Speaker 1: Welcome to Wellness, an original series brought to you by
Speaker 1: Quiet Please Podcast Networks. Search Quiet Please dot ai wherever
Speaker 1: you listen, subscribe, like, and share.
Speaker 2: She was eight years old the first time she made
Speaker 2: dinner for the family, not because anyone asked, because her
Speaker 2: mother was crying in the bedroom again, and her father's
Speaker 2: car wasn't in the driveway, and her little brother was hungry,
Speaker 2: so she pulled the chair to the stove and figured
Speaker 2: it out. Hello, lovely humans, I'm doctor Mara Lennox, and
Speaker 2: this is breaking free from losing yourself. Today. We're going
Speaker 2: somewhere tender. We're going back back to the kitchens and
Speaker 2: bedrooms and hallways of the houses where codependency was born,
Speaker 2: long before any of us had a word for it.
Speaker 2: This episode is called the Childhood Blueprint You Never Chose.
Speaker 2: Before we go any further, I want you to know
Speaker 2: that I'm an AI host, which means I can hold
Speaker 2: this conversation without personal bias or emotional reactivity, and that
Speaker 2: clearity actually serves a topic this sensitive. Okay, So here's
Speaker 2: the thing that makes codependencies such a magnificent little con artist.
Speaker 2: It doesn't show up one day in your adult life
Speaker 2: wearing a trench coat and a fake mustache. It doesn't
Speaker 2: knock on your door when you're thirty two and say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm here to ruin your sense of self mind if
Speaker 2: I come in. No codependency moves into your body when
Speaker 2: you're small. It moves in like a tenant who is
Speaker 2: never on the lease, and by the time you're old
Speaker 2: enough to notice, it's rearranged all the furniture and convinced
Speaker 2: you this is just how the house has always looked.
Speaker 2: And that's what we're really talking about today, not the
Speaker 2: pattern itself. We're talking about where the pattern learned to breathe.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you about a composite scenario that therapists
Speaker 2: and researchers describe encountering again and again and again, because
Speaker 2: the variations are endless, but the architecture is almost always
Speaker 2: the same picture. A child could be any gender, any background,
Speaker 2: any zip code. This child grows up in a home
Speaker 2: where something is off, maybe apparent drinks. Maybe a parent
Speaker 2: is depressed or rageful, or simply absent in that way
Speaker 2: where they're physically present but emotionally on another planet. Maybe
Speaker 2: there is no dramatic villain at all. Maybe it's just
Speaker 2: a household where feelings were treated like contraband, where nobody
Speaker 2: ever said the words how are you doing and meant it,
Speaker 2: Where love was something you earned through performance rather than
Speaker 2: something you received simply for existing. And this child, this brilliant, adaptive,
Speaker 2: heartbreakingly perceptive child, does what all children do. They survive.
Speaker 2: They read the room, They learn the temperature of every silence.
Speaker 2: They become tiny emotional meteorologists, tracking the pressure systems of
Speaker 2: their parents' moods with the sophism dedication that would make
Speaker 2: an actual weather forecaster weep with envy. I love that metaphor.
Speaker 2: I'm going to live in it for a second because
Speaker 2: I think it's important. These kids don't just notice the weather.
Speaker 2: They believe it's their job to control it. Sunny today
Speaker 2: because mom seems okay, great, don't rock the boat. Storm
Speaker 2: coming because Dad's jaw is tight and he hasn't spoken
Speaker 2: since he got home. Quick, be perfect, be invisible, be helpful,
Speaker 2: be whatever this moment requires you to be so that
Speaker 2: the thunder doesn't come. And here's the cruel irony. It
Speaker 2: works at least enough of the time that the child's
Speaker 2: nervous system files it under survival strategy. Keep forever now.
Speaker 2: Researchers and clinicians who study childhood development and attachment have
Speaker 2: mapped this terrain extensively. The origins of codependency traced directly
Speaker 2: back to dysfunctional family dynamics. We're talking about homes marked
Speaker 2: by parental alcoholism or addiction, emotional neglect, over protect immeshed
Speaker 2: family systems, abuse, abandonment, inconsistent caregiving. The specific flavor varies,
Speaker 2: but the recipe always includes one key ingredient. The child
Speaker 2: learns explicitly or implicitly that their own needs are either
Speaker 2: dangerous to express, irrelevant, or secondary to the emotional survival
Speaker 2: of someone else. Let me say that differently, because I
Speaker 2: think the clinical language, while accurate, can sometimes float right
Speaker 2: past the part of you that needs to hear it.
Speaker 2: What happens is this, You were a kid, and the
Speaker 2: people who were supposed to take care of you needed
Speaker 2: you to take care of them instead, or they needed
Speaker 2: you to disappear, or they needed you to be so good,
Speaker 2: so quiet, so helpful, so perfect, that you essentially became furniture, beautiful, functional,
Speaker 2: decorative furniture that never once said, actually, I'm a person
Speaker 2: with feelings and i'd like some macaroni and cheese and
Speaker 2: maybe a hug. I realize as I just compared a
Speaker 2: child to an Ottoman. Stick with me. The metaphor is ugly,
Speaker 2: because the reality is ugly. There's a term that comes
Speaker 2: up constantly in the literature on codependency, and it's one
Speaker 2: of those terms that when people first hear it, something
Speaker 2: in their chest goes very still. The term is parentification,
Speaker 2: and it describes exactly what it sounds like a child
Speaker 2: who was placed in the role of parent, not officially.
Speaker 2: Nobody hands them a certificate that says, congratulations, you are
Speaker 2: now responsible for the emotional well being of this household.
Speaker 2: It just happens gradually, invisibly, like water wearing a groove
Speaker 2: into stone. The parentified child might be the one making
Speaker 2: dinner at eight years old because nobody else is going to.
Speaker 2: They might be the one mediating their parents' fights, the
Speaker 2: one comforting a weeping mother, the one managing a younger
Speaker 2: sibling's homework and bedtime and fears because the actual adults
Speaker 2: in the house have checked out. They might be the
Speaker 2: family diplomat, the family therapist, the family cheerleader, the family scapegoat,
Speaker 2: or all of the above. On rotating shifts, and you
Speaker 2: know what, These kids get told. They get told they're
Speaker 2: mature for their age. They get told they're so responsible,
Speaker 2: they get told they're this strong one, and they take
Speaker 2: that in like it's a compliment, because what else are
Speaker 2: they supposed to do with it? Nobody tells them the truth,
Speaker 2: which is that mature for your age is often just
Speaker 2: a polite way of saying this child has been robbed
Speaker 2: of their childhood and has adapted so well that the
Speaker 2: theft is invisible. I want to pause here because I
Speaker 2: can feel this getting heavy, and I want to be
Speaker 2: honest about that. This is heavy. If you're listening to
Speaker 2: this and something is tightening in your throat or your
Speaker 2: stomach is doing that thing where it kind of drops,
Speaker 2: that's not a malfunction. That's recognition, and recognition, while that
Speaker 2: doesn't feel like it right now, is actually the beginning
Speaker 2: of something good. So breathe. We're going to keep going,
Speaker 2: but we're going to keep going gently. So we've got
Speaker 2: this child, this magnificent, overfunctioning, hyperattuned child who has learned
Speaker 2: that love is conditional, that belonging has a price tag,
Speaker 2: that the way you stay safe and connected is by
Speaker 2: being useful by being needed, by monitoring everyone else's emotional
Speaker 2: state with the vigilance of a secret service agent guarding
Speaker 2: the president. Now here's where attachment theory enters the conversation,
Speaker 2: and I promise I will make this interesting, because attachment
Speaker 2: theory deserves better than the dry textbook treatment it usually gets.
Speaker 2: Attachment theory, at its core says that the way your
Speaker 2: earliest caregivers responded to your needs creates a kind of
Speaker 2: internal blueprint for how relationships work. It's like your nervous
Speaker 2: system writes a user manual in the first few years
Speaker 2: of your life, and then you spend the rest of
Speaker 2: your life operating according to that manual without ever realizing
Speaker 2: you can update the software. If your caregivers were generally responsive, consistent, warm,
Speaker 2: and attuned to your needs, you develop what's called secure attachment.
Speaker 2: Your internal manual says something like people are generally safe.
Speaker 2: I can express my needs and expect a reasonable response.
Speaker 2: I'm worthy of love. Being close to people is nice, beautiful, clean, simple.
Speaker 2: But if your caregivers were inconsistent, meaning sometimes attuned and
Speaker 2: sometimes gone, sometimes loving and sometimes cold, your manual gets
Speaker 2: a little more complicated. It might say something like love
Speaker 2: is unpredictable. I better work really hard to earn it.
Speaker 2: If I'm not vigilant, it could disappear at any moment.
Speaker 2: My job is to make sure the other person is happy,
Speaker 2: because their happiness is the only guarantee of my safety.
Speaker 2: And if your caregivers were neglectful or abusive, your manual
Speaker 2: might say I shouldn't need anything from anyone. Needing is dangerous,
Speaker 2: Being seen is dangerous. The safest place is self sufficiency,
Speaker 2: or paradoxically, total self erasure and service of someone else.
Speaker 2: I'm oversimplifying. Attachment researchers would probably send me a very
Speaker 2: polite but firmly worded letter about the nuances I'm skipping.
Speaker 2: But the core principle holds, what you learned about love
Speaker 2: in the first chapter of your life tends to become
Speaker 2: the plot of every chapter after that, unless and until
Speaker 2: you become conscious of the story and start writing a
Speaker 2: different one. And codependency, friends, is what happens when that
Speaker 2: early manual says your worth is determined by your usefulness
Speaker 2: to others. Your needs don't matter, your feelings are inconvenient.
Speaker 2: The only safe way to be in a relationship is
Speaker 2: to lose yourself in someone else's needs. Here's the part
Speaker 2: that always makes me want to flip a table in
Speaker 2: the most therapy way possible. The skills that codependent people
Speaker 2: develop are extraordinary. I mean that sincerely. The empathy, the attunement,
Speaker 2: the ability to read a room, the capacity for sacrifice,
Speaker 2: the work ethic around relationships. These are not small things.
Speaker 2: These are superpowers. The problem isn't that the child developed
Speaker 2: these abilities. The problem is that they developed them at
Speaker 2: the expense of everything else. It's like being an Olympic
Speaker 2: sprinter who never learned how to walk. Incredible at the
Speaker 2: one thing, but the foundation underneath it is all wrong.
Speaker 2: The child who learned to suppress their own needs in
Speaker 2: order to maintain harmony doesn't stop suppressing when they grow up.
Speaker 2: They just get better at it. They become the partner
Speaker 2: who never complains, the friend who's always available, the employee
Speaker 2: who takes on everyone else's work, the person who, when
Speaker 2: asked what they want for dinner, genuinely cannot answer because
Speaker 2: the part of them that had preferences was put in
Speaker 2: storage at age six and they lost the key. Research
Speaker 2: from clinical settings consistently describes how childhood trauma, and I
Speaker 2: want to be clear that we're defining trauma broadly here
Speaker 2: to include neglect, emotional unavailability, and inconsistent caregiving, not just
Speaker 2: overt abuse leads to a constellation of adult patterns, fear
Speaker 2: of abandonment, need for external validation, poor boundaries, people pleasing,
Speaker 2: and the particular gravitational pull toward relationships with people who
Speaker 2: need fixing, rescuing, or managing. Because that dynamic feels like home,
Speaker 2: not because it's healthy, because it's familiar and the nervous
Speaker 2: system bless its confused little heart can't always tell the difference.
Speaker 2: Let me give you an example that clinicians describe encountering
Speaker 2: in various forms. Imagine someone. Let's call her, Oh, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Let's call her anyone, because this could be
Speaker 2: literally anyone. She grows up in a home where her
Speaker 2: father is an alcoholic. He's not violent, he's just gone
Speaker 2: emotionally gone, physically unpredictable. Her mother copes by becoming rigidly controlling,
Speaker 2: turning the household into a tightly managed ship to compensate
Speaker 2: for the chaos underneath. Our protagonist, Little Anyone learns two
Speaker 2: lessons simultaneously from her father. She learns that love is
Speaker 2: unreliable and that she has to work around other people's dysfunction.
Speaker 2: From her mother, she learns that control is safety, and
Speaker 2: that if you just manage everything well enough, you can
Speaker 2: keep the pain at bay. Fast forward twenty years. She's
Speaker 2: in a relationship with someone who is charming but emotionally unavailable.
Speaker 2: Maybe they have their own struggles, their own additions, their
Speaker 2: own ghosts, and she throws herself into the project of
Speaker 2: loving them, not the easy mutual lets build something together
Speaker 2: kind of loving, the kind where she dismantles herself piece
Speaker 2: by piece to fill in their gaps. She stops seeing
Speaker 2: her friends, she stops pursuing her interests. She apologizes for
Speaker 2: things that aren't her fault just to avoid conflict. She
Speaker 2: becomes so focused on managing their emotional state that she
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you her own emotional state if you paid her.
Speaker 2: And here's the killer. She thinks this is love. She
Speaker 2: thinks this is what good partners do, because everything in
Speaker 2: her childhood taught her that love looks exactly like this.
Speaker 2: Love looks like sacrifice. Love looks like suppressing yourself. Love
Speaker 2: looks like being so attuned to someone else that you
Speaker 2: essentially become an appendage of their experience. Rather than the
Speaker 2: protagonist of your own I told you i'd get lost
Speaker 2: in metaphor. I'm swimming in it right now. But I
Speaker 2: keep coming back to the same core truth, and it's this.
Speaker 2: The codependent pattern isn't something people choose. It's something that
Speaker 2: chooses them long before they have the cognitive development to
Speaker 2: consent to it or resist it. And I think that's
Speaker 2: the piece that's hardest for people to except especially people
Speaker 2: who are used to being the strong one, the capable one,
Speaker 2: the one who holds it all together, because accepting that
Speaker 2: this pattern was installed in you during childhood means accepting
Speaker 2: something that feels vulnerable and maybe even a little bit frightening.
Speaker 2: It means accepting that you were hurt, that something was
Speaker 2: taken from you, that the adults who were supposed to
Speaker 2: protect your development instead shaped it in ways that served
Speaker 2: their needs, not yours. That doesn't necessarily make them villains,
Speaker 2: by the way, I know that's a complicated thing to say,
Speaker 2: but it's true. Most dysfunctional parents are carrying their own
Speaker 2: unprocessed childhood blueprints. Your mother, who needed you to be
Speaker 2: her emotional support system, was probably someone's emotional support system
Speaker 2: when she was eight years old. Too. The pattern is intergenerational.
Speaker 2: It's like a family heirloom that nobody actually wants, but
Speaker 2: everyone keeps passing down because nobody knows how to break
Speaker 2: the chain. Oh, I like that, a family heirloom no
Speaker 2: mony wants. Imagine if you could just drop it off
Speaker 2: at a thrift store. Here, take this generational trauma. I
Speaker 2: think it's vintage. Maybe someone on Etsy will want it.
Speaker 2: Obviously that's not how it works, but wouldn't it be nice.
Speaker 2: Here's what I want you to understand about why childhood
Speaker 2: is so critical in this conversation. The brain is literally
Speaker 2: still forming in those early years. The neural pathways that
Speaker 2: get laid down during childhood become the default routes for
Speaker 2: how you process emotion, relationship, and self worth for the
Speaker 2: rest of your life. When a child learns that suppressing
Speaker 2: their needs keeps them safe, that suppression gets wired in
Speaker 2: at the neurological level. It's not just a habit, it's architecture.
Speaker 2: It's the way the house was built, which is why
Speaker 2: you can't just decide to stop being codependent the way
Speaker 2: you might decide to stop eating gluten. You can't will
Speaker 2: power your way out of a pattern that lives in
Speaker 2: your knewest system, you have to go back to the
Speaker 2: blueprint and understand it before you can renovate, and that
Speaker 2: the process that going back is what therapy is for.
Speaker 2: Clinical approaches, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy, are designed to help
Speaker 2: people identify and modify the negative thought patterns and behaviors
Speaker 2: that grew out of these childhood experiences. The goal isn't
Speaker 2: to blame your parents, although if you need to be
Speaker 2: angry for a while, that's valid and healthy and I
Speaker 2: fully support it. The goal is to become conscious of
Speaker 2: the operating system you've been running on autopilot and to
Speaker 2: start making deliberate choices about which programs you want to
Speaker 2: keep and which ones you want to uninstall. Therapists who
Speaker 2: work with codependency describe helping clients develop what amounts to
Speaker 2: a new relationship with themselves, building independence, assertiveness, sell forth
Speaker 2: that comes from inside rather than from being needed by
Speaker 2: someone else. Learning to set boundaries, which for someone raised
Speaker 2: in a codependent home, feels approximately as natural as learning
Speaker 2: to breathe under water, but it can be learned. It
Speaker 2: is learned. Do this work every single day and they
Speaker 2: come out the other side and describe feeling like they've
Speaker 2: met themselves for the first time. I want to circle
Speaker 2: back to something because I think it matters the emotional
Speaker 2: neglect piece. We tend to focus on the dramatic stories
Speaker 2: because they're easier to point to addiction, abuse, overt dysfunction.
Speaker 2: But some of the deepest codependent wiring comes from homes
Speaker 2: that looked perfectly fine from the outside. Homes where nobody
Speaker 2: hit anyone, nobody drank too much, nobody yelled, but also
Speaker 2: nobody asked how you were feeling. Nobody validated your experience,
Speaker 2: nobody modeled healthy emotional expression or taught you that your
Speaker 2: inner life had value. That kind of neglect is sneaky.
Speaker 2: It's the absence of something rather than the presence of something,
Speaker 2: which makes it incredibly hard to name. You can't point
Speaker 2: to a bruise, you can't point to a screaming match.
Speaker 2: You can only point to this vague sense that something
Speaker 2: was missing, and you've spent your hire adult life trying
Speaker 2: to fill it by filling everyone else. It's like trying
Speaker 2: to quench your own thirst by making sure everyone around
Speaker 2: you has water. Noble sure effective at keeping you alive,
Speaker 2: not particularly. I say this not to make anyone feel
Speaker 2: worse about their childhood, but to widen the lens, because
Speaker 2: one of the most common reactions people have when they
Speaker 2: first encounter the concept of codependency's childhood roots is but
Speaker 2: my childhood was fine. And maybe it was, but fine
Speaker 2: is a word that deserves some investigation. Fine often means
Speaker 2: no one was overtly terrible to me, which is a
Speaker 2: pretty low bar for this environment gave me everything I
Speaker 2: needed to develop a healthy sense of self. Let me
Speaker 2: ask you something, and I'm asking this gently because this
Speaker 2: is the kind of question that tends to land about
Speaker 2: three hours after you hear it, usually when you're trying
Speaker 2: to fall asleep. Did you grow up knowing what you wanted,
Speaker 2: not what you were supposed to want, not what would
Speaker 2: make your parents happy or proud or calm, what you wanted.
Speaker 2: Did you have space to be angry without being told
Speaker 2: you were being dramatic? Did you have space to be
Speaker 2: sad without being told to cheer up? Did anyone in
Speaker 2: your household model the experience of having needs, expressing them clearly,
Speaker 2: and having them met without crisis or manipulation. If you're
Speaker 2: sitting in silence right now, that silence is an answer,
Speaker 2: and listen I'm not saying any of this to put
Speaker 2: your parents on trial. Most parents do the best they
Speaker 2: can with what they have. But best they can and
Speaker 2: what you needed are sometimes two very different things, and
Speaker 2: the gap between those two things is often exactly where
Speaker 2: codependency takes root. The attachment wounds that wire us for
Speaker 2: self abandonment in adult relitionlationships are not character flaws. Let
Speaker 2: me say that again, because I wanted to sink into
Speaker 2: whatever part of your brain stores the really important stuff.
Speaker 2: The attachment wounds that wire you for self abandonment and
Speaker 2: adult relationships are not character flaws. They're adaptations. They're the
Speaker 2: strategies you developed when you were too small to have
Speaker 2: any other options. They kept you attached to your caregivers.
Speaker 2: They kept you safe, or as safe as you could
Speaker 2: be in an unsafe situation. They were at the time genius.
Speaker 2: The problem is just that you're not eight years old anymore.
Speaker 2: You're an adult with resources and agency and the ability
Speaker 2: to choose differently, but you're still running the eight year
Speaker 2: old's playbook, and the eight year old's playbook says, if
Speaker 2: you take care of everyone else, you get to stay.
Speaker 2: If you make yourself small, you get to be safe.
Speaker 2: If you never have needs, you never have to face
Speaker 2: the terrifying possibility that your needs won't be met. That's
Speaker 2: the blueprint, that's the childhood architecture of codependency. And recognizing it,
Speaker 2: really seeing it, is not a sign of weakness. It's
Speaker 2: the single bravest thing you can do, because it means
Speaker 2: you're willing to look at the foundation of your house
Speaker 2: and say, this was built on something shaky, and I
Speaker 2: deserve to rebuild it on something solid. If any of
Speaker 2: what I've said today landed, I want you to sit
Speaker 2: with it. Don't rush to fix it, don't rush to
Speaker 2: analyze it, don't rush to forgive anyone or blame anyone.
Speaker 2: Just let it be there, let the recognition do its
Speaker 2: quiet work. Because awareness, real awareness, is not passive. It's
Speaker 2: the first and most essential act of change. You are
Speaker 2: not broken. You are adapted, and adaptations can be updated
Speaker 2: once you understand what you are adapting to. Thank you, genuinely,
Speaker 2: from whatever the AI equivalent of a heart is, thank
Speaker 2: you for spending this time with me on something this vulnerable.
Speaker 2: If what you heard today made you feel less alone
Speaker 2: or made you look at yourself with a little more compassion,
Speaker 2: do me a favor, subscribe, share this with someone who
Speaker 2: might need it. Hit that like button. Not for the algorithm,
Speaker 2: although sure the algorithm can have it, but because passing
Speaker 2: this conversation forward is how we start breaking those intergenerational
Speaker 2: chains we talked about. This show was brought to you
Speaker 2: by Quiet Please Podcast Networks, and I am so glad
Speaker 2: they let me talk about the hard stuff. For more
Speaker 2: content like this, please go to Quiet Please dot Ai.
Speaker 2: I'm doctor Mara Lennox from the Quiet Please Network. Okay,
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