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62. Demystifying Codependency: A Deep Dive into Relationships, Self-Discovery, and Emotional Regulation · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, this is Dawn, and you're listening to Dear Divorce Diary with my coach, dawn, where we explore the post-divorce life and you, the woman who lives it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: We cover everything from trauma during and after divorce to feeling like a stranger in your own life and the new frontier of life as a single woman.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Cozy in for the conversations you've been longing to have about this new life.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Hi, love, today we are talking about codependency and the codependency triangle, or the victim triangle.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: So it's shape day on the pod and this is a topic I've been talking about for many, many years.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's just such a deep, rich topic and we're going to talk about some of the very specific reasons.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I love it for you in this moment, but in the meanwhile, I did a little Instagram reel on the victim triangle this week.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: If you're not following me on Instagram, come on already.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And the question I got is why do people talk about codependency as though it's a bad thing?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Aren't we supposed to be in relationship?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Aren't we supposed to take good care of each other?
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Aren't we supposed to live a life of service with other people?
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And yes, I think so many people have that question about what, what, what, the crap is codependency and why is it bad?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: And so just know, we're going to dig into all that good stuff today to really have a feel for this.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: So what is codependency?
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Well, long story short, codependency is really the boiled, really boiled down.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Codependency is the act of I need you to be okay in order for me to feel peaceful or okay, and you need me to be okay in order for you to feel peaceful or okay.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Right, so it's this idea of people pleasing in an order to avoid a feeling of rejection or abandonment, that I'm going to keep the peace at all costs, or I'm going to go through this kind of series of behaviors in order to feel closer, connected to you.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And it's not always done through people pleasing, actually, sometimes it's done through conflict, but it's it's all a whole series of behaviors in order to maintain a sense of connection, so that I don't feel abandoned or rejected.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Because if I feel abandoned or rejected, then life feels really big and scary, I feel alone and I don't know what to do with my hands.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about what a triangle has to do with this.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, so if you could picture, if you're watching on YouTube, you could see, but if you're on the pod, you have to use your imagination, love, okay.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So an inverted triangle, right, three points on a triangle.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: And I want you to think if we bisected this triangle and half top to bottom, the bottom point would be victim, which is a feeling of less than, not as good as right.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Now, I know, just like that, you got a shot to the heart, right?
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: You're like oh, I have felt less than, not as good as right.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And in the top half of the triangle we have rescuer and persecutor, which feels better than.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I am better than you, and I know you just got your second shot to the heart because I know you have felt comfortable in that feeling from time to time also, especially as it relates to your ex.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Am I right?
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: So in this triangle, there are these three points victim feels less than rescuer and persecutor feel better than.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And the thing is is we all have a spot on the triangle where we feel more at ease, where we spend more time, and we all get on this triangle every single day.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So I am not just calling you out love, this is a.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: This is a human behavior pattern that we all do, and the goal is to learn how to do it less or do it differently, right.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And so when you're on the triangle, you inevitably move around all three points, and when we are in power struggle with somebody else, they are also on the triangle dancing around their three points, right?
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: So think of it like this.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Let's say you're on this triangle and you're coming from a place of I feel less than I don't feel good about myself, and so you get this bright idea I know what to do.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go do something really good for somebody else so that they, so that I can feel better about myself, right.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: And so this is where people are like what's wrong with that, don?
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: That seems like a sound strategy and it that's not wrong, right.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to go rescue air quotes, right?
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Somebody else that I can feel good about myself, okay, great.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Now let's say I do that a lot.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And now I start to feel burnt out or like taken advantage of, or like maybe I've lost track of my own needs in that process.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And now, out of my resentment and my exhaustion, I'm pissed that you keep letting me take care of you and you're not taking care of me, joop.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I shift right over to Persecutor.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: What is?
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Why don't you care about me?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: What is wrong with you that you are such a POS and you don't care about other people and you don't notice my needs, and right.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: And now we've shifted from started in victim up to rescuer, over to Persecutor.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And then let's say we get into some power struggle with Persecutor and somebody's like, well, you didn't, you know.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: And then eventually that fight, the energy shifts.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And then we're like, oh shit, I took it too far.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And now we're back down to feeling in victim, like, oh, I'm not good enough, I really screwed up here.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Right, I took it too far, I hurt you, I, whatever.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And then we're back down in that low, I'm not as good as spot.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So notice that each of these three spots on the triangle, they're not from a sense of grounded worthiness, where it's like I know who I am, I know my purpose, I know that even if I'm feeling less than that, that's just a feeling.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: It's not true.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: We can separate the truth from a passing emotion or a passing thought, and we don't necessarily have to get hooked onto the triangle in order to prove ourselves or to please somebody else, or to make somebody else feel small so that I can feel big, right.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: So we also do this triangle pattern inside of ourselves, right.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So I want you to think about the times that you really feel genuinely like wow, I am not good enough and I can't do this thing, and that feels very, very true within yourself.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: And then, maybe to avoid feeling like you're not good enough, you then have three glasses of wine and a scroll on Instagram to quote unquote rescue yourself from having to do the hard work of either finding your true sense of worth and purpose or transmuting those feelings of not good enough.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: And so then you rescue yourself by doing all this avoidance behavior or this numbing behavior, right.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: And then, when you feel disgusted with yourself or doing all of that avoidance behavior, you shift on over to persecutor and you start beating yourself up for what you're not doing well enough and persecutor and you're like, really, you know being cruel to yourself with your negative self-talk, and then that just reinforces you dropping into victimhood and saying, see, I really am not good enough and I'm never gonna feel differently than this.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So this is a cycle.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: That is a vicious cycle.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: It's also been known as the shame generating machine, this codependency or victim triangle.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Right Now, one of the reasons that I absolutely love talking about this is because I think that there's a certain sexiness that happens on the internet when we're doing blame, right?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: So notice how sexy it feels to blame your ex.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Notice how sexy it feels to blame other people for what you're currently experiencing.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that I love talking about as a therapist and a coach is hey, love.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Anytime we're doing blame, we are absolutely stuck in our healing.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Our vibration is low.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: We are not attracting abundance.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: We are definitely not in gratitude.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: We are reinforcing our wounds and we are not rising.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: We are not reaching our full potential.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: We are absolutely in victim consciousness when we're doing blame, and so I think that when we're in a season of healing from a relationship wound, it's really an opportunity to say it would feel a certain type of sexy to shift into blame so that I don't have to face this mountain of personal work that I have to do, and so that's a dance that we're all gonna do throughout our lives.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Right, we're gonna go through seasons of saying like I'm gonna own my shit, I'm gonna get better, I'm gonna grow, I'm gonna become an unstoppable force of worthy power, versus not today.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Today, I'm just gonna do blame because that's all I've got today.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And hey, I'm here for that, I do it too.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And so we all have these blind spots inside of our healing journey that some days we have the energy to tackle them and some days we don't.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: But I really love especially on the internet love noticing when victim triangle behavior is happening, because you know all those times that we roll up on a really dramatic Post on social media and we're like I'm just here for the comments and you can see the power struggle and you can see the vitriol or the hate or the whatever is going on.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Right, that's victim triangle playing out, codependency triangle playing out right there in front of your eyes.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: You know so many of the conversations that get highly politicized or polarized.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: It's because we are just so comfortable in drama and victimhood.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, victim and Victimhood, codependency and drama triangle it's this kind of title is interchangeable, right?
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: So we, one of the reasons we stay so entrenched on the triangle is because we love drama.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: We love drama.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: We get a certain chemical hit in our brain from, from being a part of it, from watching it.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: So think for a moment when you're sitting in nature and you feel really grounded and really good and really clear, and you're just sure that God is real and that you are taking care of and all is going to be well and and you feel a certain peace, right, and everything.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: You're just like, wow, life is so clear right now.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna bottle this, yeah.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: But then think about when you're watching your favorite TV drama, or you're listening to your favorite like, or your you know a shout out right now, boozy betch memes, right, like you're, I don't know.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: There's just like a certain kind of drama that you're watching or a trainwreck that you just can't take your eyes off of, and that Feels a certain kind of good also, right.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So, and that's not necessarily wrong or bad like drama and acting out of the human condition yeah, it's, it's fun, it feels good.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: There's a certain art to that, there's a certain expression in that that helps us feel seen, heard, understood, connected me too, right?
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So the key thing to hear when we're talking about this is to really Sit and ask yourself okay, don has pointed out today this pattern of victim, rescuer or persecutor, and I need to now ask myself how hard is it for me to feel good about myself, or grounded in a sense of worthiness, how hard is it for me to not people, please?
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: How hard is it for me to Ask for what I need in relationships, set boundaries where appropriate and then maintain those boundaries and and Regulate my nervous system, while somebody else is clearly not happy with me and they're gonna make that painfully obvious?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: How Easy or difficult is it for you to sit in those moments Now as you've just moved through Divorce or you're moving through it right, and you notice that your role has shifted?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: How hard is it for you to sit with not having the role of Spouse or partner right, husband, wife?
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: How hard is it, when your kids are not with you, for you to not be just living full-blown in the role of parent?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Now, it's very reasonable that these role shifts are hard.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: They have been where you've been expressing yourself.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: But notice that when we're not living fully into those roles because we have time by ourselves and with ourselves, how hard is it for you to sit with that?
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: How well do you know yourself when you're not busy doing the role of mom or parent or spouse?
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And so if you're like uh, you know, not like a hard dawn, but not terribly hard like okay, you may have a healthy relationship with codependency or the victim triangle, but I think that most of us, because the underpinnings of these behaviors are typically attachment wounds.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: So if you've noticed that in your life you've taken an attachment styles quiz and you're either an anxious or avoid an attacher, there's some clues for you that these things are probably harder for you.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Or if you notice that you'll do anything to avoid rejection, there's probably some clues for you there, right?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: And so so the underpinnings of codependency being these typically attachment wounds, because at some point in our lives we got the memo that, hey, you should make me feel better about myself, you should, you should help me, um, feel okay in this moment and you should do that at all costs, right?
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: We, we've all gotten kind of lost in that.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Especially think that when we've come up in a certain generation that was like um kind of patriarchal, right, or like um, really a people pleasing generation, a perfectionist generation where it should look good, it should sound good, it should um, have a certain perfectionism to it, right.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: And so what we're talking about in shifting off the triangle to a great grounded sense of worthiness is pursuing worth over perfection.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: But like, how, dawn, how do I do that?
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: So you've pointed out this pattern.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: But now what do I do with it?
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: And I think that answer is less sexy, right, it's like cool to be able to point out oh look at those people in the comments doing the victim triangle but what to do with it?
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: When I see myself doing it in my own mind body and when I see myself doing it in my own relationships, you know where my mom says that thing that's so triggering?
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: And then boom, I'm off to the races pointing out all the ways that this person or that person is not perfect, right?
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So how do I sit with?
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: I'm triggered and I'm not feeling great about myself and I have to shift out of that.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: The answer is probably sit in nature and do some journaling and use a tool.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: The answer is probably to tap into some deeper sense of spirituality and purpose so that I can reconnect with, with who I truly am at my core, and not just my role, and not just, um, this habit of feeling less than or better than.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: And so, if you really want to transform your relationship with yourself and your sense of worth, and you really want to transform your relationship with the person that you co parent with, or with your family or even your friends, right.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: If you really want to transform your life in a way where you're not constantly toggling between feeling less than, or feeling better than, and kind of hot wiring your sense of worth by doing this Um, victim, rescuing or persecuting, then it really means practicing, catching it when you're doing it inside of yourself and with other people and saying, oh, what was that, what was I supposed to do when that happened?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Right, and the answer is really pause, take a deep breath and regulate your nervous system.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And what do I mean by that?
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, when your brain has somehow gotten the memo that fight, flight, freeze right, because fight is persecute, flight is rescuing, freeze is victim.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: That's like a fairly good analogy, right, and there's probably some hybrids in there.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: But so when you're in fight, flight or freeze, because you're amygdala, because you got triggered, because you're afraid of rejection or abandonment, or feeling very alone, because there's these wounded parts of you, right, it's to pause and say, oh, this is that thing that's happening in my brain.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And here I go, racing around this triangle.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Let me slow this down and let me get grounded.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Let me use a tool, let me shake it out, let me do some deep box breathing, let me see if I need to schedule a session with my therapist or with my coach, or I need to go take a yoga class, or I need to go outside, or I need to do a tapping video in the bathroom stall at work, and or I need to take a nice bath, or I need to do some humming, because humming is very, very grounding.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: It helps the app, that amygdala, that nervous system, say oh, actually, a Tyrannosaur can't probably be chasing me if I have the bandwidth to hum a happy tune right now.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Right, so, and then it's.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: It's doing these things enough times, over and over and over again, catching yourself in the moment that the brain starts to get the memo that, oh, sometimes I am in danger.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: It's legitimate, right, like the internet has a way of telling us, of reminding us that we're safe.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: But sometimes danger is legitimately happening, right.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we, we really are in a risky situation and our nervous system needs to know that when those that, that, when we are genuinely in danger, that fight, flight, freeze is an appropriate response.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: But we're not always good at differentiating when we're not actually in danger and when we're having a trauma response, which is something happened a long time ago but the brain is re experiencing it as though it is happening right now.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: And that's because when we experience something and we're flooded with really overwhelming emotion, that fight, flight, freeze response, it interrupts how our memory gets encoded.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: And when that interruption happens, then that's where flashbacks come in right and trauma responses come in.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And those, those experiences that we experienced, they didn't just fall back into our longterm memory where we can tell oh, that happened back then and it feels like it happened back then.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It feels like it's happening now.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: So this is what's happened in this divorce process is so much of how you've related to your ex in the past, so many of the painful experiences that you had with your ex and with all the associated relationships.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: It still feels like it's happening now.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: And so you're still kind of getting hooked into power struggle and hooked into these woundings and your nervous system isn't having your wise mind say, hey, actually that's over now.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: And so, even when there are better tools for relating to your acts or relating to yourself in this healing process, in this grieving process, you kind of just automatically reaching for that less than better, than toolkit.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: But there's a better way, love, okay.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: So I want you to really kind of laser in on when you're feeling less than or better than, that being your really big clue that you're kind of on this codependency or victim triangle dance, and that this is the time to pause and regulate and use a tool so that you can get grounded and say, ah, my worth goes well beyond what is going on in this conversation in this moment in time, or my role, to my children, or to my ex, or to my family, or to my friends or to my boss.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And so let me take this moment to grab my journal.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Do you keep a journal in your purse?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I kept a journal in my purse all the time when I was really in this grieving, active, acute grieving phase.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Right, pull out my journal, even if I'm in the car, even if I'm at my desk.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Pull out my journal and say, okay, I'm doing the triangle thing right now, feeling better than or less than what is the truth about who I am?
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: And even if I can't find it, let me ask the question on paper what can I get grateful for in this moment?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: What can I do to shift myself into a more grounded, powerful dynamic and reminding yourself in that paper, in that journal, that there is more than this dynamic right.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And so, in the post divorce roadmap, our immersive journaling experience.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: This is why we use phone screens and we use mirror messages and we have very specific prompts to ask ourselves these big questions.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Because when we've been entrenched in this victim triangle pattern, it's harder to get out of it when we haven't been catching ourselves or practicing it first.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And that's why we need clues and cues in our environment to remind us of kind of a healthier mindset, right and so grab that journal, make a note for yourself, leave yourself a post it note on your dashboard, in your purse, on your desk at work, on your mirror, on your phone, to remind yourself hey, not perfect but worthy.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Right, not perfect but worthy, all right, I know that you are super cued into this pattern now and you're going to run with it and I am so excited.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Talk soon.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Love you so much.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Peace, dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by my Coach John.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: You can find more at mycoachjohncom.