95: Strong Women and Co-Dependency | Dr. Zoe Shaw

Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.

Hi there. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed psychotherapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. I'm a life and relationship coach and a motivational speaker, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. Connect with me by texting the word join to 38470, or just log on to my website at drzoeshaw.com. Before we get started today, I just want to give a thank you to Keisha Hollier Gates. She sent a wonderful email to me after listening to episode 91. She said, "Wow! Bless you. Appreciate you on point." And then she went on to give me some advice. So if you remember episode 91 and my fails, I talked about flooding my neighbor's backyard, and she said intervention is the best gift. To set a timer on your phone for anything that needs timing. We are multitask queens. And then for a gift, she. suggested that I check if any furniture or special item was ruined and replace, or let them pick the item and pay for it. So thank you, Keisha. And actually, this was really helpful for me because yes, first of all, we are multitask queens and it does sometimes get us into trouble. And I literally have an Apple Watch and although I love it, I don't even use it to its maximum potential and I need to get on that. So thank you. I'll remember now. And actually I have since to set a timer whenever I'm getting ready to do something, even if I think I'm going to remember. I set a timer on my watch. And also, thank you for the idea for my neighbors. Everything is good in their backyard. They're still saying hi to me, and their backyard got cleaned up very quickly. So all is good, and thank you, Keisha. If you would like to connect with me, give me some advice, or ask for some advice, please do. Just send me an email, zoe@drzoeshaw.com. So my fail for this week is actually a really embarrassing one, and I I don't even really want to share it, but that's the whole point of it, isn't it? The whole point is for me to share the real fails and my real wins. So I am not going to gloss over this one. I'm sure I've mentioned, at least in passing, that I am writing a memoir, a book, and it's tough. And in, I think, effort to just move things forward with my book, I queried an agent about it, and she quickly got back to me and said she's So I sent her my manuscript. Now, this is the manuscript that has not been treated, had not at that point, by an editor. And I sent it off to this agent who I was really interested in working with. I since have had it edited. And so in my inbox, I got an email. I'm on the email list of this agent, and she happened to write an article and send it to her email list. Basically about what not to do as a first-time author writing a memoir. And I read the article, and I'm still pretty convinced that she wrote all about my manuscript. And this is a fail because she wasn't glowing about my manuscript. She was basically saying everything that I did wrong. As I read the article and I looked at the date that she wrote it, it was a couple of weeks after I submitted my manuscript to her. And that was painful. My manuscript was really great material for her article, and she actually said a lot of the same things that my editor said to me. And I think the fail, of course, is that I went too fast. I shouldn't have submitted the manuscript to her. It wasn't ready. My win, though, because there's always so many lessons in our fails and I'm learning them, my win is that Although there was some immediate hesitation where, of course, my thoughts spiraled down into how embarrassed I am and how this isn't for me and I can't do this and what were you thinking when you set out to write a book, I quickly was able to get past that point and take in her words as actual constructive criticism. I'm so thankful that they mirrored the words of my editor, who also encourages me to finish this book, to rewrite this draft, because I do know that there is some value in this book. But it is tough when other people, agents, are telling you that you suck and sending out to their thousands of people on their mailing list. She didn't call me out at all. But my win comes down to my self-talk and my ability to quickly self-regulate and Continue to be determined to finish what I started. So there's my win. Onto the topic of today. Can a strong woman be codependent? The answer is a resounding yes. Some women who are strong and identify as strong women may be fooled by their strength into thinking that they can't be or aren't codependent. Now, most people view codependency as a sign of weakness, and you may think that codependent women don't have a backbone, but the truth is that you can be a strong and independent woman. You can be as strong as can be on the outside of certain relationships and completely codependent within certain relationships. Did you know that taking care of it all ism? I just made that up. Is a sign of codependence? Yes. You might trick yourself into believing that you have to do it all because you're on your own or because no one can do it better than you can, or because it gets done faster if you just do it by yourself. But this may be more about you needing to feel needed than you may be willing to recognize. For some of you, I'm going to be holding up a mirror today as we talk about codependence. So codependent personalities tend to be people pleasers. They thrive on helping others or even thinking they may fix them. Now, if you're in the I'm going to fix him camp, I wrote an article on my website titled Why Your Romantic Partner Can't Be Your Charity Case. Go read that. And when caring for another person stops you from having your own needs met, or if your self-worth is dependent on being needed, then you may be headed down that codependent path. So what does codependent really mean? What is a codependent person? We hear that term thrown around everywhere now, but what does it really mean? At its core, codependency is a need to be needed. The concept of codependency was actually first developed in the 1950s with drug and alcohol counselors, and they would call the family members of the alcoholics co-alcoholics. And the reason why they called them co-alcoholics is because there was a clear set of behaviors in the family members, the spouses and the children of the alcoholic, that enabled them to continue their bad behavior and to continue their addiction. Eventually, therapists started seeing these sets of behaviors in people outside of addiction as well, and that's how the term codependent was coined. So the definition of codependency is an excessive emotional, physical, and psychological reliance on a relationship that is dysfunctional. And I got that from recoveryconnection.com. Codependency is not an actual psychiatric or medical diagnosis, but it is a cluster of symptoms. Now, your codependent behavior is not something you were born with. Nobody's born codependent. I mean, we're born completely dependent. But as we age in healthy relationships, we learn a healthy interdependence, or sometimes we don't. So your codependent behavior is something you learned in childhood. In codependent families, children learn to avoid feelings and emotions. Often there are things going on in the home that are never directly mentioned, but sometimes they're glossed over, they're pushed under the rug. And these families, they tend to pretend that everything is fine when in fact it's not. Codependents learn to define themselves in relationships through their family members' happiness, success, or failure. So they define their self, who they are as people, in relationship to basically their family's happiness. In adulthood, codependents look for approval from others to feel good. So they tend to lack a solid concept of self. Remember, they're getting their sense of self through other people, which leads them needing to validate themselves continually through others. They also tend to, not always, but they tend to lack the ability to tolerate or express strong emotion. They tend to not acknowledge the real problem in relationships, and they have an often unspoken belief system that their needs are not as important or should be sacrificed for others. So can a woman who is otherwise considered strong and independent also be codependent in her relationship? Well, absolutely. Why? Because codependency is not negatively related to strength. In fact, there is a strong relationship between codependency and strength. Codependency is a coping mechanism gone bad. And by the way, all coping mechanisms go bad past their expiration date. What do I mean by this? Let me tell you a little story about a soldier. Our soldiers in our country, other countries as well, they go out to the battlefield. When we send them out to the battlefield, what do we send them out with? A gun. Armor. We send them out with guns. We send them out with ammo and grenades and all kinds of things. And the reason why we do that is because they are in a battle zone, and those are the tools that they need to survive in that battle zone. That's a smart thing to do to protect our soldiers when we send them out. Now, that same soldier, if he comes back home, He's done with his service, he's home, he's with his family, and he goes to the mall. If he keeps all of that armor on, all his defenses on, and he walks through the mall with his family with his gun drawn and his grenades, he's going to get arrested and also probably put into a psychiatric ward. The reason why is because those defense mechanisms, those coping skills, those tools and resources he has on the battlefield are not functional in another place. The same things that can be life-saving and healthy and smart in one place are dysfunctional, not working, and dangerous in another. That's what happens with your defense mechanisms, with your codependency. You developed it in childhood because it was necessary. It was the necessary armor that you needed to survive in your family of origin. That's the only reason why you developed the codependency behaviors. But when you took them into adulthood and you started using them in relationships, you passed the expiration date and now it's in a different place. Now you're at the mall because as an adult, you have different coping mechanisms, like the ability to leave an unhealthy situation, like the ability to change things that you couldn't do in your childhood. And so codependency in adulthood is a very well-formed, smart defense mechanism no longer needed. It's gone bad and it doesn't work anymore. All coping mechanisms actually are smart responses to moderate or high-level stress, so they are not weak, but they do stop working effectively when you're no longer in danger. So a lot of times codependents are going to find themselves, of course, still using their defenses and they're miserable and they're not understanding what is going wrong Or why they can't make these relationships work. They will often also turn towards addictions themselves, not necessarily drugs or alcohol, but food or sex or risky behavior as a way to stuff down their feelings or somehow get them out that they would otherwise avoid. The following are questions taken from recoveryconnection.com. About codependency and ones that I want you to ponder. Do you avoid confrontation? Do you neglect your needs to attend to another's first? Do you accept verbal or physical abuse by others? Do you take responsibility for the actions of others? Do you feel shame when others make mistakes? Probably others that you are in close relationship with. Do you do more than your share at work, at home, or in organizations? Do you ask for help? Do you need others' validation to feel good about yourself? Do you think everyone's feelings are more important than your own? Do you suffer from low self-esteem? Those are questions to ask because obviously if the answers are yes to a lot of them, then you might be struggling with some codependent behavior or codependent thinking or relationships. Codependents tend to feel responsible for solving others' problems. They will often give more than they're given in a relationship. I've talked before about how important reciprocity is in relationships and interdependence. When one person is giving more or the most in a relationship, you're usually looking at codependence. Codependents will also sometimes offer advice to others, whether it's asked for or not. And this is about that same feeling of being needed. Codependents will also expect others to do what they say sometimes. This goes back to being kind of super sensitive and having a sense of, I want other people to need me, my ideas are good, and I wanna be validated. A codependent often will then walk away though, feeling used and underappreciated. They will give a ton of their energy, a ton of themselves to people or to events, and then feel that if their advice is ignored or no one's saying thank you, they may then feel very disappointed and underappreciated. A codependent is often trying to please people so that others will like or love them. You know, I have a client that I was talking to recently about that, and I said to him, if you are putting forth your fake self in your relationship and you feel loved, Or that person loves you, you will still walk away feeling very unloved because what you know is that they love the fake you. But we all desire to have the real us loved. And so that obviously is an issue with codependents because they are spending so much time trying to please and they have so little sense of self that it's hard for them to put anything authentic forth to be loved. A codependent takes a lot of stuff very personally, often because they don't have healthy boundaries. When you don't have healthy boundaries, then you are bombarded a lot. You feel that way. You can be super sensitive and take things very personally, and that leads to feeling like a victim. Codependents can sometimes be the martyr, the victim. They feel sometimes powerless. What happens is they often don't understand their role in creating their own reality. They don't recognize that everything in their life they are choosing. That's a huge thing for a codependent is because they feel like things are happening to them, not that they're choosing. Codependents will use manipulation, shame, or guilt to control others' behaviors, often to get their way. And sometimes these behaviors that they do are not conscious. They don't even realize that they're doing it or manipulating. A big one too is that codependents are lying to themselves. They're making excuses for their family members' bad behavior because they don't know how to deal very well with their own feelings directly. So it's a lot easier to just kind of ignore, to lie and deny. And of course they fear rejection because the deepest fear for a codependent is that they are not lovable. So how do you untangle yourself from a lifetime of behaviors that in some ways are rewarding, but are actually hurting you at the same time? I want you to think of the pendulum, of a pendulum swinging, and I'm not asking you to swing your pendulum all the way to the other end, but I've talked before. That both ends of a pendulum are unhealthy. So if you're at one end of the pendulum, you've got to figure out how to swing it back to the middle, because if you swing it all the way to the other end, you're still in dishealth. Remember, we're not looking for disconnection, which would be the opposite of codependency. We're striving for interdependence. And it's not easy to change a codependent relationship. I'm going to be straight up honest about that, but it is doable. I am actually a living, breathing example of that. I used to have a very unhealthy codependent relationship with my husband. And just like I mentioned earlier about a codependent not being able to see the reality of their part in this whole picture, I had to get myself out of that codependent place myself by seeing that I was choosing my life. And what I found out was that by changing one part of a system, you change the entire system. And although I can't change my husband, changing myself completely changes the system of our relationship. The trick is that it does take time and consistency, because what's also true is that when one part of a system changes, the rest of the system reacts strongly and tries to bring that part of the system back to homeostasis. And you've probably experienced this in your life, whether it was in just a small way of your spouse Kind of sabotaging your diet. Like, let's go out to dinner when they knew you just started this diet. And sometimes that is what makes change so hard. Often it's a subconscious bringing back to homeostasis, but your partner is gonna try to bring you back. But if you maintain the new level of health, the system will find a new homeostasis, a new norm, and you are on the path to creating a healthy interdependent relationship. So you do this by starting to be honest with yourself and your partner about how you feel, what you think, what's going on for you in your relationship. You've got to stop the negative thinking. Stop the thinking that tells yourself that your needs don't matter. And that's something you may need to do some work on. I'm actually starting a self-talk course, or maybe you can get some help otherwise, learning how to stop your negative self-talk. You have to work on not taking things personally. Not everything is about you. In fact, most things have nothing to do with you. Your spouse's behavior is probably something to do with his childhood. It has nothing to do with you. And most of the things that happen in relationship are not personal. It's other people just being who they are and us getting very offended by it as if it's personal. Another is you need to take breaks. Sometimes you just need your own space, time out, and force yourself to do it even though sometimes that might feel comfortable, meaning do things by yourself. Take breaks from the relationship. Have something that is just yours to give yourself a sense of independence that's not tied to the relationship. And of course, always consider therapy, counseling, life coaching— so important. Rely also on On a support network. If you don't have one, I've said before, go get therapy, figure out a way to start creating your own support network because you've gotta talk about what's going on with you to someone. And last, you have to establish boundaries and stick to them. That is the core of codependence, is learning how to erect healthy boundaries and be consistent with them. It's a lifelong process. It is a journey, but you have to recognize what boundaries right now are wide open for you. And that is not health. So takeaways: you are a strong woman and your story doesn't define you. You can be strong and you can still be in a codependent relationship. And if you recognize yourself in any of the descriptions about which I spoke today, it's time to take some steps because being in a codependent relationship is not healthy. But getting out of a codependent relationship Is doable. You've got this. So thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show. New shows go up on Tuesdays. Subscribe now so that you don't miss any episodes, and also connect with me by joining my mailing list. I send out weekly, sometimes biweekly emails straight into your inbox of encouragement and motivation for being the strong woman that you are and you desire to be. Connect with me at drzoeshaw.com. Have a great week.

You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman, with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your mind in the superwoman game. Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends. And subscribe to her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of the Dr. Zoe Show.