How to Spot and Heal a Codependent Relationship

Sometimes we can feel drained, exhausted and unseen in our relationships. Sometimes we can find ourselves in a place where we've built our whole life around a relationship. And if that relationship goes away, we feel like our whole life would fall apart. If you've ever been there or if you've ever felt like God, my relationship is way too codependent and I don't know how to break the cycle. I don't know how to change this. I'm so glad you're here because that's exactly what we're talking about today on the healing is possible experience. We're going. Okay. Three, two, one. Foreign. Welcome to the show. I'm Rebecca Silence, Emotional healing and relationship coach, media personality and author, here to help you manage and master your emotions so that you can feel even more like you and even more alive. Let's talk about codependency, because this is an issue that affects every one. So we're going to explore codependence and if you stick around till the end of the episode, I'm going to share the one thing I teach my private coaching clients that helps them break through codependence and connect to a whole next level of real connection and real intimacy in their relationships. So what are the three things that you need to know to help break up with codependence for good? Number one, co dependence means that you're giving yourself up and you're giving yourself away all in the name of love. Now, we are programmed. We, we live in a culture and in a society, especially in the United States, where we are trained and taught that you loving other people more than yourself, you loving at your own expense, it's the right thing to do and it's a prerequisite for love. And I'm here to say no. No way. Oh, my God, stop the presses. There is definitely a better way, right? You betraying yourself in the name of love, that is essentially what codependence is. And there is absolutely never a good reason, a good time to be codependent and to back burner you so that somebody else can get their way, get their needs met, be happier, be not upset, Whatever your justification in your mind is around why you would show up as codependent, it's never serving the other person's highest growth. So this is really, really, really important what I'm saying. Even if this is what we've seen, this is what's modeled, this is what we've been taught is the right thing to do. You giving you up for someone else, it's never Helping them with their highest, most evolved, most healthy soul journey. It's helping them stay stuck in their past and in their patterns and in their pain. Every time we engage and relate in a way where we are being co dependent. Okay, the second thing I want us to know about codependence is it actually kills the experience of love. It doesn't enhance it. So here's what I mean by that. When you're codependent, the person that you are attempting to relate to in relationship with, they're no longer relating to you, they're relating to you. Acting, you become an actor when you're codependent. The truth of who you are, your authenticity, it gets squashed like a bug when you choose a codependent path. It's not this person able to see, hear, relate to or experience you anymore because you're in an act, wearing a mask in a version of you that's completely fake. Because you don't want conflict or you don't want them upset, or because you feel like it's the right thing to do, to say yes to what you think they need you to say yes to, to show up the way you think you should be showing up for them. But if it's you showing up for them in a way where you back burner you, there's no relationship anymore, you've just squashed the experience of love, the availability for an experience of love, like a bug so fast. And it so again does not need to be this way. The third thing I want to say here about codependence that I'm going to spend a little bit more time on because I think it's really, really important is we're, we're modeling and playing out when we're being codependent. What we saw codependence, it's actually a coping skill and it's avoidance to intimacy. It creates disconnection, it builds a wall between you and people that you love and want relationship with. And it's us coping and managing the way we learned we should. Because this scenario, this external circumstance in some way, shape or form is reminding us of a moment in childhood, a moment when we were younger, that this is what we learned, is the way to navigate moments like these. Let's unpack this a little bit further. We learned love growing up. And I am telling you, after countless years, two day couples intensives, countless couples that I've worked with for the past 15 years, I see it over and over and over again. When codependence is present in a relationship, people are not again, being themselves. They're being their mother or they're being their father. And they are playing out what they saw growing up with the person they're with now instead of creating a brand new, fresh, exciting, healthy, mature experience of love that is not what they saw before, but what they desired and what they decided they were going to create for themselves. So often we are repeating the heartbreaks and traumas and patterns that we saw our parents playing out with our partners now. And in the name of love, we're showing up the way we think we should versus the way that would be honest and authentic and true to who we are now, not true to our unhealed inner child's need to be loved or to not have to go through the trials and tribulations that we saw our parents going through. Right? So you can create a brand new experience of love, but not if you're coping with love, because you learned that love is painful, that you learned that conflict is a bad thing, that you learned that if your partner is not happy, you can't be happy. There's so much that's codependent that we don't even know is codependent. So what if instead of codependence, we decided to be fully alive, fully joyful, fully expressing our love unapologetically, first for ourselves, then for our partner or the person in front of us because we can. What if we weren't afraid that if we're too happy, if we're too vibrant, if we're too alive and liberated and free, that nobody could possibly love us? Because how do we become relatable? Do you want to relate to people stuck in their past and in their pain? Or do you want to relate to people that also desire a new experience of love, of relationship, of connection? Codependence kills connection. Codependence is how we've coped based on what we've learned. Codependence is you in self betrayal and committed to self betrayal because you want the other person to love you. But there is no way that this other person can love you when you're not even showing up, when you're not even there in the mix because you're acting and showing up as the person you think you should be versus risking letting the vulnerable, brave, courageous, real you lead the moment and risk seeing what happens. We don't know when we raise the bar, when we raise our vibration, when we give to ourselves so that we can give to another person, that that's going to go well. But man, do we know the Co dependence dance. Well, we have memorized, like if you grew up in the 80s like me, you know, we know the Macarena, right? We know codependence. It's a dance that we do, it's a dance that we're committed to, it's a dance that we expect, and it's a dance that we're comfortable with. But it kills off relationships. So here's a couple of other things I want you to know about codependence. When we are codependent in our relationship, we kill off our ability to to have an independent experience outside of the relationship. Here's what I mean by that. When I'm codependent, all that matters is preserving the relationship and I no longer am connected to me as an individual or to the other person as an individual. There are really three big pieces that I teach my couples. When they're all three firing on all cylinders. The relationship is healthy, mature, and has a shot at being completely different than what either person has ever seen or experienced before. So there's you, there's the other person, and there's the relationship. What happens in codependence is there's me, there's you, there's us. And it all becomes a cluster, it all becomes enmeshed. And each person is losing themselves again in the name of love in an effort to try to preserve the relationship. But if independence is threatened and freedom is threatened in a relationship, people get resentful, people get frustrated, right? So a better way, a healthier way, is to take responsibility for your individuality, your independent experience, to have an independent vision for where your life is going outside of the relationship, and to support your partner and having all of that for themselves as well. From there, you can together, 5050 co create and navigate the relationship, have a shared vision, have a shared vision, know what you want together and support each other's individual pursuits. And that is the opposite of codependence. And that's healthy. And that makes room for whatever the two of you want to create together. There's no right or wrong way to do relationship. There's just what is right and best for you and for your relationship. I've never worked with a couple and help them design their relationship in the same way that another couple I've worked with chose to design their relationship, right? Like, we all get our unique experience of life and we can all have our own unique, glorious and blissfully joyful experience of relationship. But again, not if we're stuck in a codependent rut, not considering ourselves. Have Your own position, have your own opinion, have your own identity, and the relationship gets so much healthier. And when you're codependent, you don't have a position, you don't have an opinion, you don't have your own individual identity because you're just morphing into a chameleon version of yourself to try to keep the peace, to try to preserve. But man, if you're doing that and you're not resentful, already it's coming. And if your partner is giving themselves up to try to make you happy, they're either resentful or they're about to be. And it doesn't have to be this way. So let me share with you now the number one most important lesson that I believe I teach my couples. When they are finding themselves in a codependent pattern and in a codependent dynamic that has them just crawling out of their skin and wanting more, but not wanting to have to lose their partner. So you can lose the codependence without having to lose the relationship. And if you end a codependent relationship without healing your codependent patterns and wounds, you're just going to play out the same damn thing again with somebody new. So here's what I do. This is the lesson that I think is so essential and so game changing. So the lesson is this. If and when any relationship is feeling stale or heavy or even like it's suffocating you to death and sucking the life out of you, it's time to take self responsibility for you giving you up in the name of love. So the processes to break up with giving you up in the name of love, to break up with self betrayal in the name of love, and instead to risk telling the truth about who you are. Now it's about giving yourself permission to have as many allow me to reintroduce myself moments as you need to with your partner. This version of me, my truth in this moment is. And while you're taking responsibility for your truth, for your needs, for your desires, for your wants, offering solutions about what would work better for you to your partner, please also take responsibility for your fears and your wounds and your triggers and your unhappiness or suffering or whatever version of that is showing up for you, if it feels heavy, if you're hurting, if you're resentful, you've given you up somewhere along the way, you've maybe become one of your parents, you've maybe decided again without meaning to and maybe not even consciously, that this is just what happens. Love means My dreams have to wait. Love means that I actually am no longer important, just my spouse and my kids. Love means I give up my career to be a homemaker. Love means that if I'm not this genes size I'm going to get cheated on. Love means that if my partner's cheating on me, that must mean something's wrong with me. These are all lessons and patterns that we play out and that we decide are gospel and true and inevitably going to repeat unless we we morph into the version of who we think we should be so we don't get hurt like our parents did or like we did in our childhood or like we have in past relationships. But no risk telling the truth about who you are now, what you want now. Decide you can have it all. And this is the big hack self responsibility. Your partner isn't hurting you or the reason that you feel good. In moments that you feel good, you are. It's the meaning that you are making up. It's what you've decided about you and what you're making your partner's actions or lack thereof mean about you. That's either having you feel good or having you feel terrible. It's not actually them. And what we're not taught is that we can experience the best of ourselves. We can experience the best of life. We can pursue joy and the highest possible vibration. Even if our partner is having a bad day, even if our partner is being cruel, even if our partner isn't showing up the way we would desire or supporting us in our independence and our dreams the way we wish they would. We can experience love and self, love and possibility and joy and happiness. Regardless, it really is possible. So you're the one responsible for the experience of life you're having. And chances are if you are codependent and unhappy in a relationship, it's more that you don't like you in the relationship than it is you having a problem with your partner. I'm going to say this one more time because it is so important. If you're unhappy in a relationship, you don't like who you're being. That's the issue. And when you're brave enough to get back into liking you again, no matter how your partner receives it or shows up now, the relationship has a chance. The more codependent you are, the more dead in the water your relationships are. The more you are brave and risk I'm going to have a new experience, the more likely the relationship has a shot at reinvention. If you want support privately with your relationship just visit rebeccasilence.com right now. Either way, take what you've learned in this episode and pick one thing and write it down that you're going to implement and you're going to bring into your relationships. And it isn't an overnight fix. Codependence is a way of being that we have been trained, in some cases is even life or death. But it's not let codependence die. It won't kill your relationships. It will give you the opportunity to reinvent and heal and transform your relationship. And if you don't want codependent dynamics and your partner does, it's okay to break up with codependence and to let them go and to pursue a healthier, more mature love and experience of relationship that is available to you. But the only thing you have to lose in your relationship is you and don't you dare let that happen and let yourself be self responsible. If I'm experiencing resentment, where did I betray myself? If I'm experiencing suffering, where am I betraying myself? If I'm experiencing stress and pressure and overwhelm in my relationship, where am I betraying myself? If I am unsatisfied, where am I betraying myself? And the list could go on, but you get the point, right? No more self betrayal. Codependence is gross and real intimacy, real connection, soul connection, spiritual connection. That's what is available to you on the other side of co dependence. And even if you don't know anybody that isn't codependent, you can be the trailblazer for your life and for your relationships codependence. Hopefully I've done a good enough job here of lowering the value of codependence. It's a recipe for disconnection and disaster, period in your relationships. Nobody that's codependent is happy. People that are willing to be true to themselves even when it's not popular in their relationships, they thrive. Thank you for joining me for today's episode of the Healing Is Possible Experience. For more visit rebeccasilens.com Definitely, if you haven't already. Also check out my book Coming Back to Life anywhere books are sold. It's a great book to actually read with your partner to explore patterns and, you know, ways that you've learned to be in relationship that are codependent that no longer serve. And be sure to tune in every week for another episode. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and please do share today's episode with anyone that you think would benefit from a masterclass on how to break up with codependence and arrive at life on the other side. The darkness is real, but so is the light. And healing isn't promised, but it is possible for you and for me. And for all of us. Thanks again for being here. Love you so much. See you soon.