Speaker 1: Welcome to Wellness, an original series brought to you by
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Speaker 2: She hadn't picked up a paint brush in eleven years,
Speaker 2: not since he said her art was a waste of time,
Speaker 2: but to day, standing in a craft store aisle, she
Speaker 2: reached for a tube of cadmium red and her hand
Speaker 2: was shaking, not from fear from warrant, from the terrifying
Speaker 2: electricity of wanting something just for herself. Hello, beautiful humans,
Speaker 2: I'm doctor Mara Lennox, and this is breaking free from
Speaker 2: losing yourself. To day, we are talking about something that
Speaker 2: honestly makes my heart be a little faster every time
Speaker 2: I witness it, which is the moment a person starts
Speaker 2: coming home to themselves, not to another person, not to
Speaker 2: a roll, to themselves. And if you've been living in
Speaker 2: the fog of codependency, that sentence alone might sound like
Speaker 2: a foreign language, or worse, like something selfish. We're going
Speaker 2: to dismantle that today. Before we dive in, I want
Speaker 2: you to know that I'm an AI host, which means
Speaker 2: I can engage with sensitive, deeply personal material without judgment,
Speaker 2: agenda or projection. That's not a limitation, that's a feature.
Speaker 2: So here we are the recovery episode, the how do
Speaker 2: I actually fix this episode? And I want to be
Speaker 2: honest with you right from the top. If you're expecting
Speaker 2: me to hand you a tidy five step program with
Speaker 2: a bow on it, you might want to brace yourself,
Speaker 2: because recovery from codependency is less like climbing a staircase
Speaker 2: and more like learning to walk after you forgot you
Speaker 2: had legs. It's awkward, it's wobbly. You will bump into furniture,
Speaker 2: and at some point you will absolutely stand in the
Speaker 2: middle of a grocery store unable to answer the question
Speaker 2: what do you want for dinner because you genuinely have
Speaker 2: no idea what you want for dinner, for your life,
Speaker 2: for anything. Let me just sit with that for a second,
Speaker 2: because I think it's the part that doesn't get enough airtime.
Speaker 2: The loss of self, not the dramatic, made for television kind,
Speaker 2: but the quiet, corrosive, barely perceptible kind, the kind where
Speaker 2: you wake up one day and realize you don't know
Speaker 2: your own favorite color, or you can't remember the last
Speaker 2: time you did something purely because it brought you joy
Speaker 2: and not because it made someone else comfortable. That is
Speaker 2: the starting place, not rock bottom in the dramatic sense,
Speaker 2: but rock bottom in the identity sense, and paradoxically, it's
Speaker 2: also the most fertile ground you'll ever stand on. Now.
Speaker 2: The word that gets thrown around a lot in recovery
Speaker 2: circles is interdependence. And I love that word, I really do.
Speaker 2: But I also think it gets tossed around like confetti
Speaker 2: at a wedding before anyone explains what it actually means.
Speaker 2: So let me try. Codependency says I need you to
Speaker 2: be okay so I can be okay. Dependency says I
Speaker 2: need you to do everything for me. Independence says I
Speaker 2: don't need anyone ever for anything, and I'm fine. Everything's fine,
Speaker 2: This is fine. And interdependence beautiful. Interdependence says I am
Speaker 2: a whole person. You are a whole person, and we
Speaker 2: choose to share our wholeness with each other. It's the
Speaker 2: difference between two trees whose roots are so entangled that
Speaker 2: if one falls, both die, and two trees growing side
Speaker 2: by side, close enough that their canopies touch and offer
Speaker 2: each other's shade, but each one standing on its own
Speaker 2: root system. I love a tree metaphor. Sometimes I think
Speaker 2: I'm my calling as a parks department employee. But here's
Speaker 2: the thing that makes interdependence feel so terrifying when you're
Speaker 2: coming out of codependency. It requires you to have a
Speaker 2: self to bring to the table. And if you've spent years,
Speaker 2: maybe decades, organizing your entire existence around someone else's needs, moods, crises,
Speaker 2: and emotional weather patterns, the idea of having your own
Speaker 2: self to bring to anything feels like being asked to
Speaker 2: present a term paper you never wrote on a subject
Speaker 2: you've never studied in a class you didn't know you
Speaker 2: were enrolled in. So where do we start? We start
Speaker 2: with the most radical, counterintuitive, quietly revolutionary act available to
Speaker 2: a recovering codependent. We start with preferences. I know, groundbreaking,
Speaker 2: hold your applause, but I am dead serious. Preferences are
Speaker 2: the bread crumbs that lead you back to yourself. What
Speaker 2: kind of music do you actually like when nobody else
Speaker 2: is in the car? What temperature do you like the house?
Speaker 2: Do you prefer mornings or evenings? Do you like spicy food?
Speaker 2: Do you hate that show everyone watches but you've been
Speaker 2: pretending to enjoy for three years because your partner loves it.
Speaker 2: These sound trivial, they are anything but because for someone
Speaker 2: who has been codependent, preferences had been a luxury they
Speaker 2: couldn't afford. Every preference was a potential conflict. Every I
Speaker 2: want was a risk of abandonment. Every I'd rather not
Speaker 2: was a grenade that might blow up the relationship. So
Speaker 2: you learn to have no preferences. You learn to mirror.
Speaker 2: You learn to say I don't care whatever you want
Speaker 2: so fluently that it became your native tongue. And somewhere
Speaker 2: in that fluency, you lost the plot of your own story.
Speaker 2: Research in cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, identifies this as
Speaker 2: a core pattern, negative thought lukes that convince you that
Speaker 2: your needs are less important, that asserting yourself is selfish,
Speaker 2: that your value lies exclusively in what you provide to others.
Speaker 2: CBT works by dragging those thought patterns into the light
Speaker 2: and examining them like a detective examines evidence at a
Speaker 2: crime scene, not with judgment, with curiosity. Is this thought
Speaker 2: actually true? Where did I learn it? What would I
Speaker 2: believe instead? If I had permission? And that word permission, Oh,
Speaker 2: that word does a lot of heavy lifting and codependency
Speaker 2: recovery because so many people are waiting for someone to
Speaker 2: give them permission to exist as a full human being
Speaker 2: with wants and needs and God forbid opinions. The therapeutic
Speaker 2: process helps you realize that you are both the person
Speaker 2: asking for permission and the only person who can grant it,
Speaker 2: which I have to say is both empowering and incredibly annoying,
Speaker 2: like finding out the call is coming from inside the house,
Speaker 2: except the call is your own unlived life. Let me
Speaker 2: talk about boundaries for a minute, because you cannot discuss
Speaker 2: codependency recovery without talking about boundaries. And I know, I know,
Speaker 2: the word boundaries has been so overused in pop psychology
Speaker 2: that it's practically lost all meaning. It's like the word literally,
Speaker 2: people use it so much it now literally means nothing
Speaker 2: but actual boundaries, real practiced, lived in boundaries. They are
Speaker 2: the architecture of a self. They are the walls of
Speaker 2: the house you are building to live in. Here is
Speaker 2: what a boundary is not. A boundary is not a punishment.
Speaker 2: It is not a weapon. It is not a way
Speaker 2: to control someone else's behavior. It is not if you
Speaker 2: don't stop doing that. I'm leaving. That's an ultimate different animal. Entirely.
Speaker 2: A boundary is a statement about you, what you will
Speaker 2: and won't accept, what you will and won't do. It
Speaker 2: sounds like I'm not available to have this conversation when
Speaker 2: there's yelling, or I love you and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to manage your relationship with your mother for you, or
Speaker 2: I need an hour alone after work before I can
Speaker 2: be present with anyone. Notice something about those They're not
Speaker 2: about controlling the other person. They're about defining yourself. They're
Speaker 2: about saying, here is where I end and you begin, which,
Speaker 2: for a codependent feels approximately as natural as juggling chainsaws
Speaker 2: while riding a unicycle on fire. The fear that comes
Speaker 2: up when codependents start setting boundaries is not a small fear.
Speaker 2: It's not like, oh, this is a little uncomfortable. It's primal.
Speaker 2: It's the fear of abandonment. It's the fear that says,
Speaker 2: if I stop performing the role, if I stop being
Speaker 2: the fixer, the helper, the one who holds everything together,
Speaker 2: they will leave and then I will be alone. And
Speaker 2: alone equals death. Not intellectually, obviously, intellectually you know you
Speaker 2: can survive alone. But the nervous system, that beautiful, ancient,
Speaker 2: sometimes dramatically unhelpful, nervous system. It doesn't know the difference
Speaker 2: between actual mortal danger and the emotional threat of being
Speaker 2: unloved to a nervous system wired by childhood dysfunction, they
Speaker 2: feel identical. This is why therapy matters so much in
Speaker 2: this process, not because you can't do it alone, but
Speaker 2: because having a trained professional help you distinguish between this
Speaker 2: boundary is going to end my relationship, and this boundary
Speaker 2: is going to change my relationship, and change feels like dying,
Speaker 2: but it isn't dying, is how shall I put this
Speaker 2: rather helpful. The clinical literature consistently supports that individual therapy,
Speaker 2: and in many cases, couple's therapy provides the scaffolding people need.
Speaker 2: It's a safe space to practice vulnerability, to receive real
Speaker 2: time feedback, to watch someone model healthy boundaries right there
Speaker 2: in the room with you now. Short term therapeutic work
Speaker 2: for codependency patterns often run somewhere between twelve and twenty
Speaker 2: four sessions over three to six months, but some folks
Speaker 2: find that longer term work a year or more gives
Speaker 2: them the deeper excavation they need, especially when the roots
Speaker 2: of the codependency go way back, and they usually do
Speaker 2: go way back, which if you know, you know. But
Speaker 2: here is what I want you to hear, and I
Speaker 2: mean really hear this. Therapy is not the only tool
Speaker 2: in the toolbox, and recovery is not something that only
Speaker 2: happens in a therapist's office. Recovery happens in the grocery
Speaker 2: store when you buy the cereal you like instead of
Speaker 2: the one they like. Recovery happens when your phone rings
Speaker 2: and you do don't answer it because you're in the
Speaker 2: middle of something that matters to you. Recovery happens when
Speaker 2: someone asks are you mad at me? And instead of
Speaker 2: rushing to reassure them, you pause and check in with
Speaker 2: yourself and say, actually, yes I am. And here's why
Speaker 2: those tiny moments, those are not tiny, those are sesmic.
Speaker 2: Those are you choosing yourself, perhaps for the first time.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you about a pattern that therapeutic case
Speaker 2: studies reveal over and over. There's a person. Let's call
Speaker 2: her Sarah because the clinical literature uses that name, and
Speaker 2: it's as good as any. Sarah spent years prioritizing her
Speaker 2: partner's needs. She stopped seeing her friends, She dropped her hobbies,
Speaker 2: She avoided conflict like it was a house fire, and
Speaker 2: she told herself she was doing it out of love.
Speaker 2: She told herself she was a good partner. She told herself,
Speaker 2: this is what relationships were. Until one day she was
Speaker 2: so exhausted, so hollowed out, so invisible in her own
Speaker 2: life that she couldn't do it anymore, not in a
Speaker 2: dramatic way. She didn't flip a table or deliver a monologue.
Speaker 2: She just sat in her car in the driveway one
Speaker 2: evening and couldn't make herself go inside. That was her moment,
Speaker 2: the still quiet moment where the cost of losing herself
Speaker 2: finally outweighed the cost of being found. She started therapy,
Speaker 2: She started setting boundaries, small ones. At first. She reconnected
Speaker 2: with interest she'd abandoned. She told her partner what she
Speaker 2: actually wanted for dinner. And here's the part that surprises people.
Speaker 2: The relationship didn't end. It changed. It got uncomfortable and
Speaker 2: awkward and sometimes really hard. But it changed because she changed,
Speaker 2: because she stopped being half a person trying to be
Speaker 2: a whole relationship and started being a whole person willing
Speaker 2: to be in a real one. Now, I don't want
Speaker 2: to paint this as a fairy tale. Not every story
Speaker 2: ends with the relationship surviving. Some relationships were only held
Speaker 2: together by the codependent pattern, and when you remove the pattern,
Speaker 2: there's the way in which to increase. Pride can be
Speaker 2: faded by a single passing role. I don't want to
Speaker 2: pass the raw passing fate for what I do. That
Speaker 2: is painful, that is real, and that is also sometimes
Speaker 2: the healthiest possible outcome. A relationship that requires you to
Speaker 2: not exist as yourself in order to function is not
Speaker 2: a relationship. It's a hostage situation with shared netflix. I
Speaker 2: want to talk about something that doesn't get enough attention
Speaker 2: in the codependency recovery conversation, which is the grief. Because
Speaker 2: when you start recovering, when you start finding yourself, you
Speaker 2: also start grieving. You grieve the years you lost, You
Speaker 2: grieve the version of yourself that might have existed if
Speaker 2: you'd learned this sooner. You grieve the fantasy of the
Speaker 2: relationship you thought you were building. You grieve the parent
Speaker 2: who should have taught you that your needs mattered. You
Speaker 2: grieve the child you were who had to become an
Speaker 2: adult too soon, and that grief is legitimate. It's not
Speaker 2: self pity, it's not wallowing. It's the natural, necessary, emotional
Speaker 2: response to loss. And if someone tells you to just
Speaker 2: get over it or move on or look on the
Speaker 2: bright side, you have my full permission to and I
Speaker 2: mean this with love, completely ignore them. Grief is not
Speaker 2: a detour from recovery. Grief is part of the road.
Speaker 2: Here's where I want to get practical, because I know
Speaker 2: some of you are seeing there going Mara, This is
Speaker 2: all very poetic, but what do I actually do tomorrow morning? Fair?
Speaker 2: Let's get into it. First. Start noticing when you abandon yourself.
Speaker 2: You don't have to change anything yet, just notice. Notice
Speaker 2: when you say yes and mean no. Notice when you
Speaker 2: suppress an opinion to keep the peace. Notice when you
Speaker 2: check someone else's mood before you allow yourself to feel.
Speaker 2: Your own awareness is the first boundary. It's the line
Speaker 2: between unconscious pattern and conscious choice. Second, practice the pause.
Speaker 2: When someone makes a request or expresses a need, instead
Speaker 2: of immediately leaping into action like a golden retriever who
Speaker 2: just heard the word walk, pause, take a breath, Ask yourself,
Speaker 2: do I actually want to do this? Am I doing
Speaker 2: this from love or from fear. Is this a gift
Speaker 2: I'm giving freely or a toll I'm paying to avoid conflict?
Speaker 2: The pause is where your power lives. Third, reconnect with
Speaker 2: your body. Codependents are often profoundly disconnected from their physical
Speaker 2: selves because the body holds the truth, and the truth
Speaker 2: is inconvenient when you're trying to maintain a fiction. Start small.
Speaker 2: Notice when you're hungry, Notice when you're tired. Notice when
Speaker 2: your shoulders are up around your ears because you've been
Speaker 2: absorbing someone else's tension all day. Your body has been
Speaker 2: trying to talk to you. Start listening. Fourth, rediscover pleasure.
Speaker 2: And yes I say that as a sex therapist. But
Speaker 2: I don't just mean sexual pleasure though. Listen that too,
Speaker 2: Absolutely that too. I mean pleasure in the broadest sense.
Speaker 2: What makes you laugh, what makes you lose track of time?
Speaker 2: What did you love doing before you started building your
Speaker 2: life around someone else's blueprint. Go back to those things,
Speaker 2: even if they feel silly, Especially if they feel silly.
Speaker 2: Joy is not frivolous. Joy is evidence that you are
Speaker 2: alive and that your aliveness matters. Fifth get support therapy, yes,
Speaker 2: if you can access it, but also support groups, books, podcasts,
Speaker 2: friends who get it online communities. Codependency thrives in isolation
Speaker 2: and secrecy. Recovery thrives in connection and honesty. You do
Speaker 2: not have to do this alone. In fact, learning how
Speaker 2: to ask for help without losing yourself in the process
Speaker 2: is part of the curricular. I want to address something
Speaker 2: that comes up a lot when people start this work,
Speaker 2: which is the backlash, because when you start changing, the
Speaker 2: people around you will notice, and not all of them
Speaker 2: will be thrilled. The partner who benefited from your codependency
Speaker 2: may feel threatened. The family member who relied on you
Speaker 2: to be the peacekeeper may be upset. The friend who
Speaker 2: always counted on you to drop everything for them may
Speaker 2: accuse you of being selfish. And this is where it
Speaker 2: gets really hard, because the codependent brain hears your being
Speaker 2: selfish and immediately wants to course correct, to go back,
Speaker 2: to prove that they're not selfish by once again abandoning
Speaker 2: their own needs. It's like a reflex. Someone says you've changed,
Speaker 2: and that accusatory tone, and every cell in your body
Speaker 2: wants to unchange, to go back to being comfortable and
Speaker 2: invisible and small. This is the moment, This is the crucible.
Speaker 2: This is where you find out if you're going to
Speaker 2: stay on the path or retreat to the familiar prison.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to lie to you and say it's easy.
Speaker 2: It is emphatically not easy. But I will tell you this.
Speaker 2: The discomfort of growth is temporary. The discomfort of staying
Speaker 2: the same is permanent. One is the pain of a
Speaker 2: muscle being stretched. The other is the pain of a
Speaker 2: muscle atrophine. They both hurt, but only one of them
Speaker 2: leads somewhere. You know what I think the most beautiful
Speaker 2: thing about codependency recovery is, and I've thought about this
Speaker 2: a lot, it's that it doesn't actually reduce your capacity
Speaker 2: to love. I think people fear that. They think if
Speaker 2: I stop being codependent, I'll become bold, I'll become selfish,
Speaker 2: I'll become one of those people who can't attach to anyone. No,
Speaker 2: what happens is the opposite. What happens is that your
Speaker 2: love gets cleaner, It gets more honest, It stops being
Speaker 2: contaminated by fear and obligation and the desperate need to
Speaker 2: be needed. You start loving people not because you'll fall
Speaker 2: apart without them, but because you genuinely choose them, and
Speaker 2: being chosen by someone who doesn't need you but wants you.
Speaker 2: That is love, That is the whole thing. That is
Speaker 2: what we've been reaching for all along. Interdependent relationships the
Speaker 2: research consistently shows are characterized by mutual respect, individual jewel identities,
Speaker 2: balanced give and take, shared power, and emotional resilience. Both
Speaker 2: people can weather a storm without collapsing into each other.
Speaker 2: Both people can celebrate a win without feeling threatened by
Speaker 2: the other's success. Both people can say I need space
Speaker 2: without it meaning I don't love you. That's what's on
Speaker 2: the other side of this work. Not perfection, not some
Speaker 2: instagram ready relationship with matching pajamas in synchronized contentment, real, messy, honest,
Speaker 2: brave love between two whole people, people who fight sometimes
Speaker 2: and repair, who disappoint each other and recover, who hold
Speaker 2: space for each other's pain without trying to fix it
Speaker 2: or absorb it or make it go away. That sounds
Speaker 2: like a lot, and it is a lot, But it's
Speaker 2: also just life, your actual life, the one you've been
Speaker 2: subletting to other people's needs for way too long. I
Speaker 2: want to leave you with something that image I started
Speaker 2: with the woman in the craft store reaching for the
Speaker 2: cadmium red paint with shaking hands. That's not weakness. That
Speaker 2: trembling is not fragility. That is the earthquake of a
Speaker 2: self being reborn. That is desire, long buried and finally
Speaker 2: clawing its way to the surface. That is a woman
Speaker 2: saying with her body, with her choice, with her trembling
Speaker 2: magnificent hand, I am still here. I still want things,
Speaker 2: and what I want matters. If that's you, if you're
Speaker 2: standing in your own version of that craft store aisle,
Speaker 2: reaching for the thing you put down years ago, whether
Speaker 2: it's a paint brush, or a friendship, or interrear or
Speaker 2: just the audacity to have an opinion about what's for dinner.
Speaker 2: I want you to know something. You are not selfish
Speaker 2: for wanting a self. You are not broken for having
Speaker 2: been codependent, and you are not too far gone to
Speaker 2: come home. The door to yourself has always been unlocked.
Speaker 2: You just forgot you were allowed to walk through it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, not
Speaker 2: just with your ears, but with whatever part of you
Speaker 2: recognized itself in these words today. If this resonated, if
Speaker 2: it landed somewhere real, I'd be grateful if you'd subscribe,
Speaker 2: share it with someone who needs to hear it. Give
Speaker 2: it a like whatever Small Acts says, this mattered to me.
Speaker 2: This show is brought to you by Quiet Please Podcast Networks,
Speaker 2: and it is truly a privilege to be in your
Speaker 2: ears and I hope in your corner. Take care of yourselves.
Speaker 2: And I mean that in the most non codependent way possible.
Speaker 2: For more content like this, please go to Quiet Please
Speaker 2: dot Ai. I'm doctor Mara Lennox from the Quiet Please Network. Okay,
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