38 - Symptoms of Codependency (Part 4)
Episode Highlights:
Emotional recovery is about going back to “ground zero,” your childhood.
A disease is a morbid process that is destructive to the being: body, mind, soul, and heart. It reduces our capacity to be productive and prosperous. Disease has a characteristic chain of symptoms with known or unknown origins. A disease is chronic, with acute episodes, progressive and often fatal.
We are as sick as the feelings we will not let ourselves have.
Symptom # 9 Hypervigilance
Hypervigilance is the fear of giving up anxiety that keeps me “on my toes” as a safety mechanism; bad things will happen if I’m not on my toes.
Hypervigilance is being controlled by anxiety. Anxiety is always seeking relief from the hypervigilance. Anxiety becomes the expectation of an external threat doing something to put me in a position of helplessness.
Anxiety is in us to tell us to be ready to take a defensive action, a reaction:
fight…get ready
flee…get ready
freeze…get ready
appease…get ready
Anxiety in its negative form is saying “watch outside right now because something is coming that is going to harm you.” Anxiety is an external locus of anticipation and control.
The anxiety in hypervigilance is about avoiding the confession of being afraid and in need. The anxiety goes in search of the external threat; it looks for danger. This anxiety will not be quelled until it finds the thing that it needs to control in order to find relief.
We are made to live fully in relationship and connection. When we become disconnected from how we are made, because we are made for connection and to live fully in relationship, that has always been there. If I can’t find a way to be connected the way I am created to connect, I will have to find another way to be connected, one way or another.
Toxic shame tells you that if you’re not doing what others expect you to do (and your discomfort will confirm this), then you will be humiliated and rejected. Toxic Shame says:
You better get your role together.
You better watch the rules.
You better read from your script.
The only way you will be accepted (belong and matter) is by paying attention to the rules; following your role; and reading from your script. The tragedy of this is, we become impaired and chronically conscious of our external world, chronically ill-at-ease or “dis-eased” (diseased,) and we become externalizing creatures with roles, rules, and a script. Every day becomes a challenge to get through, instead of a challenge to go live fully in.
Codependents are attracted to where their anxiety takes them. If they don’t get rid of the anxiety you can’t ever be comfortable. Sadly, once hypervigilance has been triggered and you’ve become reactive, at that point you are more uncomfortable when you’re not focused on danger than you are when you can relax.
Anxiety, it its healthy form, is the energy of readiness or movement:
“It’s time to stop and rest.”
“Hey, it’s time to get dressed.”
“It’s 8 o’clock. I’m headed to work.”
“Time to go pick up the children.”
Anxiety is a gift we have been given that allows us to:
anticipate
be prepared
watch out
know to be afraid
Fear is a feeling that allows us to prepare for where we are heading. Fear gets us ready and helps us to prepare for our task. It recognizes danger and moves us to ask for help:
How do I prepare?
What do I need to learn?
What do I need to anticipate?
What will the consequences be if I am not prepared?
Healthy depressing is resting, and healthy anticipation is preparedness. They are both part of life; they are energy.
Hypervigilance is birthed in toxic shame that tells me that “I have to predict the future and anticipate the negative, or I will be found to be rejectable or humiliated.”
In our impaired experience in codependency, we are always aware of an external threat, sometimes even when no one is around. We are always on alert.
Hypervigilance, in its repaired form or how we are born, we are really capable of experiencing comfort (actually no anxiety) and being around others who we can be vulnerable with. We are made to be comfortable asking, seeking and knocking. I don’t have to be in control to live fully. Others can bless me.
When a person has a healthy expression of hypervigilance, anxiety becomes an indicator that I need help versus I need control.
We need to get back to an internal locus of control.
I know what my feelings are.
I am able to respond to my feelings, be response-able.
I am able to identify my feelings.
I am able to explore my feelings.
I am able to express my feelings.
I’m capable of experiencing comfort, which is a reduction of anxiety, and I’m able to use my energy to ask, to seek, and to knock.
When in recovery, anxiety is just an indication to ask for help; it is not an indication to get control.
Codependents who are trying to get control will head to the negative people. Codependents who are in recovery from codependency will use their energy to ask, seek and knock; they will head to the positive people.
Symptom #10 Depressive and/or Anxiety-Orientation
Once you begin to experience yourself in the place where you were made to be loved the most, once well-meaning, but impaired care-givers and significant others, because of their discomfort with their own internal experience, they start being uncomfortable, anxious and “dis-eased” with your presentation of your true, unique self as God created you (your feelings, needs, desire, longings and hope.) Then, the codependent in development begins to have depressive and anxiety-oriented struggles.
What happens to all codependents in the beginning:
depressing their anger
depressing the truth telling
depressing your needs
This leads to a condition called dysthymia, a low-grade chronic depression. Suppressing how you’re made so that you can be acceptable and loved. So, you’re trying to be loved by hiding yourself, instead of being yourself. You realize that you better become someone else; this is hypervigilance.
The unhealthy solution to depressiveness is anxiousness. This is rooted in the fear of having feelings.
The toxic shame experience of that is, if I show feelings I will be rejected as a failure or seen as weak. Depressiveness and anxiousness allow us to predict the future. If I hide me well enough, and pose as someone else, and stay vigilant about watching faces to see what they need, I’ll be ok; otherwise, I won’t be.
The impaired expression is that we end up wearing masks.
We are made to relieve our anxiousness and depressiveness, let fear have its course and let toxic shame go away, to remove the impaired expression of the mask.
We must get with people who “get it”, and identify what we’re feeling.
What am I feeling? (hurt, lonely, sad, anger, fear, shame, guilt, and glad)
What’s this like?
What’s this like for another person?
If you can name the feeling, then you can actually have the experience:
I’m afraid
I feel afraid
Then you identify and explore
Where is this coming from
How familiar is this feeling?
You express it.
Codependents have to ask questions
Where am I?
Where is it coming from?
Who do I tell?
Living With Heart Podcast, Episode 18, Living Fully in The River
Symptom #11 Distorted Relationship to Willpower
It’s all about the fear of being needy because neediness is failure or equals being a failure.
Toxic shame says, “If I have to need, I lose my worth.”
The impaired experience of that is that I become very self-demanding. My expectation is to be able to do things I’ve never known how to do or to be able to do things I really can’t do.
The repaired expression or healthy expression of this symptom is that I actually have the humility and acceptance of knowing that I cannot be omniscient or omnipotent.
Willpower will become our sin:
The will to overcome that God made me to be in need.
The will to overcome that God created me to be vulnerable.
The will to overcome that God made me to find fulfillment and connection.
The will to overcome being human.
We have a will that ends up being the denial of our own hearts.
Codependents practice:
being stronger than
not being in need
I’m so pathetic, I can’t think at all. I can’t make decisions. Someone needs to make them for me. (the will to not be exposed as having feelings, so you decide and that way I won’t have to feel.)
The will to not be human, is sin.
The rejection of being human and the will to have control leads us to sickness.
In recovery, the power of will is submitted to the heart’s passion.
Willpower is made to move us to the future that the heart dreams.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center