hey there everybody welcome back to week two of the codependency Series today we're
talking about the impact of codependent behavior I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes
last week we went through the different symptoms of codependent behavior and why you may have
developed them how they may be helping you feel safe and I asked you to think about
how you actually demonstrate those symptoms how you express hyper vigilance or control issues so
you start becoming aware of your behaviors and the functions they're serving but today we're
going to talk about how these behaviors impact you and your entire life and I call this the
Pacer impact and that stands for physical impact affective which is your emotional impact cognitive
environmental and relationship so how do each of these symptoms impact you as a whole person low
self-esteem and a need for external validation how does that affect you physically a lot of people
with low self-esteem fear abandonment they have a high level of anxiety which causes them to have an
exaggerated stress response it can cause a lot of stress-related illnesses it may make it harder to
sleep at night affectively or emotionally when you have low self-esteem again you may have a
lot of anxiety you may have a lot of depression you may feel hopeless and hopeless and unlovable
cognitively low self-esteem May regularly tell you you can't do this it is very disempowering
it tells you that you're not smart enough that you can't be trusted
relationally if you have low self-esteem and a need for external validation you may get into
any relationship just to be in a relationship just to feel like you deserve to exist you get into any
relationship that will provide you that external validation and tell you you know what you're okay
a lack of a sense of self is also going to impact you physically if you have no
idea what's going on inside you you're focused on everybody else you're going to miss things
like you're hungry you're sleep deprived you're burned out you are getting sick you're in pain
where you could initially intervene early you don't notice it until it's a crisis
affectively if you have a lack of an awareness of how you're feeling what your emotions are you're
just on autopilot trying to make everybody else happy guess what you start numbing you
start feeling unfulfilled you start feeling like you're being taken for granted you start
there's a lot of feelings that may go there when you are not icing you know how does this
make me feel and what can I do to improve the way I feel or what can I do to continue feeling happy
cognitively if you don't know what your thoughts and opinions and wants are then it's going to be
hard to assert those to other people which means they're not going to be able to effectively meet
your needs they can't read your mind when you don't know what you need or want you often feel
unfulfilled but you don't know why which can lead to problems in relationships because you may get
frustrated at other people for not meeting your needs but they don't know what your needs are
or you may not know what your needs are and be frustrated with yourself
difficulty setting and maintaining boundaries physically that leaves you feeling unsafe if
you set boundaries that are too strong and you keep everybody out you may feel abandoned and
isolated and alone and vulnerable if you have weak boundaries and people you know walk all over them
and tell you what to think and what to feel and how to be which is very common in codependency
because that's all that a lot of people with codependency have ever known then again you start
feeling like you don't matter like nobody cares about your opinion and it can lead you to feel
um unhappy and Powerless hyper vigilance oh going back to cognitively if you have difficulty setting
and maintaining boundaries then people are often going to tell you what to think and you're not
checking in and going is this really what I believe and you may start getting LED down a
path that isn't really in line with your values hyper vigilance physically again it's gonna
ramp up that stress response system it's going to cause problems with relaxing enough to sleep it's
going to cause stress related illnesses digestive upset autoimmune flare-ups you know stress is
toxic we I mean we need a little bit of it but ongoing constant stress is toxic affectively when
you're hyper Vigilant you're constantly scanning you're kind of like that little squirrel that's in
the middle of the road going which way do I go and it's looking for nuts to eat but it's also trying
to not get run over by a car and it can't focus it's stressed out all of the time and can you
imagine feeling that way there's a lot of I always feel like squirrels are really anxious creatures
which I mean they're pretty close pretty low on the bottom of the food chain so I guess they have
a reason to but recognizing how being hyper Vigilant being on guard all the time impacts
your ability to feel things like happiness and contentment and relaxation cognitively
when you're hyper Vigilant you are more prone to notice the threats in the environment than
the good things you're more likely to notice the cars and the Tigers than the cache of nuts
that's on the other side of the road if you want to stick with a squirrel metaphor because your
body wants you to survive unfortunately that leads you to start believing that the world
is far more dangerous and scary then maybe it really is because you're not noticing the good
you're only noticing the bad and that's going to impair your ability to concentrate when you're
stressed out when you're hyper Vigilant you're in fight or flight mode you're not in let's
think and solve problems in concentrate mode you're in movement mode and so hyper vigilance
is going to impact your ability to think clearly to remember things you're going to have brain fog
and relationally when you're hyper Vigilant you may be looking for little micro Expressions that
indicate that somebody is going to be mad or abandon you so you may make assumptions that
really don't need to be made they're not accurate in this context with this person
when you're hyper Vigilant it also drains your energy because you're constantly scanning it's
hard to focus on this person in this context and hear what they're saying and their needs
people pleasing when you're people pleasing at your expense you know taking it to that
extreme you're going to get run down you're going to start getting sicker you're going to
have stress-related illnesses affectively you may actually start resenting people if they
aren't showing you sufficient gratitude for what you've done you are giving literally till it hurts
and they are not recognizing that and giving you that external validation that you so crave
cognitively if you're people pleasing a lot you may be telling yourself that you should
do this or you have to do this to be a good person so it's important to look at how people
pleasing changes the way you think about other people's ability to do things for themselves
denial of personal needs again emotionally physically if you don't pay attention to
your personal needs you can't address them relationally you're not going to have the
energy the desire the motivation to engage with others if you are hungry angry lonely and tired
fear of Abandonment or that need to be needed that goes along with being hyper Vigilant and
feeling unsafe all the time so again you've got stress you've got regular fear of Abandonment
fear is anxiety you're going to potentially feel anxious a lot of the time if you are
not with your significant other with your eyeballs on them you may feel anxious and
that can cause a lot of problems and it's not just fear of Abandonment that they'll leave you it
could be fear of Abandonment that they're going to make a bad choice because you're not controlling
their every move like a marionette marrying a tear whatever somebody who moves puppets and
they're going to go to jail or they're going to die or something so it's important to
recognize how that impacts your willingness to respect their boundaries and this goes along
with control issues too your willingness to respect their boundaries and say you know what
you are an adult you have the ability and the right to choose and people with codependency
issues that's often terrifying giving somebody the ability to make their own choice because somewhere
in the back of their head they quote know that the person is going to make the wrong choice and
that could be because they've experienced it time and time again with other dysfunctional people
but it's important to recognize this person in this context does this apply
the person with codependency may have difficulty expressing emotions or dysregulation and when
people dysregulate I have used the analogy it's like a tsunami of stress hormones instead of just
a little a wave or a trickle it's a tsunami that is exhausting it's like running a 600 yard Sprint
and I know you don't usually Sprint for 600 yards and there's a reason for that because it takes so
much freaking energy people with who emotionally dysregulate that's exhausting it burns up a lot
of energy that now they can't use to do other things that they wanted to do it may impact their
ability to take good care of themselves and eat right and do things like that because they just
don't have the energy in them affectively emotions can start feeling very scary if you're regularly
dysregulating because the only emotions you're feeling are those tsunami emotions everything
else is just kind of gray kind of blah and you're not feeling happy you're not feeling content or
curious your brain says we don't have the time or the energy to devote to those you know if there's
a problem we'll react otherwise leave us alone and that can be really problematic for having
for experiencing happiness when you are in that constant stressed out State again you're not in
your wise mind you're in your protection your action mind and that can also make it difficult
in relationships because you may react with a tsunami to something that deserved a trickle and
what you're reacting from instead of reacting from Solid Ground
you're reacting from the place of already being running from that threat already
being on unsteady ground and feeling unsafe and then having something else piled on top
a lot of times healthy significant others may not understand this Dynamic so it can cause Rifts when
they accuse you of overreacting and you you may feel like they're being insensitive they may not
understand the totality of what's going on and the need for recovery time people who dysregulate
because the tsunami is so strong it takes them longer to recover and get get back to Baseline
than somebody who just had a trickle guilt we know that guilt impacts us physically it impacts
our ability to sleep well it causes us to feel remember guilt is anger at ourselves so that's a
stress response it may overshadow other emotions we may feel even feel guilty for feeling happy
cognitively guilt tells us that we are bad people and it's important to address those cognitions and
make sure that guilt is specific and changeable and guilt says you know what the choice you made
was not a good one and you may need to make amends for that but you are a good person so
it's important to look at how guilt is affecting the way you think about yourself as well as other
people and in relationships oh guilt guilt can be used by a dysfunctional other to manipulate you
guilt can be used by a functional other to manipulate you if they realize that it works
and that's not okay that is a boundary violation but if you're feeling guilty about a lot of things
people who are healthy may also not understand why you feel guilty understand why you feel the
need to do all of these things and they're like you know sit back relax take care of yourself
you don't need to people please you don't need to meet my every need and you're like yes I do
yes I do if if I want to be a good person I need to do this because that's what you were taught
and enabling and rescuing Behavior this again is putting other people's needs before yours
going above and beyond making sure that the other person does not experience the consequences of
their actions and everybody needs to experience the consequences of their actions if I put my
hand on a hot plate and I get burned I'm probably not going to do that again if I put my hand on a
hot plate and somehow somebody protects me from getting burned then I'm going to keep doing it
if I am and don't do this if I am texting and driving and I don't get into an accident then
I'm more likely to do it again as opposed to if I have to experience the consequences of my actions
or if going with enabling if I'm texting and driving and I get into an accident and
somebody who's codependent makes that accident go away it's like okay we'll just pretend that
didn't exist I'm not going to learn from my consequences so it's important that
people experience the natural consequences of their behavior and when you don't do that
it's causes a lot of relationship Strife if you feel like you're constantly having to rescue
or cover up for somebody you may start feeling resentful and they may start feeling resentful
because they're like I never asked you to do that so it's important to examine how enabling
impacts you physically affectively cognitively and how is it impacting your relationships
so go back over the next week and review the impacts of codependent behavior on your life how
are they impacting you physically affectively or emotionally cognitively and in your relationships
list in order of importance the negative consequences you're experiencing from these
behaviors and then identify at least one way to start addressing each of those negative
consequences so you're starting to problem solve you're not gonna fix it in a day but you're
starting to identify okay these are the problems and these are ways I might start to address it