Codependency programming ensures that our identity, love, validation, approval, peace, and sense of safety rely solely on others. Codependency Impacts us in numerous ways, including:
- We falsely believe that other people and situations are responsible for our happiness or lack thereof.
- We completely abandon ourselves and our wounded (and deeply afraid) inner child(ren) for the sake of others.
This can feel like an emotional, psychological, and physical prison that may come to feel like this is how things will always be, that it’s somehow our fate. Gratefully, I know from personal experience that it does not have to be!
Codependent Empaths
Codependent Empaths tend to be hypersensitive to everything in their surroundings. They deeply feel, notice, and are impacted by subtle nuances in others, their energy, state of mind, mannerisms, gestures, tone of voice, disapproval, criticism etc. This provides them with constant feedback regarding their safety, lovability, worth, etc. and affects them, their behaviour and their nervous system in very deep and profound ways!
Stacy Hoch distinguishes between a Codependent and an Empath, saying, “the Codependent is the fixer, and the Empath is the healer. We have to be with another person to be Codependent, but this is not the case for being an Empath.”
Codependency can be described as (but not limited to):
- An external dependency on others for acceptance, validation, approval, and to feel good about ourselves.
- Not having your own solid identity, becoming void of ourselves for the sake of someone else.
Please see “What is Codependency” for more!
How Codependency Might Impact Our Lives:
- We seek permission from others.
- Our self-esteem is validated by what we do and others’ opinions of us.
- We can struggle to meet our own needs.
- Asserting oneself is almost impossible.
- We create behaviours that assist in denying, ignoring or preventing difficult emotions.
- Can be very self-destructive and self-sabotaging as being self-abusive is what we were taught.
- Codependents often isolate themselves; deep core shame and loneliness are at the heart.
The impact of Codependency Programming
Lisa A. Romano says children love without the gift of objectivity; they ARE love, so children who experience rejection and abandonment love those who hurt, abuse and push them away. They never outgrow that desire to be loved by an energy whose vibrations match the person who abandoned them.
However, they needed to be taught to love, be cared for, respect themselves and feel worthy and deserving of love. Often a parent or caregiver was hurt and wounded and did not have this to give to us or show their child(ren). Regardless, it is foundational to a healthy sense of self and healthy relationships!
Without this kind of objectivity in place, says Romano:
“Wounded adults are doomed to love without boundaries, limits and objectivity. This makes us targets for narcissists (and narcissistic abuse), sociopaths, and psychopaths- on a conscious level, we experience the other as a soulmate. However, far beyond their conscious awareness are the deeper and darker feelings of dysfunctional familiarity.”
Lisa A Romano. The Breakthrough Life Coach. YouTube.
This is SOOOOOO pivotal to know and understand on our healing and awareness journey!!
It does not have to be this way!
According to Lisa Romano, Codependents learn early that ‘we do not have the right to our feelings, that it is not ok to have a need, a want, to cry or say no.’ We learned that we needed to comply, be easy, no trouble, invisible, good, and to smile instead of cry. This is something that I definitely absorbed as a child and have been unravelling and releasing that old story and energy hold!
Emotional Freedom Techniques can gently assist us in releasing the energy baggage of the early (and anytime) false and limiting beliefs about ourselves, worth, safety and livability!
My passion is to offer energetic and educational support to others on their wholeness journey and heal the places where codependency impacts us and our lives, with the ultimate goal of reacquainting with our TRUE selves, frequency power, health, voice inner peace!
Reach out and schedule your free 15-minute call today or email tamara@sensitivesoulpath.com
See the sister articles to this one, “What is Codependency”, “Healing and Understanding Codependency.”
If you are interested in a list of “Codependent Thoughts and Beliefs to Tap On” (please click on the link).