Do You Have High-functioning Co-dependence? Feeling exhausted despite “having it all together”? You might be trapped in high functioning co-dependence. Especially with trauma and ADHD, we’re so conditioned, from a preverbal age, to ignore our own knowledge, wisdom, wants and needs and prioritise others’. And it’s never too late to step into your power.
Watch here or listen wherever you get your podcasts
In this episode, you’ll:
· Learn why capable, independent people often ignore their own needs while constantly caring for others
· Learn how the “Good Girl” and “Independent Woman” conditioning keeps us from asking for help, accepting support or even knowing what we truly want
· Discover practical tools to break free from the cycle of over-giving
· Recognize when you’re accepting “floor fries” instead of what you deserve and
· give yourself permission to know what you know and want what you want without guilt. (Tomorrow’s Sole to Soul Circle special will dive deeper into this).
Stop exhausting yourself trying to be lovable. Remember that you already are worthy. Exactly as you are. You’re totally lovable exactly as you are. You’re enough. You’re not too much and the moment you recognise this, everything gets easier.
Resources mentioned: Terri Cole (Boundary Boss), Kasia Urbaniak (Unbound), Kara Loewentheil (Unf*** Your Brain) Meggan Watterson (Reveal etc) and Gloria Steinem (Revolution from Within etc)
#HighFunctioningCodependence #SelfCare #Boundaries #ADHD #Trauma #WomenEmpowerment
Feel Better Every Day!
Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you:
• Feel… regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from
• Love… accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and
• Heal… turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large
Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get deeper dives each week.
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CHAPTERS
(0:00 – 1:42) Opening thoughts on exhaustion and high functioning co-dependence
(3:10 – 4:35) Introduction to episode topic and Terri Cole’s definition
(4:35 – 5:21) Kasia Urbaniak and the “good girl” and “independent woman”
(8:12 – 10:03) Shifting attention away from yourself to the aggressor
(13:09 – 15:48) The “smoosh” and losing power in relationships
(20:48 – 23:09) Kara Loewentheil’s “floor fries” metaphor
(33:38 – 34:55) Gloria Steinem’s toilet training and fascism insight
DISCLAIMER
The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Also notice the times when you feel exhausted and be honest with yourself about the potential for high functioning co-dependence and is there someone or some area in your life where you’re more prone to it, where you feel like you have to do, you have to go along with, you have to, whatever it is, in order to be lovable, in order to be worthy. And just know, even if you have to keep telling yourself, know with every fibre of your being that you already are.
Hi, I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham and you’re listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma informed and ADHD friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself.
The idea is to help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from so you can feel better every day and you can find out more at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. For deeper dives into each episode, including bonus interviews when they’re interview episodes, plus access to a rich archive of exclusive material, including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle and there are other resources like the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and lots of book bonus videos on the website selfcarecoaching.net
And lots of other free resources around trauma, ADHD, anxiety, stress, confidence, perimenopause and menopause, self-care for solopreneurs, confidence, I can’t remember if I said that, resilience, decolonising yourself, trying to think what I’ve forgotten, but I’ve kind of spent a lot of time in the past year or so trying to create more of a library type feel for each of the specialisms to make it much more accessible and easy to use.
I hope you find that helpful and do let me know what you’d like more of and if you have any questions. That’s selfcarecoaching.net.
For today’s episode, episode 72, we’re looking at high functioning co-dependence and it’s a term I learnt from the American author and podcast host, Boundary Boss, Terri Cole.
Basically, it also confirms a lot of what Kasia Urbaniak talks about when she talks about the Good Girl and the Independent Woman actually being related. What Terri Cole explains around high functioning co-dependence is you wouldn’t think of yourself as a typical codependent person because you’re not sitting around weeping and wailing and unable to function.
Instead, you’re the one who is doing everything for everyone and you seem like you have it all together, but the point is that you’re utterly exhausted because so much of your time and energy and attention is on what other people need.
I thought I’d explore it a little bit today, but am very much encouraging you to check out Terri Cole’s work. She does entire courses around this and she has some really lovely podcast episodes and the book. Kasia Urbaniak is another, like I mentioned, the Good Girl and the Independent Woman.
She talks about the Good Girl and how we were all conditioned through thousands of years of patriarchal conditioning, where women condition obviously as well as men, but it’s to benefit the patriarchy.
Because if anything bad happened to a girl or a woman, because she was blamed, all the kind of shaming around sexuality and clothing and behaviour and very much conditioned to be a good girl, a marriageable girl. It’s only relatively recently that women could have their own money, their own credit cards, their own businesses. That is something that might sound familiar, but it’s more likely that you’ll be like, “Nope! That’s not me! I had lots of choices. I was told I could do whatever I wanted, be whatever I wanted.”
And this is where she starts talking about the Independent Woman. The Independent Woman sounds like a wonderful thing, but the way she describes it, it’s basically, we have created a situation where we are independent, we can do what we want, but it has left us unable to accept help and support and also too scared of feeling too bossy.
If you’re too much, then it’s the “too bossy”. And if you’re in Good Girl, it’s “too needy”. Kasia used to work as a dominatrix and I’ve been recommending her work to everyone. She is phenomenal. She also trained for 12 years as a Taoist nun.
She was doing a lot of energy work and set up The Academy to support people in finding their power. She works with women because it’s women’s conditioning that makes our attention go inward when we’re under attack. Whether it’s sexual harassment, verbal or in an actual situation like where you’re physically in danger or whether it’s a boss asking an inappropriate question or a random on the street, whatever it might be.
Kasia explains how we’re all conditioned as girls, as women, to be focused on how we are. Our attention defaults to, “What did I do to deserve that?”
Whereas boys are trained to focus on what they do. It’s the more active, they’re more likely.
She says nine out of 10 times if someone says something inappropriate to a man, it’ll be like, “Why would you say that?”
Her recommendation is that you immediately ask a question. So you avoid that default that leads to the freeze response. And you’re instead, it could be a, “Why would you think that’s okay to ask?” Or it might be something witty. It might, like think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They’re doing the reboot and she would not only slay, but she would have some witty repartee with each thing.It might be a situation that you later think, “Oh, I wish I’d said that.”
But Kasia’s point is you don’t even need to say anything clever or even related. The idea is to take the attention, the unwanted attention off yourself. And immediately put it onto the aggressor. It might be, “What colour are your eyes?” Or “Why are you wearing that tie?” It doesn’t matter what it is. The idea is you’re not going inwards and vulnerable in those few moments. I really recommend you check out her work. Her book Unbound is about helping women to get over that Good Girl conditioning, that Independent Woman conditioning.
What I found incredibly helpful, and how it links with this episode around co-dependence is high functioning co-dependence. To me, the Independent Woman is very much what Terri Cole is talking about.
Got it all sorted. Don’t need any help. Can I take that bag for you? Nope, I’m fine. I’ve got it.
Can I pay for you for whatever? Nope, it’s all good. I don’t need anyone to pay for me.
Can I hold a door open for you? Nope.
She talks about what she calls the smoosh. When she talks about Dom or Sub, obviously that’s BDSM but it has applications in all our lives because our lives are all about power dynamics, all our relationships. But in the dungeon, it’s more exaggerated.
Some people will talk about masculine energy, feminine energy, the feminine being more receptive, the masculine being more… I can’t think of the word right now, but just thinking in terms of when you’re able to be clear in what you want, when you’re able to allow yourself to know what you know and want what you want and to express it clearly, whether you’re coming from a dominating energy and you’re just demanding what you want, but in a way in which others want to give it to you, or whether you’re coming from the submissive.
And again, we have connotations around all of it. You might think, “Oh, I don’t like that” but you might translate it for masculine, feminine if that feels good for you or whatever. Just notice how you feel. Notice what comes up for you when you think about saying, “I need this.”
This is where we get into trouble, and I really recognise this myself in my relationships, my whole life. I’ve been changing it, I’ve been healing it, and they’re much, much better. But where I find myself in trouble is what she calls the smoosh.
It’s where I don’t want to be too needy, and I don’t want to be too bossy. I’m messing, in terms of the Taoist work she’s done, with the energies. The clean energies mean being clear about what you want, that kind of owning it. Being clear and able to accept what others want to give you when you want it. She talks about the smoosh, where you’re in neither, and you’re taking away the power from both.
For example, I grew up loathing the idea of any kind of princessy behaviour. Any kind of entitled… “I can open my own doors, thank you very much,” or anything like that. Whereas what I’ve learned from listening to her, is actually, why not let ourselves receive? Why not let ourselves enjoy all the good life has to offer when we want it, and when it’s freely given? Why not allow ourselves to have that vulnerability when appropriate, and to really connect with it in ourselves and others?
And she’s talking about the power in that, inherent in it when you don’t deny it, but also the power in terms of knowing what you want, and giving yourself permission, giving others permission. She talks about giving a role, giving others a role in your life. When you ask for someone to step up, it might go against all the Independent Woman conditioning.
I realise that I’m talking… I normally, I want all my work to be freely available to people of all genders, but this is specifically for people who’ve been raised female. Kasia wants to work with men, but she’s found through her experiments, her laboratory, she’s talking about for women.
I hope this resonates, but it will also hopefully resonate for other people as well. Notice how you feel when you know you want something, or if you’ve been so conditioned out of what you want.
How it feels to give yourself permission to know what you know, and want what you want, and to not have that codependent fear of not being lovable, not being worthy, not being acceptable, not being powerful enough, being too powerful. It gets, you can totally understand why it gets so smooshy.
I’d love for you to think about how you feel listening to this so far, and to think about whether you ever push help, support your needs being met in ways that feel good for everyone involved, away.
Because you’re not taking full ownership of your power, you’re giving your power away, and you’re also not allowing yourself to need. We’re all humans, men, women, non-binary, we all need to give, we all need to receive.
When Kasia talks about dominance, and she’s very much talking about the exchange of energy, so the attention out and the attention in, the talking, the listening, that it’s such a powerful, I really encourage you to listen to some of her work, read some of her work, if it resonates.
And in this week’s Circle deeper dive, there’ll be a recording, so self-study, and Self-study with the uppercase S, because you’re really going inward, so you can use it at your own pace.
It will be available in the exclusive membership area of the Substack, but we’ll be having a deeper dive into helping you find out what you want, even if you’ve had decades and decades of conditioning to not only not ask for what you want, but not even to acknowledge to yourself what you want.
There is so much power, and it makes me laugh, because my work has been all around this, like self-care and all, for decades now. And it’s one of the questions I ask all new clients, “What do you want?” And I sometimes say it’s harder than some of the ones around like suicidal ideation or trauma and all the others, because so many people, they just don’t know.
But you DO know when you give yourself permission to know. And this is where I encourage embodied journalling, where you record yourself, and you, I’m realising I’ve moved into the Feel part of the Feel… Love… Heal… framework without identifying that.
You might record just audio, or you might record video. I recommend video, so you can see yourself. Notice how it feels to allow your stream of consciousness, say some of the things you want.
I’m challenging myself, because I turned 50 in November, and I started a list a few weeks ago of 50 things that I want. Some of them are, I want to have finished the weeding around the house. I want to have the, like, kind of garden the area more. Other things, like I wanted to get a new kitchen tap, because there was a drip. Some of them are going to be just as exciting as that. Things around the house, or things with the car.
Other things are going to be deeper. Other things are going to be more pleasurable. Other things, I’m just going to let myself see what comes up, but the idea of giving myself permission to want 50 things. Some of them I can do for myself. Some things I’ll be asking loved ones, or I’ll be, like, kind of needing professional support with, or whatever it might be.
But let yourself want what you want, and I want to also ask you to notice how it feels to imagine asking someone to help you get what you want. And this is where the smoosh can occur, in Kasia’s terms, because it’s like, “Oh, I shouldn’t want it, or they’re busy” or whatever.
What I found really helpful is, she talks quite harshly, but I also really recognise it in so many of the heteronormative couples that I know, and some of those whom I’ve worked with: Where the woman is so used to doing everything, she basically trains the man to be what Kasia calls a couch potato, or a worm.
He goes in on himself, he loses his sense of self-worth, and often then has an affair, and it’s like, “Why would you do that?” I’m thinking of all the female Oscar winners who have then been cheated on, and it’s that kind of, no one’s fault, this is purely about unspoken power dynamics. But her point is that when we allow people to step up, when we allow people to help us get what we want, we’re also helping them. They’re gaining a role in our lives. This is good for everyone.
And of course, if they don’t, then that’s information. You recognise you were not wrong to ask, but you get to think, “No, I’m going to…”
And this is where I want to move on to Kara Loewentheil, and she does the Unfuck Your Brain podcast. And there was something, I can’t remember what episode it was, and I’ve told hundreds of people about this concept of floor fries. So the idea of, like, when we’re feeling codependent, so we might not look it, but we’re feeling like our worth hinges on someone else’s treatment of us, rather than us having that inherent, we’re all part of the divine, we’re all part of nature, we’re all deserving of all wonderful goodness, and joy, and pleasure, and happiness, and success, and health, all the things that you want, you are worthy of.
When we are taking good care of ourselves, when we’re looking after ourselves, we are more likely to get it. Because we’re more connected with what it is we want, we’re more connected with ways in which we can ask for those needs and wants to be met in empowered, powerful ways.
But when we’re not, we are liable to either accept or feel terrible for having even been offered what Kara Loewentheil calls floor fries. She gave the example in this episode that I can’t remember, ADHD brain, of, if you’re cooking yourself a beautiful seven course dinner, and someone offers you floor fries, you’re going to be like, “How random! How strange! Why would they do that?”
In Kasia’s terms, your attention goes outwards. You’re not internalising, like, “Why would they offer me…? What has given them the impression that I would be grateful for such crumbs and such dirty floor fries?”
Instead, it’s, “How strange that they’ve done that! No, thank you!”
But you carry on cooking your delicious meal, and eat it and enjoy it and you’re open for better, but you’re not going to put up with crap. And if you aren’t, if you’re starving for any kind of love and attention and care, then it’s much more likely that your attention will go inwards and you’ll be, “Oh, no one ever gives me anything but floor fries, I don’t understand.”
It’s that victimy, why, why, why, rather than you can nourish yourself. So what I’ve noticed over the years since that just somehow really stuck with me, it really resonated the idea of floor fries. If I feel in any relationship in any situation in my life now, that floor fries are on offer, I will amp up my Inner Child work.
I will remind myself that we’re all part of the divine. We all are. There’s still a lot of healing. And next week’s episode will be working with our Inner Children in different types of scenarios, different ways.
But for me, even the simplest thing, I think I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, I bought a vase, and I buy myself flowers every week. You might think a child wouldn’t want flowers, but that vase is a container for my Inner Child and my visual reminder every week, that I deserve flowers if I want flowers. And I can do that for myself.
And I can also graciously accept flowers and compliments and all good things from others. It’s not like I’m doing it myself, and I’m closing off to anything from anyone else.
Notice how you feel. Notice what helps you feel better. When you think about areas in which high functioning co-dependence is showing up in your life, I really again do recommend you check out Terri Cole, Kasia Urbaniak, and Kara Loewentheil.
As we move into the Love… part of the framework, I am encouraging you to accept the, even saying this, I’m so aware of like tightness around the heart centre. And it’s like, Oh, accept the pain, accept the fear, accept the grief, accept the loss, accept the terror that if you don’t accept those floor fries, nothing else will be on offer. It’s not true. It’s a story that you have been conditioned into, and you can break those chains.
What I love about Kasia’s work is she is not waiting for white supremacy and the patriarchy to be smashed. She’s looking at ways in which we can all find power now.
And she’s clear on the difference between power and empowerment, because power is in relation to others, and it’s going back and forth. It’s not like power over. It’s not all the negative connotations.
There’s so much wealth and abundance and resourcing and safety and all good things for everyone on the planet if we just allow ourselves to be clean about it. I keep thinking, like, not feeling worthy of love, not feeling worthy of respect or care unless you perform, so like workaholism. I know when I stopped drinking alcohol in 2001, it kind of changed. I was already training as a complementary therapist and life coach, and for many, many years, it’s only really in the last two years that I’ve begun to unpick some of the overwork, which people have been telling me about for longer and I still fall into.
Recognising, “No, I’m worthy even if I don’t get everything done, even if I don’t,” and I cannot tell you the healing that that has brought, that we’re all worthy. We’ve been conditioned to believe we have to perform, we have to do, we have to… love yourself, accept yourself exactly as you are, accept yourself at your most demanding. I’m not saying that you should be demanding and exploit anyone else or pressure or coerce or anything like that, but accept that part of you that wants to, accept that part of you that needs whatever, that wants whatever, and you’ll find a way.
And again, like I said, we’ll be going into this in greater depth in the Circle, but you’ll find ways of getting those needs and wants met in a more collaborative way that leaves everyone feeling good, but anytime you feel like you have to do xyz and a, b, c, d, e, f, g, the whole alphabet, check in with yourself and ask yourself, is that your Independent Woman or Good Girl? Ask yourself, is it high functioning co-dependence?
Ask yourself, like there are going to be times where you’re high functioning and you feel on top of the world, you’re giving, you’re organising, you’re kind of looking after people, you’re doing all the things and it feels good. It’s from what Brené Brown calls that wholehearted approach. Notice those times and keep doing it, but also notice the times when you feel exhausted and be honest with yourself about the potential for high functioning co-dependence. Is there someone or some area in your life where you’re more prone to it, where you feel like you have to do, you have to go along with, you have to, whatever it is, in order to be lovable, in order to be worthy and just know, even if you have to keep telling yourself, know with every fibre of your being that you already are.
And this, again, I realise I’m sharing a lot of references, but Meggan Watterson’s work around the Divine Feminine and listening to how women were not just excluded from Christianity as we know it, but deliberately, systematically erased.
And we know from the Gnostic Gospels that were found having been buried in the desert and in places around the world, there were so many women whose position was changed to suit the patriarchy. For example, Mother Mary, she became a virgin hundreds of years later and Mary Magdalene, who had been so beloved by Jesus, became a prostitute and that split women into the kind of whole virgin whore dichotomy, which is ridiculous.
It disembodies women and girls from the divinity in all of us. In all humans. In all creatures. Because if you could only be a woman who was holy by giving birth as a virgin, then what hope is there for any ordinary woman? And especially when men are deified and recognise themselves in the priesthood and in all these stories and all of it.
Meggan Watterson’s work, I read Reveal years and years and years ago. She’s also got Mary Magdalene, Reveal, The Girl Who Baptised Herself about Thecla and Paula, I don’t know if I’ve pronounced that, not pronounced it right. I don’t know if I’ve got it in the right order.
I’ll have the details in the show notes. But just the recognition that it’s not that women did not exist. These powerful women that they were deliberately erased by male bishops when Christianity became the emperor’s religion.
I actually almost had to pull over listening to this, driving home the other day, because I’d been raised Catholic, and I’d always felt this, how can we ever have equality when women are not? And I mean, this is like talking about women, like there are all sorts of groups of people that are others and excluded.
How can we ever have equality in life when what we’re raised with is so lopsided? And so just even knowing that was deliberate, that was systemic, deliberately done to oppress and colonise.
If you think about what happened with the Inquisition and with colonisation and Christianity being taken across the world, and indigenous practices, nature-based practices, being outlawed and buried and punished. The more we connect with what we know, with what we want, the more we heal that, not just for ourselves, but for the world.
And I think the Heal… part, I was thinking, normally, I’m thinking about helping your loved ones, your communities, the world at large. But because high functioning co-dependence, you probably already do that, I want you to really think about what you’re modelling and think about how you connecting with your needs and wants will help others.
But the focus needs to be on yourself and what you need and what you want, and you giving yourself permission to know what that is, and to have what that is, to ask for it, to demand it, but in a way, like let yourself demand it in a bad way, like on your own or in practice, to get better at then asking in a charged situation or whenever that might be. Be open to the recognition that the more we all connect with our own embodied wisdom, like this has been conditioned out of all of us, all humans, we know so much when we just listen to our bodies. And when we recognise, oh, well, OK, I now know something, I’m going to have to have a painful conversation with someone, but I’m not going to betray myself anymore in this regard, whatever it might be. Intergenerational healing can occur, recognition that our ancestors did the best they could, they were trying to protect us, internalised oppression may well have been an enormous part of that, but recognising that they were trying to keep us safe.
Keep the focus on you, you and you, and allow others those roles in your life by not saying, “I’m fine, I’ve got this, don’t worry, I’m fine” and getting increasingly resentful and pissed off and angry.
Let yourself know what you know and want what you want.
I would love to hear what you want and what you are going to give yourself permission to speak up for and stand up for, for yourself, and I want to say and others because everything impacts others, but with this specific episode, very much knowing that you are worth it.
Next week, as I mentioned, we’re working with our Inner Children, and this episode, like all of them, was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham, and if you haven’t already and you would like to, I would love for you to subscribe and rate, comment, review, obviously I’d love a five-star review, but I want you to express yourself however you want, and please do share with anyone you think might find it helpful.
Do check out the show notes, I’m aware I’ve shared lots of names, lots of people who’ve influenced me over many years and more recently, and you might want to just notice, like you might want to set reminders around your home or around your workplace or around your car or in your timer on your phone, in your diary, “What do I want right now?” Not just “What will support me?” but “What do I WANT right now?”
I want a vegan ice cream, or I want a nap, or I want a hug, or whatever it might be, just begin to embody your wants and needs and soothe yourself for the fact that it can be really hard.
We’ve all been conditioned away from that embodied wisdom from the time we were potentially potty trained or toilet trained, whatever it is that happens to small children, depending on the way that was done.
It might have been done in a way that honoured you and yourself, or it might have been that you learned at a pre-verbal stage that you couldn’t be trusted in terms of your most basic needs and wants, and then of course by the time you get to school and you can’t go to the loo whenever you want, or you can’t drink or eat whenever you want, this all has a huge impact on the world.
Gloria Steinem in Revolution from Within, wrote about a former concentration camp, I want to say victim, but he survived it. He ended up guarding a Nazi after World War II, and he was naturally filled with loathing and awfulness at what he was having to deal with, but after a few days he found compassion for this Nazi because he asked to use the toilet, and he realised that this Nazi, and presumably most of them, or anyone who is acting as a fascist and being that, they’ve been disconnected from their own needs and wants and their own sense of empathy.
She talked about how before World War II there was a trend in Germany for really harsh toilet training. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but that was, in her opinion, and this makes sense to me as a therapist. If you learn before you can even talk that you can’t trust your body, that you can’t trust yourself, that it has to be denied, it has to be suppressed, it has to be oppressed, then of course you’re going to do that in other people, too.
You’re going to use power over, you’re not going to feel safe to betray any sense of weakness. I wish there was a way not only to have every child on the planet be safe, be fed, be watered, be sheltered, be worked with in ways that the parents have support, so the parents can have their own lives as well, but the children, the babies, have all they need in order to let their souls evolve and their talents and their personalities in a way in which everyone is honoured and loved and appreciated exactly for who they are. They’re seen and heard, and they know that nothing they want or need is too much, because everyone is more accustomed to having more of their needs and wants met.
I don’t know how we do this, but I believe it would lead to world peace. All we can do is work with ourselves and have that ripple out, so sending enormous love to whoever you are, wherever you are, listening, and I would love to know how you’re getting on in terms of letting yourself know what you want, know and want what you want.
Thank you for listening.