I
Received a really interesting letter from Tirana in Brooklyn from Brooklyn, New York
And she's given me permission to use her name and she writes dear Lisa. I finally have a name for what I feel I am
Codependent holy crap your videos awaking me up big time
What I would like to know is should I be trying to wake my friends and family up to I see codependency now everywhere
How did you deal with this when you were waking up? I'm beginning to feel lonelier than ever. Is this normal?
Thanks for all you do. Love to wanna from Brooklyn. So Tawana, um, you know, it's
Everybody goes through what you're going through when you start waking up and you have a name for this
not feeling good enough when you have you've discovered a name for your
unconscious sometimes neurotic need
completely invisible need
Program to seek an unconscious sometimes neurotic need to seek validation outside of yourself
You're holding your breath waiting for the person that you're with to say
Oh, you look beautiful or oh you did a good job. You know, you are a people pleaser
You are somebody who you know, you're the first person at work in the morning. You're the last person to leave
You know
You're always going going going going going you have you always try to prove yourself to other people
And you don't realize that you may be seeking a sense of I am enoughness from outside of you
Now this could drive us all really
Bonkers because it's an unconscious drive and then what happens is when we start to become aware of it
We realize that we have to literally stop our mine
So when we will meet one we're going throughout our day we have to ask ourselves
Is this a codependent behavior or is this a non codependent behavior? Is this a healthy behavior?
Is this an unhealthy behavior? Am I seeking validation or am I generally doing this thing?
Because I want to do it and I expect nothing in return
um, you know, am I vacuuming the rug before my husband gets home, you know and emptying all the garbage pails and
spraying air freshener around the house
you know and putting my lipstick on because I'm hoping that today when he walks through the door, he's gonna say
Wow, honey, the place looks great. By the way, you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen
you know if we're doing
things in our life physical things in our life because we're holding our breath waiting for someone outside of us to deliver us a
Message that we are enough or that we are valuable then we're literally giving our power over to other people
When we start waking up and we stop we start taking responsibility for that behavior
It could be very very numbing. It could be very
Anxiety-provoking because the brain doesn't know what to do, right the brain only knows
To play with the tools that are in the shed
So if people pleasing toning yourself down nodding your head when you feel like saying l know, you know
if
That's all your brain knows how to do that's all your brains gonna know how to do until you learn how to do something else
so Tawana
I would say it's very normal to wake up and feel I use the word topsy-turvy in the book the road back to me because
it was like
Like I also say that when I was waking up it was bittersweet. It was like what like where have I been?
First of all, like how could I not have known that I was seeking?
Everybody else's approval for a right to breathe. How could I have not have known that so was I judging myself?
Since that time in my life many years ago. I realized that it's best to nudge the judge and never judge yourself
Never judge yourself discern good behavior from poor behavior
Don't judge other people discern, you know healthy person unhealthy person above the veil below the veil
Reactive person mean spirited person, you know, it's good to discern. It's not good to judge
So when you start working waking up, it could be very topsy-turvy. It can be very bittersweet and
Also, very exciting that holy crap if I stay on this path and I learn tools to heal my whole life
Can change was very very exciting?
and you also in most cases I find that clients that I coach with and people in my programs they ask the similar questions like
Shouldn't my mother know she's codependent
Shouldn't I wake her up to the idea that my father who is an alcoholic and narcissistic and a gambler and all this
Shouldn't she know?
that there's a better way or
Shouldn't I tell my brother who was in a very dysfunctional?
relationship with his wife
should I tell him and
My best friend who was on her third marriage
You know who keeps attracting men who don't work and she has two and three jobs and her kids are begging for her
Attention or her children are estranged from her because she keeps picking men over the children
Shouldn't my friend know that this is a codependent behavior?
And I would say yes, they should know but not everybody's ready to change because to heal from codependency
Requires great mental strength, it requires great emotional endurance
It requires the ability to sit in pain, right? We don't want to sit in pain. We want to avoid pain
We don't want to feel our attachment traumas
We don't want to feel visceral memories - when we were infants and we were being abandoned and ignored what the brain does want to
feel that
in fact
our brains are designed to run away from that right which is why we end up in these codependent behaviors in the first place because
When I fear you leaving me
even though you might be a very dysfunctional person when I feel you leaving then I get in contact with my
toxic loneliness I get in touch with my abandonment trauma I get in touch with that time in my life where I was a
Powerless, maybe infant or a toddler or you know young child preschooler or you know aged?
school-aged child where I'm
Experiencing this detachment and this disconnection from the people that were supposed to love me, and I don't want to feel that
So as an adult because as it is below social it be above everything. I'm
Experiencing today is a mirror to what I experienced in childhood if I'm experiencing trauma today
that means that I have an unresolved trauma from the past and
Today is an opportunity to heal that which is why I do what I do
I want to encourage people who are lost and lonely and afraid and who have feel will feel abandoned and
Who don't know what they're doing wrong?
I want to encourage you to figure it out and never give up and use this
Magnificent brain that human beings have been born with to your advantage
Use cognition to your advantage learn to organize your thoughts in a fashion that allows you to connect to higher thought processes
and allows you to understand your lower thoughts for
the the mind the seven year old six year old five year old psyche that was being created and imprinted by
experiences that were not your fault
I want you to understand that because it's really really exciting to know that
You can be liberated from that and bring more love and light to enter yourself and that's the entire planet
This is the shift. This is this is truly the work that we are here to do. It's to evolve the consciousness. And so
Yes, it's we want people to wake up but not everybody is prepared
For what? It means to heal from codependency to heal from codependency
You've got to be willing to look inside you've got to be willing to
acknowledge the pain that has been repressed and denied and
Suppressed and you've got to be able to learn and that's what I teach people taught to do how to sit in the anxiety
and the pain of the moment and just extend your ability to sit with it without fleeing from it and
developing a codependent behavior or an addiction or some type of
dissociation or
Distraction to avoid the paint so we have to learn to sit and whip sit with it
and we have to learn how to observe it and then process it allow our bodies to eliminate it and then once it's cleared
learn how to deal how to teach ourselves
literal
step-by-step
Skills that'll allow us to prevent ourselves from being codependent in the future, right?
So we're all about just breaking patterns as we go and getting better and healthier and healthier as we go. It's not an all-or-nothing
It's not one day. I was putting pennant and the next day I wasn't this is a long freaking journey
And I'm you know in recovery many many years now close to two decades and I'm still working on
Tuning my vibrations and tuning my thoughts and paying attention to my beliefs and practicing non-resistance in blah blah blah
So too Tawana, yes, you're gonna start to see a lot more patterns that you ever saw before because you're not unconscious anymore
You're living from a higher state of awareness. Right? So you're out of the amygdala
The hippocampus isn't controlling your reactions every more anymore, which is awesome
Thank you so much for waking up and bringing more love and light into this world. I think it's awesome
You will feel a tendency to want to wake people up, too
My best advice is you know, people will begin to say, you know
Tawana you seem so much more balanced you seem so much more happy like
You know that girl said something to you and you didn't react and you're gonna be like, yeah
I love myself
Like when you love yourself really you don't attract so much garbage and you know
if if
People are around you. They're trying to hurt you like you don't accept their energy anymore because you know that you're not, you know
and just by being a shining example of
You know a true sense of worthiness of the self, especially if you haven't had it before
People will start asking you questions about why do you think you are this way? Like, what? Do you know that?
I don't know and that's when you can the door keeps open to someone far it in mine and
That's when you be able to shine your light on them even more in the meantime. Just continue to work on yourself and
You know, if you do find yourself saying mom that's codependent like you don't have to deal with that guy
like he's just taking advantage of you and you're
You don't feel like you're good enough and that's why you don't want to be alone
And that's the piece you were abandoned as a child and nobody was up there for you
You know, nobody supported you that's why and your mom might look at you like girl. Shut up
You know that might happen or mom might say yeah, you know, I I really maybe you're right, you know
so I do think it's worth worth it, you know to give it a shot to
say something along those lines and like
Maybe even investigate, you know, but tiptoe around it
I got caught up many many years in dysfunctional thinking because when I found this out, I looked at my mom
I was like, oh my god
She's so codependent and my dad's a narcissist, you know
And like I want to save her and I looked at my sister's relationship with her ex-husband
I was like, I want to say her, you know, and I looked at my brother
I want to see him, you know
I wanted to save my nieces and my nephews but what ended up happening was I got kicked in the teeth, you know, um
I got slaughtered by my family when I started my father was like Alex
Psychological mumbo-jumbo and boy what a mess. He's in today. So he should have listened to me 20 years ago
but
So I would say my best advice is you know
if you feel like comfortable saying something to one of your friends about their behavior, you know, I would I
Would try to say something but be very careful about their reaction and don't take it
Personally know that to heal from codependency and to heal from narcissistic abuse
addictions and dissociation
Requires warrior-like strength a warrior is somebody to me that?
goes into battle knowing that
They're gonna feel pain most likely they're going to feel pain but they go anyway because they see the bigger picture
Because they want they believe peace is on the other end of that whatever conflict, you know
Or pain whatever whatever's on the other end is gonna be peaceful, you know
And so they're willing to sustain the trauma and the drama and the pain, you know to get to the other side
So you're a warrior to Lana and I'm so glad that you're here. I'm so honored by your presence
Thank you so much for watching. Please consider joining my facebook group and
maybe even my soon-to-be launched membership site and
You know just continue rockin on and learning all you can and and tapping into that amazing beautiful life. That is within you
Remember as you tap into that light
You not only benefit yourself your children
but people who live with you, but
You you really helped increase the vibrations of the planet, you know
And and your recovery is making the planet a better place for me for my husband and for my children
my future grandchildren and beyond so there are no words to thank those of you who are on this path and taking it seriously and
Who are interested in tools? There are no words for me to thank you for staying on this path. So
I'm gonna try anyway and say thank you. Thank you for being here now
I'm gonna say dear once I bow to the love in the light. That is absolutely