Codependent.
This is a word that can come loaded with emotion, responsibility, shame, guilt, self-doubt, people-pleasing, and fear of going against the way your protective survival skills have trained you to go about life.
Well, this week, a variation on this theme kept coming up in my sphere of observation. From counseling and coaching meetings to a trip to the convenience store, one theme seems to be showing up repeatedly. as.."someone bothered me by their thoughts/words, and I find myself emotionally spinning as a result of it."
Over and over again, I was observing situations in which "Person B" had thoughts or opinions that were made known to "Person A" in a way that "Person A" didn't appreciate but was trying to work through. "Person B" in each case had expressed themselves in a way that "Person A" was feeling "put upon" by the disclosure(s) of "Person B," and "Person A" felt the pain and pressure of trying to sort through the various nuances of that information "Person B" attempted to share.
If that last paragraph sounds convoluted and confusing to you in any way, image how confusing it can feel when you are "Person A!" You're minding your own business, trying to live your life well, and "Person B" drops a verbal "bomb" of some sort....perhaps, an insult, a blaming statement, a shaming statement, an expectation, or an observation that you didn't ask for, didn't want, and didn't deserve right at your proverbial feet.
Those kinds of situations bring up all kinds of "feels" right? There's the confusion, the frustration, the hurt, the anger, the trying to understand and meet someone else's needs, the digging in of heels when we feel pushed against our will or resentful of the intrusion we didn't ask for because somebody else just had to express themselves "at our expense" in some way, and overall, the dysregulation in our nervous systems when we feel the load of what "Person B" expressed.
The key to handling these types of situations is to recognize what "belongs to you" and what "belongs to the other" person.
It gets convoluted and confusing, when we can't identify where we end and they begin, just as they couldn't identify where they end and we begin.
It's easier said than done, though, because these kinds of things can send our nervous systems into fight, flight, freeze shutdown, or fawning. So, how can we become more clear on what does and does not belong to "us?"
6 Questions You Can Ask to Leave "Person B's" stuff with them.
1) Ask yourself, "What am I observing?"
2) "Is this mine or theirs?"
3) "Do I need to respond/take action, or is it their issue/responsibility?"
4) "Am I trying to be the rescuer, when they need to be the one who makes their choices and experiences the consequences of those decisions they've made?'
5) "What am I going to do with what I have observed or experienced?
6) How can I make a healthy choice that pleases God out of truth and not obligation, people pleasing, or fear?"
On a related note, finding one's way after belonging to a religious cult is an experience that leaves a lot of confusion and conflicting thoughts and emotions to sort through, too, as the cult's destructive messaging and beliefs can be left at the unsuspecting doorstep of its followers. Don't forget to check out this week's podcast episode, Part 2, of my interview with Liza Lovett, from the Warrior's Community Podcast, where she shares more about her journey to healing from toxic abuse.
If you would like help walking through the difficulties of life and mindset issues, the Mental Health Membership Community is NOW OPEN. You can learn more about what's included,and join by clicking this link.
You are a masterpiece that you are perfectly created everything about you by your perfect creator. And God is that perfect creator who considers you a beautiful masterpiece with wonderful gifts to go serve Him with. We're going to talk about the story that gets distorted, right? We have this beautiful story that God has written for you. And then in this fallen world, things kind of can smack into us sometimes and they can smack into us with lies about us. They can smack into us with things that hurt emotionally or physically. They can smack into us with doubts and fears or neglect, right? There are all kinds of things that could have happened, and your story gets impacted by those unique things that happened in your life.
When the Nervous System Goes Astray
Ideally, God has designed the nervous system so that you can shake it off and regulate and be okay. You've survived and made it through the pain, and you go on. But our nervous systems need to get the timestamp that says that's done. It's not happening anymore; it's no longer going on and we can relax. Instead of that timestamp, what often happens is that if we don't have enough in the way of supportive resources for what we need to be able to process these things, then our systems still hold on to the memory and the energy of it. And we might interpret messages about ourselves like we're not good enough or we should have done this or what will people think? Or maybe God's mad at us or what's wrong with us, we don't deserve anything better, whatever it is, okay? We get messages that lie to us, and we need to challenge those in light of God's truth. But our systems, because of being smacked into are kind of trying to get our balance back and we're trying to figure it out. And then the way we feel sometimes after we've been smacked into makes us think these messages are truer than they are and then makes us feel defeated and then scares us. And then we end up in a cycle that we don't want to be in, but we repeat cycles of fear or anxiety or patterns of defeat and believe the feelings and the lies that we'll never get out of this. We can't break free. Happiness is for other people. We'll never be good enough to please God. We're always going to be anxious or have panic or worry. There's so much that lies to us because it's like the enemy smacks into us. And then when we're wounded, those wounds get even further, kind of infected and messed with. And we're so exhausted from being messed with that we kind of just do the best we can to lick our wounds and try again. But we never get the chance to really heal unless we really heal. What happens is those wounds keep getting triggered or recycled over and over again, and we lose some things.
Aligning with God's Design for You; I Can Help You
Instead of the wonderful story that God designed for us, we end up getting sidelined and licking our wounds and trying to hope for better the next day and things just repeating again and again because we don't have nervous system healing from what happened to us. And so that's why I have the Empowered Freedom Framework in the Empowerment Oasis program that I'm launching in October. Because I want you to have all of the tools possible the spiritual, the mental, the emotional and the physical. Tools to give you peace, to get you off of that hamster wheel and living the life you really want to live, the life you know you can live, the life you just don't know how to get to yet. I want to help you get there. I've gotten there in my own life on a day-to-day basis. I am living my best life, my freest life, my most just, beautiful life with God, because God has done this for me. But He's not just done it by some one-time miracle. He's done it by giving me a healthy marriage and good people in my life. He's done it by teaching me new principles. He's done it by therapy. He's done it by education. He's done it by practicing tools that regulate my nervous system and help me to be calm and more relaxed, less anxious, less fearful. Ways to think that can soothe my nervous system and tell me the truth so that I'm aligned with God's original story being that Masterpiece award winning, unique peach pie, so to speak, rather than a peach pie that's trampled into pieces on the ground and doesn't know how to get back up. And I've been there, but I'm now back on the picnic table. I'm up on the winner's stand where everybody's like, let's see that pie shine, right? I want you to be back up there, too. There's no reason you can't. I want to see you shine for God in the truth of his story about you not constantly beat around in cycles of licking wounds from what the enemy's done to your story. Those are lies. You can close those chapters, and my Empowered Freedom Framework can help you to close those chapters. And I want to work with you and help you if you've been praying for something that can help you get out of the cycles to get really deep in a short amount of time so that you can get back to living and freedom, ultimately saving time and money over the long haul. Because these skills and tools will stay with you for a lifetime. You just have to practice them and use them. It's no fun to struggle, and we certainly don't want to have the enemy holding anything over us. We're daughters of God. We got work to do. All right, so I'm going to tell you when our stories get skewed by what's happened to us, and we get negative messages about ourselves, about how much power we have, about who God is, about how we feel about God, about our abilities to make change or do something about it. There's a lot of struggle that happens and a lot that's stolen and taken away.
10 Ways to Recognize If Your Story Has Been Tainted
I'm going to give you ten ways that you can see if your story has been tainted with and if you're still struggling with things that can be healed and need to be healed.
- Absence of Peace: Do you feel that you have peace on a daily basis? Like really stable peace in your body? Or has your peace been stolen?
- Nervous Tendencies: Do you feel like you're a bundle of nerves in everything you do? Do you feel like it's hard to go out and meet people or go to things, maybe even going to the grocery store? It just gets you all shaky? Do you feel like speaking up in a group is hard, or defending yourself is hard, or having an honest conversation with somebody is too difficult? Do you lack confidence in your capabilities or confidence that God will come through for you?
- Untrusting: Do you find yourself not able to trust God or yourself or other people very, very easily? Do you find your decision making is kind of something you struggle with and difficult? Maybe even something you avoid out of fear of making the wrong decisions?
- Anger and Frustration: Do you find that you're harsher than you want to be? That your coping skills are either nonexistent or pretty well shot that you're more critical to yourself. You yell more at your kids or your spouse. You kind of have frustration or anger just spilling over onto others. Lose your temper, get passive aggressive, get resentful, feel like just giving up, being hopeless. Those are other ways that indicate that your story has been tampered with.
- Feeling Hijacked: Do you feel like you have been hijacked, like the ability to control the way that your body and your mind work together seems disconnected. Your self-control to be able to go, no, this is what I think, and my feelings can go along with that. Seem to be at odds. You might realize with your mind, I don't want to be acting this way, but then have some emotional or mental stuff going on that you're just observing, sort of like, what is that about? That seems so out of my control. I just don't feel like I've got a handle on this. Why am I acting this way? Or if you've ever had yourself, say something like, why did I say that? I don't really mean that. What is going on here? If you felt hijacked, as if your body or your emotions or your thoughts don't belong to you, that can be another indicator that your story has been intruded upon.
- Unstable Relationship with God: If you feel like your connection to God isn't solid, feel like you'll never be good enough or feel like you can't trust Him again, that's another indication.
- Physical Response: If you feel like you cannot relax your body. Your muscles are so tense you forget to breathe. You breathe really shallow or rapidly. You feel disconnected from your body. Find yourself zoning out, not quite present when you want to be present. Maybe you're playing with your kids and you're thinking about your to-do lists and everything else, but not actually where you are enjoying it. That's not a guilt, that's just these are often indications that our nervous systems are overwhelmed.
- Wasting Time: Do you find yourself wasting so much time that you want to be using for other stuff, but that your mind races? Or you've spent so much time going over conversations in your head that are long over, that your focus is not where you want it to be? Or you've wasted so long hoping that you'd finally get past this, and now it's months or years later and you're still struggling.
- No Sense of Power: Do you feel like your sense of power has been taken from you and that you don't have any power to get over anything, to even take the next steps? That's a lie. But you might feel that way if you've had your story trampled on.
- Riding the Hamster Wheel: And then the other thing is that you want to make an impact. You have a desire, you even have a calling. But this thing that you keep returning to, like you're on the hamster wheel and can't seem to get rid of keeps pulling you back in, and you need to get out is taking time, power and impact as well away from you.
These are the ways the enemy steals from God's story for your life. And the thing is, Jesus defeated the enemy. Jesus has already given you the victory. Now, what's happening is we need to know how to soothe your nervous system, how to equip your mind, how to strategize as a whole being, body, soul, spirit, mind, feelings, relationships, goal setting with the tools that you need to be able to manage it well. And I would be honored to come on that journey with you. I want you to go from surviving to thriving. Because survival is great and a good gift from God. Thriving is joy and where daily power comes in and it is possible.
