How to Trust Yourself and Let Go of Codependency

  Hello friends, how are you doing today? How are you, like, genuinely doing today? Getting to the point of recording this podcast was kind of an effort. Can I tell you about it? Well, it's my podcast, so I'm going to. I have been planning on recording this podcast for, I don't know four hours now?

Probably about four hours. And To show you that I am not exempt from the challenges that you also struggle with on a daily basis. A slight switch up in my routine can completely like throw me off and it takes so long to gain the executive functioning to get back to the tasks that I was wanting to do.

Simply just being on Facebook and scrolling when I plan on just going on there and posting and getting off that didn't happen. And having a really lovely conversation with someone that I wanted to have a conversation with Having a hard time pulling away from that and then realizing oh shit I have a client here in a bit, but then they had to reschedule last minute And I'm like, I'm having a hard time getting started here.

Here are all the things. And also, I'm trying this new thing where I am doing video as well as audio. And that seems really scary. Because in my head I'm like, okay, well it's a huge fucking deal. I have to do my hair, I have to do my makeup, I have to make sure the background looks okay. I need to make sure that I look good.

Be in a comfortable place because I can't sit all the way back in my chair. Else I'm not going to be able to see the screen. Which I wrote out my transcript this time of things I want to say versus just having notes next to me in my comfy little corner. And there was just a lot of details and I was worried about how I'm going to be perceived on this video being autistic.

Like. Eye contact is a bitch. And I realized a few years back when I recorded videos for a previous business of, I didn't realize how much I look around as I'm talking. I did not realize that. And now that I know that I'm autistic, it's something that I am very conscious and very aware of. So, all these thoughts came in, and then I'm like, you know what, fuck it, maybe, maybe I just shouldn't use video for my podcast.

And then I thought, well, actually, if someone doesn't like the fact that I'm looking all over when they're listening to my podcast, then don't watch the fucking video, or don't listen to my podcast if you don't like me, because I'm autistic, and that's a trait about me. So. So that's what happened in my head before pressing record.

I'm really happy to be here with you though. I'm really excited about what what I'm going to be talking about today. Which is, I think the quote, if you love it, let it go, is the stupidest, most inaccurate quote that I've ever heard. Well, maybe not that extreme, but I think we need to change our approach to this.

This quote puts a lot of emphasis on the other person. If you love that person despite their actions, despite their words, despite their bullshit, let it go. And if it comes back to you, It was meant to be yours. Excuse me, but what the fuck? Maybe it is the autistic in me that needs more context, but I have my own quote.

And that is, If you can trust yourself in any situation, set expectations based on what would bring you the most fulfilling life, and trust that if they can't rise to the occasion, that you're going to be okay. Let that sink in. So here's a little backstory in my life. I used to be an incredibly codependent person, especially when it came to romantic relationships or encounters with men, I so desperately wanted to be loved, wanted to be validated, wanted to be told that I was okay.

And I know that that stemmed back from my childhood and it stemmed back from the love that I got from my dad or lack of the lack of priority that was put on me Growing up when you are shown throughout your entire childhood, you don't matter. You internalize that you don't matter. So I accepted crumbs.

I accepted any attention I could get, and I'm an incredibly honest person. It's one of my core values. My mom used to tell me that if you don't have your words, you don't have anything. But I found myself in situations that felt. Less than honest. I feel both shame and sadness when looking in the past, because I know how incredibly alone that I felt.

I know that I was just trying to make the pain stop if even for a moment, which is why I put myself in these positions where I was getting validation for a moment, for a night, for an hour that wasn't going to make me feel good with people who were in situations that I shouldn't have been in a situation with them with, if you can catch my drift And I just, I look back on, on that previous version of me with so much sadness and so much empathy.

And it's a lot less judgment that I used to have. In the moment I realized what I was doing was wrong, quote unquote, because of the morality of it. But I look back now and I see that it was just someone who was really just struggling to be loved. And it didn't mean that I was inherently a bad person. It just meant that I had this internal belief that I am not good enough and there's never going to be somebody that chooses me, which put me, it predisposed me for shitty romantic relationships because I didn't have someone to model that, Hey, this is how you're treated when someone puts you first.

I didn't see that in my mom's relationship. I don't really see that in any relationships in my family. I see a lot of women that are compromising themselves and their self worth and don't even have a self worth because of their childhood and what they were taught about themselves. So What I didn't know at the time is that I was reaching for someone to fill in the emotional holes in my heart, the intense grief that I was left with when my mom died when I was just 18, not having someone to tell me that I'm loved and that I'm worthy.

The same way that my mom did, I didn't realize until after she was gone, how much I depended on her to give me my self worth. She's someone that would tell me all the time, like, you know, you're so beautiful. You're so smart. You can do anything. And I think it's really great that parents tell their kids that, but my mom told me this so much that.

It didn't really, I didn't feel like it meant anything when she told me in the moment, but when it all went away, I realized that all of my self worth was wrapped up in those words that I would hear every single day. So. I went from depending on her to give me self worth, I went from codependency and tending to her emotional needs to feel okay in myself, to trying to find that in men, without even realizing.

I realize now looking back on the relationship between my mom and I right before she passed, it was not, I, when my parents separated when I was 16, and she really leaned on me for emotional support. I won't forget someone who I refer to as like a second mom to me saying, you guys kind of grew up together and at the time I didn't even think about how fucked that was.

I'm fulfilling an emotional need in my mom. I'm a kid. I am not prepared to do that. I am not equipped to do that. But when you're a kid and you're grow up in a certain family, they don't ask you, hey, kid with a underdeveloped brain, can you be my everything? You are just expected to be their everything.

And since you are reliant on them, On a biological level and on a very real physical level for shelter and survival, you find yourself believing subconsciously that that is your role in life to be the emotional, to fill the emotional void in other people. It's funny because I used to think that I was an incredibly extroverted person with a really high sex drive when in reality I was seeking emotional safety and validation in other people.

Now that I really like who I am, my need to be around other people and my sex drive have both changed dramatically. I couldn't trust myself to be alone back then, not truly alone at that time. So that's a little bit about like where I came from and the fucked up patterns that I was in realizing that I was emotionally codependent.

Now.

In my marriage, I've not been quiet about their shit we're working through. I found the same dependency to fill another void. Fast forward, and I've done a lot of personal work on myself to really like who I am. Getting to that point where I'm comfortable being alone or being by myself and filling my own emotional needs, it took a lot of work.

But I found the same dependency to fill another void. Seven years ago, I was working three jobs while doing a full time school load in college. I was paying all my bills. It wasn't fun. I had a max out credit card. There were a couple of times I remember stealing food from a grocery store that I worked at.

Something that I still think about to this day. But I went from being a very self assured person in that moment to something happening. I went from having no degrees, struggling to find enough work to pay my bills while sleeping a grand total of maybe four hours a night on a good night, but knowing I'd be able to trust myself to figuring it out.

To being someone who is now 30 years old with a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, a profitable business. And somehow losing trust in myself that if I had to, I could do life alone financially. And this lack of trust in, this lack of trust in yourself, it'll prevent you from having healthy relationships.

It has caused so many issues in my marriage. It caused me to not state what I truly need and fear that if Joe can't rise to the occasion, that I wouldn't be okay on my own. And let me tell you, that is a scary fucking thing to come to terms with. So I dove really deep into that thought train, and I had to take my own advice that I give to my clients who don't feel like they have the evidence to prove that they could take care of themselves financially, if it was in their best interest to leave their relationship.

In reality, I can. I'd be okay. But I had to dig really deep into why I have been trying to force outcomes in our marriage instead of setting boundaries and standards. And then quietly observing. Why has the quiet observation felt so damn hard? I didn't trust myself. And that realization hit me in the fucking face.

And once you see something like that, you can't unsee it. Since I was a little girl, my dream has been to be financially independent of any other person. To know that I've got my own back no matter what. That I'll never go without a home, food, and basic necessities. So when I realized that I didn't trust myself to provide that for myself, I felt like I was failing.

But here's the thing, I wasn't. I had the ability, and I have the ability, to take care of myself this entire time. I have evidence that I was able to do this without my degrees, working service jobs. So why would that change now that I have all of this evidence that I would be okay? In the same way that I had been okay in the past.

Realization number one. It was really important for my sense of peace that I know this fully. I'm someone that needs to ponder something to fucking death and really understand the Core of the issue. I'm someone that will ask myself why several times to get to that really uncomfortable truth, because despite how uncomfortable that truth is in the longterm, it's way more uncomfortable having that lack of inner peace that I feel only comes with a really deep understanding of yourself and taking that deep understanding and doing what's best for yourself. I am able to be the healthy half of the equation in my marriage with the confidence to set expectations and boundaries with peace as I am in observation mode to wait and see what happens.

I know that many of you grew up in homes that were similar to mine, at least in the fact that there was little certainty. Maybe you lacked certainty that there was enough money. Maybe you've lacked emotional security. Maybe you lacked both. Like I said, in different parts of my life, I lacked emotional certainty and I felt like I could take care of myself.

And then when I gained emotional certainty in myself, I gained a financial insecurity. For no good fucking reason. No logical reason. How you feel is always valid, but for no logical reason. But when you grow up in a house where your primary caregivers do not give you certainty, it's really hard to find it in yourself.

So give yourself grace if this is something that you are realizing about yourself. You may not have had a parent model behavior that showed you that they were confident in their own abilities to provide emotional or financial needs for themselves. I know that's the position my mother was in, but now I know a hundred percent in my soul that it's going to be okay no matter what.

I'm able to be incredibly honest about what I want for my life, what I know I deserve from a partner, and my own dreams, independent of any relationship I'm in. The trajectory of my life now, when I look at it, looking five years from now, is not dependent on any person other than myself. I know that I can get there one way or another, and it's this peace of mind that has allowed me to understand myself to a fuller depth, trust myself and quietly observe my marriage.

And that shift is powerful. When you go from feeling enmeshed in someone else's world to knowing that you're going to be okay, your relationship changes. I know that mine has. Because I no longer feel I need to rescue anyone for myself to be okay. Before it felt like we were both on a sinking ship. And if I didn't figure out a way to patch the boat, we were both going down.

Now it feels like we are both in our own boat floating along the same river. Except I know that if my boat gets a leak, that I'm going to be able to patch it. I have a patch kit with me. And now, I trust that Joe has the ability to patch his own boat, too. He doesn't need me to patch it. When you're in a relationship where your safety is contingent on the other person, it limits their ability to problem solve.

Think about it. How would it feel for someone to tell you, I don't think you have the ability to do that? You'd feel like shit. You lose confidence in your abilities too. And when you set expectations and boundaries and then step into observation mode, you give them the space to decide and act if they choose to meet them.

I feel this episode is equally a lesson in yourself and a lesson in relationships, which naturally has other people in it, unless it's the relationship with yourself. And I think it's time to ask yourself really hard questions. If you're struggling in your relationship, why is that? Is it that the other person's not treating you well?

Why is that person not treating you well? And in no way, shape or form, am I saying that it's your responsibility that someone doesn't treat you well? It's not the way that someone treats you is 100 percent their responsibility. But what I am saying is that it's really hard to even know if the relationship that you are in has the potential to be what you want it to be.

Unless you are able to step out of the leadership role, I'm realizing that the same qualities that make me a really good business owner in that I take charge. I'm a problem solver. I will do whatever it takes to solve a problem. I don't walk away quickly. I have been my business is almost three years old next month, and it's only been this year that I've really made serious money from it.

I'm not someone that quits. But when you're in a relationship, if you are always in leadership mode, if you are always the one that is problem solving, initiating, problem solving, overexpending yourself, you don't even know if the other person has the ability to meet your expectations. When you set expectations and standards and then quietly observe if they are willing to do the work to meet them, or if that person's even meant for you.

You can't even come to that conclusion until you're in that place. It doesn't matter how much therapy that I do. I've been in marriage therapy with with Joe now for a few months and it's only now that I've come to this realization that The reason I felt so much panic when it looked like it was coming to an end is because I didn't trust myself to be able to give myself everything that I need completely on my own.

There are some things that you can't get unless you're with another person. When you're having an experience, a way to enhance that experience or to make it even bigger than it is, is to share it with another person. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the ability to know that emotionally you're going to be okay, financially you're going to be okay, the life you dream of is possible even without another person.

And until you get to that point where you know in your heart you would be okay, you will not have the peace that you need to bring calmness into being the other half of the equation. And it's that calmness that allows that person to change. If they so choose to. I hope that this has been impactful for you.

I hope that if you are really struggling in your relationship, that you're able to ask yourself a lot of questions of why. It's really easy to look at what the other person is doing wrong, and I'm not even saying that what you're doing is wrong. What you're doing is based off of a lot of survival. It's based off of what you were taught.

It's really hard to reprogram things that you have come to believe because of your subconscious your subconscious brain. But it is possible to act differently. It is possible to come to those deeper understandings and start to live your life differently and show up differently for yourself and for others.

I hope that you believe in your ability to get to the root cause of why you feel the way that you do. And I hope that you know that no matter what, you have the ability to make sure that you are okay. Until next time, my friends. Bye now!