As I was laying in bed this morning I was thinking about the codependency I learned as a child in my family as well as what I brought into my romantic relationships. So for example, with my family, my role is care taker and the expectation is to do it in a sort of invisible way. I do the caretaking and get little if any recognition. I should also not ask for recognition or reciprocity. In my intimate relationships I have tended to vacillate between feeling insecure, uncertain where I really stand with someone, trying to figure out where they are with us and putting up walls so I don't have to feel this instability. The underlying theme behind all of this behavior is feeling like I can't trust the relationship will be consistent and always available to me when I do need someone. So, in all my relationships I rely on myself for emotional support, for help, for a soft place to fall on a bad day.
I felt for awhile now that I wasn't sure how to be anything else. Where do I start? How do I change this if I never operated outside of it? Honestly, it felt a little daunting.
Then there was this morning, laying in bed with that sweet coziness of just waking up and an epiphany washed over me. When it comes to the more shadowy aspects of our behavior, especially with things like codependency we can operate in essentially two ways. You are either being reactive or responsive. You are either playing out the same old dance you have always done, getting involved in the story of fear, pain, desperation or you are pausing long enough to choose a new way to do things, engage in a new outcome, i.e. being responsive. Reactivity is a short term solution to a problem (just do what you need to do to stop feeling bad) and responsiveness is a long term one (do what is in your best interest to take care of yourself). With this understanding also came clarity that reactivity always creates a solution to your feeling out of sorts or trying to manage a situation but it comes at the cost of creating a new problem. The new problem is the codependency, it is your attaching your welfare mentally, emotionally, maybe even physically to what you can't control, namely someone else. So, for me for example, in my family I have run around picking up after grown people, spending an hour or more making meals I couldn't even eat (they eat meat, I do not), getting them aspirin when their head hurts, washing their laundry, essentially treating them as if they were all small children to the point of exhaustion. I would have little to no time to take care of my needs, my emotions, myself. Being exhausted I started to get frustrated and I would ask for help, ask for reciprocity and ask for a little recognition of what I do. This always, always, always got met with some level of judgement and hostility. being treated in my mind like I didn't have a right to reciprocity, recognition and self care made me angry. So here is me... Choosing to either not take care of myself or be perpetually pissed off on some level. I was being reactive to just smooth things over short term, to just get by in the moment and creating the problem of my welfare being tied to people I had no control over. And no control left its own problems of feeling off center, out of control and isolated. My romantic relationships played out behaviorally different but ended up with me feeling this same sense of being off balance, out of control and isolated as well.
Responsiveness is about "What kind of person do I want to be in this situation?" "Who am I going to show up as right now?" "What is my goal for an outcome?" " Where do I want to see this problem/argument/issue end up?" Responsiveness doesn't create a new problem to resolve with its solution. It allows you to come from a place of self awareness, of taking responsibility for who you are on your side of what is going on. Awareness allows you to see how what you do is going to affect the outcome you accept. And I say accept here vs. get because again you are only half of the equation of what is going on. So, you don't have control over how this situation is going to evolve no matter how aware you come in as. You DO get to choose what you do with what the other person/people are offering you as a solution. You get to decide if you will accept what is offered or you will take care of yourself and disengage from a dance that no longer serves you. You get to choose to be codependent, all your well being wrapped up in if or how someone else shows up for you, or not.
The answer would seem to be a bit simpler than I had originally thought... I don't know that I need to go back and find an origin of this behavior. At this point it would seem all I simply need to do to shift this is be aware when I am engaging if I am being responsive or reactive.
I felt for awhile now that I wasn't sure how to be anything else. Where do I start? How do I change this if I never operated outside of it? Honestly, it felt a little daunting.
Then there was this morning, laying in bed with that sweet coziness of just waking up and an epiphany washed over me. When it comes to the more shadowy aspects of our behavior, especially with things like codependency we can operate in essentially two ways. You are either being reactive or responsive. You are either playing out the same old dance you have always done, getting involved in the story of fear, pain, desperation or you are pausing long enough to choose a new way to do things, engage in a new outcome, i.e. being responsive. Reactivity is a short term solution to a problem (just do what you need to do to stop feeling bad) and responsiveness is a long term one (do what is in your best interest to take care of yourself). With this understanding also came clarity that reactivity always creates a solution to your feeling out of sorts or trying to manage a situation but it comes at the cost of creating a new problem. The new problem is the codependency, it is your attaching your welfare mentally, emotionally, maybe even physically to what you can't control, namely someone else. So, for me for example, in my family I have run around picking up after grown people, spending an hour or more making meals I couldn't even eat (they eat meat, I do not), getting them aspirin when their head hurts, washing their laundry, essentially treating them as if they were all small children to the point of exhaustion. I would have little to no time to take care of my needs, my emotions, myself. Being exhausted I started to get frustrated and I would ask for help, ask for reciprocity and ask for a little recognition of what I do. This always, always, always got met with some level of judgement and hostility. being treated in my mind like I didn't have a right to reciprocity, recognition and self care made me angry. So here is me... Choosing to either not take care of myself or be perpetually pissed off on some level. I was being reactive to just smooth things over short term, to just get by in the moment and creating the problem of my welfare being tied to people I had no control over. And no control left its own problems of feeling off center, out of control and isolated. My romantic relationships played out behaviorally different but ended up with me feeling this same sense of being off balance, out of control and isolated as well.
Responsiveness is about "What kind of person do I want to be in this situation?" "Who am I going to show up as right now?" "What is my goal for an outcome?" " Where do I want to see this problem/argument/issue end up?" Responsiveness doesn't create a new problem to resolve with its solution. It allows you to come from a place of self awareness, of taking responsibility for who you are on your side of what is going on. Awareness allows you to see how what you do is going to affect the outcome you accept. And I say accept here vs. get because again you are only half of the equation of what is going on. So, you don't have control over how this situation is going to evolve no matter how aware you come in as. You DO get to choose what you do with what the other person/people are offering you as a solution. You get to decide if you will accept what is offered or you will take care of yourself and disengage from a dance that no longer serves you. You get to choose to be codependent, all your well being wrapped up in if or how someone else shows up for you, or not.
The answer would seem to be a bit simpler than I had originally thought... I don't know that I need to go back and find an origin of this behavior. At this point it would seem all I simply need to do to shift this is be aware when I am engaging if I am being responsive or reactive.
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