Today, I’ve picked four identifications of codependency for us to recognise. I want to say that as we progress and gain more awareness, we see things or are ready to accept things more than we may have been six or twelve months ago, when we’re ready to get honest about things in our lives.
So, self-abuse: you hate yourself for seeking approval in the first place, and you then turn that on yourself by engaging in more destructive behaviors and thoughts. Who’s done that? They’ve gone and sought approval from someone through giving, doing, or asking for counsel, and then we feel guilt and shame. I know I used to do that. I’d call someone and ask for their advice, and then I’d think, “Why did I do this?” and I’d put myself through a cycle. “Now they’ll think I’m terrible. Now they’ll… I’ll put myself back to bed with depression for doing that.” It’s not to say don’t seek counsel, but do it in the right way.
Self-denial: we know that denial is one of our strongest emotions, and the acronym for denial is “don’t even know I am lying.” Feeling guilty from rejection, you tell yourself you should never have sought acceptance in the first place, like, “Why did I do that? Oh, I’m so stupid.” And you know, we just absolutely do a number on ourselves. Also, what I might like to add here is we can think that other people may be abusive or unkind to us. The main person who is more vicious to us than anybody out there is ourselves. No one, no one will treat you more viciously or abusively than how you’re treating yourself. So that means the cleanup starts with going back to how we treat ourselves, with support.
Self-despair: you feel so low that you can’t even conceive of ever feeling successful or happy again. You just think this is your lot, and we go down lower and lower and lower. We get into self-despair.
Self-humiliation: boy oh boy, do I know these very, very well. And I’d like to say these days, if it does start to come into me, I nip it in the bud straight away, and I don’t do it. I mean, my whole life was a cycle of these feelings, thoughts, and actions. Self-humiliation: you can’t believe that you were stupid enough, that you didn’t think, that you wouldn’t realise the outcome you were after. So we do something and then we think, “Why did I do that? I can’t believe I’m so stupid. I’m no good,” and we start the cycle again.
Remember that these are releasing chemicals in our body that our body and mind become addicted to. So we need to wean ourselves off these feelings with support. I don’t believe it can be done on our own because we never can tell ourselves what we need to know in those times because the addiction sets in, and the same addictive thinking comes in. So, I hope that helps. I hope you can identify with these things. There is another way to live, and my next video will be about some of the things we do when we’ve gone into this self-abuse and self-despair.
Thank you.
