G'day A.J. Mahari here what do people with codependency have to
do among many other moving pieces in
recovery from codependency well it is about finding more of
yourself and building a stronger sense of self
so that means going back and doing some work
from your childhood family of origin etc so that you can
in this multi-faceted multi-layered healing and recovery process so that you
can work on integrating parts of yourself
that need to be fully integrated for you to be
able to identify the boundaries that you need
why you don't have them what happened in your childhood etc but
it's really about sense of self not the same as people with bpd
but there's an overlap there of some similarity but it's not to the same
extent as people with bpd but after these
cluster b relationships when people lose themselves even when
they might not have had this self-integrated whole object part
relationship to self you know lacking self-esteem and
lacking self-worth and having shame wounds etc
as i've talked about then it really becomes a journey
of many moving pieces and people really have to
commit to that engage with that and be really hungry to resolve the
issues the the multiple issues that lay between
what that are between why you are codependent
and where you need to go to be relating in much healthier ways
and having boundaries because there is this lack of sense of
self it's not entirely a lack of self but you
are to one degree or another somewhat fragmented in yourself
in your awareness of yourself sort of like
compartmentalization of feelings over here kind of repressed something
else over here denial defenses and not to the degree
of you know bpd or anything that at the heart of all of this
and many other issues and challenges people are going through in their life
along with codependency or people with codependency
is really the adverse childhood experience that creates
these very uh difficult relational patterns to undo
because the reason they came about in codependency these difficult these these
unhealthy relational patterns was for survival so therefore they get
tied back to somewhat
primal defenses maybe not as much as in bpd or npd then they also get tied back
to what are alloplastic defenses which to a
lesser degree than people with bpd people codependency are going to
struggle with this idea um so so people with bpd with
their alloplastic defenses tend to blame everybody else for
everything but there's this alloplastic defense
within codependency as well we're in and it stems from your
childhood wherein rather than blame everybody else
for what you're feeling how you're being hurt what's happening what's confusing
you what's devastating you you blame
yourself every single time and then if you're
with a partner you'll cluster be whatever that blames
you too as they do that's what their alloplastic
defenses are about their more primal defenses um they say
everything is somebody else's fault well codependents are there like sponges
because of what you've gone through in your childhood doesn't have to be
horrible but it's different degrees for different
people many people codependency have a cluster be parent
not everybody but many do so codependence
on the opposite side of people with bpd with alloplastic defenses
and more primal kind of defenses are instead of blaming everybody
you know for what's going wrong although that ends up happening for a lot of
people codependency after you get really shattered and
tremendously wounded by somebody with bp or npd
you you can start blaming a lot um and maybe not taking that personal
responsibility but codependents notoriously take way too much
responsibility for everybody else's stuff seeking approval wanting to be the
nice guy wanting to be the liked person at all cost losing yourself to that and
the other thing is so codependents tend to take on everything like it's
their fault whereas people bpd or narcissists like
they're shoving it out into the world and and so really in codependency we see
like what i would really say is a more proper way to say this would be reverse
alloplastic defenses you know i was like well well it must be
my fault i must have done something wrong
i i must i i cause they're not happy they're not approving of me this
isn't working out and there's so many feelings that go
with things that you learn in childhood that
create a codependency for you that are that were about survival like i
said so that makes it much more core
deep than people realize so it's adverse childhood experience
as well as is bpd as is npd as are many things that are
called mental illnesses unquote that are really adverse experience and
extreme adverse experience in childhood that
have a context that needs to be unpacked and
kind of like parsed and looked at and the pieces so taken apart
to put back together in a healthier way this is not going to happen with
somebody guaranteeing you some quick fix some easy thing watch a
video watch a bunch of videos and you can heal yourself it it just
doesn't work that way like i said so hopefully you're gonna get yourself in
if you're not already in a process with somebody who is like myself an
expert in this and helping people to heal their codependency and what all
that really does mean in a much deeper way than the fact that
you maybe you've been with a cluster b or you still are etc
because it because codependency is not just as i think i said in another video
it's not just fused to cluster b it's not fused to the
relationship you're in right now or a relationship that just devastated
you because that is a replication of something that
the codependency that exists within you was there before
that happened and then you get like a double
woundedness factor there so it's really important to know that
codependency is the reason uh for many
why you'll get into the unhealthy bond with a cluster b
often people do it's not the other way around it's not that by being in that
relationship it caused your codependency might have
made it worse might have made you much more aware of
it or something inside right but it's also codependency
is really an a response to adverse
childhood experience that really does
yeah i want to say teach children because it doesn't teach it does the
opposite it leaves you without modeling and having been taught how to
manage your emotions how to know what you're responsible for
or not how to have the boundaries in that regard between self and other
you know so codependency recovery involves you know
becoming much more emotionally literate raising your emotional intelligence
skills and tools and you know skill building
and it's it's because so many people especially after relationships with
cluster b with codependency they're now on the dangerous psychiatric
medications you might be one person i have many
clients who are in this situation because
they are suffering so much and what i really want you to hear and understand
about codependency and the reason why
it is a process of healing and recovery that you shouldn't just do with just
anybody or do by yourself is that
there's there's so much that underpins what you've experienced
in your adult relationships whether they've been cluster b
or had other issues or challenges because
people with codependency lacking self-worth lacking self-esteem
lacking somewhat a sense of self lacking part of that
needing to be more fully self-integrated in a process of healing and recovery
which does take work and takes expertise on the person you're
going to work with part to help guide you through that and what
all that really means so it's really important to know that
codependency is really entrenched
by the time that you might become aware of it
because of a cluster b relationship or aware of it in some other way
in your life and many people with codependency will have substance
abuse issues and struggle with that because
it's a way to try to not feel the pain that you might not be holy in touch with
while you're feeling the pain the codependency is extremely
painful and that's why in in healing and recovery journeys you
really need to work with people who are expert in this area and not just
showing up saying they're recovered and now all these wonderful
really exploitative guarantees and promises to you because
it this is serious stuff and this really is about
you learning more about you here being healed changing old patterns and
to do that it's really rooting around in
primal emotions and people need to learn how to cope
with that and and get skills and tools and
strategies which i offer clients in the process of doing that work of
healing from codependency and or your last
relationship or the on and off again relationship
so and there is the addiction factor in codependency
relationship addiction and the chemical soup of the reality of withdrawal
and it's very painful and what you're experiencing with codependency
is you're experiencing whatever you are in your adult relationship right now or
just did or have or maybe a series of adult relationships
have been very painful and shattering for all different kinds of reasons or
they were all cluster b but you have a deeper level of pain
under all of that that so you can't just so so this is why people get stuck not
being able to move on from the cluster b because it's not just all about the
cluster b it seems like it in here now doesn't it
but it's not and so it's it's what's come
up again or come up more to your awareness
from that recent relationship or relationship you're still kind of like
in or out of or you're not sure and so it's not just that you're going to heal
from that relationship like codependency is not so tied just to
the relationship with a borderline or a narcissist
it's deeper than that and it's from childhood and so it that's why it's
so incredibly painful and it's another reason why it's so
incredibly difficult for people to go no contact stay no contact stop
the contact deal with paul's hope endless hope that isn't really what hope
is and it's really self-defeating and
really painful for so many people so i hope that you'll find this video
helpful and the intent with it is really you know if you're somebody with
codependency who's not quite taking it seriously enough
yet if you think that watching anybody's videos
is going to help you heal and could give you a
coping technique or tool here and there could give you information
but no you have to dedicate yourself to investing
in your own healing and recovery journey and that takes time
and like i said it doesn't happen in two months or four months or six months
and especially after cluster b relationship or maybe you've had many
challenges in your life due to what your adverse childhood experience
was some people not all people with codependency are the
same but i can say one thing that applies to
pretty much across the board people with
codependency you are not really in touch enough with
your emotions and here comes the slippery rather
dangerous part of getting into healing and recovery if
you try to do it on your own or you listen to somebody who's promising you
have been guaranteeing you everything through like general videos etc
no you need your own specific process and what's really important about that
is that you can't unfold the journey for yourself i
couldn't do it for myself years ago i needed help with it it's really
important to reach out for help and it's really important to know that
you know i have a lot of clients when i first speak to them first couple
sessions they're like but how does this work but what does this really mean
people have to find their way through that i do my best to explain it
but you know the best way to be healing and recovering
is to be looking at what happened in your childhood what you learned there
what isn't serving you what hurts so much and how to unlearn that
and relearn a whole bunch of other coping tools and skills and how to get
in touch with emotions emotional literacy is critical
to recovery from codependency because people learn in childhood
there's no place in your family abortion for your feelings or often
very much not with at least a parent if not both
but families of origin and their dysfunction creating codependency
in in many many people as children it's complicated it really is
complicated and it's deep inside of you and
for you to be able to journey through that
and learn what that's all about the key thing is you need to really have
coping tools and skills to be able to start to manage your emotions to get in
touch with your emotions not the least of which and more
importantly essentially is the parts of self not
integrated in wounded inner child which might involve different age stages
of an inner child that is a lack of self-cohesion
self-integration so you're not really able with codependency to be a whole
object relational unit with yourself first
which is really important before you start to relate
to the object other this is not just terminology for people with bpd object
relations is very informative about the way in
which we actually do relate to each other
when it's going all wrong when it's unhealthy when it's really painful
or when it's working well and when it has a healthy basis to it
so i hope something i said was helpful but please know
the codependency recovery and people with cptsd are codependency
any kind of adverse severe adverse or adverse childhood experience
this is where this all begins like pete walker says in his book
cptsd that begins in early childhood too so do things get maybe come more to your
consciousness triggered set off more through other
kinds of relationships and as you're older
absolutely but that's not where the difficulty starts
and if you approach it as if that's where it starts
you're not going to get to the deepest work that you need to really get
you know into that recovered and bounded and more self-worth and self-esteem
integrated you take care