inner child. They struggle to trust their own judgment and hesitate when making choices being because they were often harshly criticized if they made the wrong choice as a child. So now they're afraid. They're afraid to make a decision because they don't want to be punished. Denial and avoidance are other characteristics of growing up in a chaotic household that can lead to what we call in adulthood codependency that results from a wounded inner child. In denial and avoidance, the person turns a blind eye to problems, making excuses for others and avoiding confrontation. Well, you can see how that could have been a lesson that a 6 or a 10 or a 12 year old learned growing up in a chaotic or dysfunctional family environment. You confront the dysfunctional caregivers and it probably not going to go well for you. You pay attention to all the problems and you're going to feel even more hopeless and helpless. So ignoring what's going on. Okay, yeah. Dad came home drunk for the seventh time this week and it's only Friday. All right. The child's going to ignore that. The child is going to try to avoid being aware of the problems and will make excuses for their caregivers bad behaviors as adults. They carry this into adult relationships. People with wounded inner children and codependency have control issues. They often attempt to control others behaviors or feelings, often through manipulating or advice giving. As a child, they may not have been able to manipulate or give advice much to their dysfunctional caregivers, but they may have started to develop some of that along the way. They're like, I've been through this, let me tell you how I solved may not be the most helpful way to solve it, but they feel like this worked for me to some extent, therefore this is the way it has to be. And they're afraid, you know, going back up to difficulty making decisions. They're afraid to try any diff other different way because when they have deviated from what the the few things they found that worked to help them stay safe, it often didn't go well and Resentment the person with codependency and the inner child may feel resentful and rejected when hope is declined. The child often personalizes everything. That's just how they're that's how they're wired. They think differently than adults, so they personalize everything. When something goes wrong, it's my fault when caregivers are upset, it's my fault when help is declined and it's my fault. It must not be good enough help or I must not be worthy enough to help. And as adults, they may still have those thoughts or beliefs about what it means when somebody declines their help. They perceive it as a rejection of them instead of a rejection of their help. If you want to learn more about the inner child, you can join my community@doc snipes.com aura where I have self help courses with videos and worksheets, live events and group courses. Codependent behaviors represent the person's best attempt to stay safe and avoid loss or abandonment. Codependency can develop at any point in life. However, children in a chaotic household may develop these behaviors to survive and continue to be plagued by the terror of abandonment. In order to recover, we need to help people recognize the source of their fears, grieve those losses, and see their power and safety in the present so they can feel safe and empowered.