Vanessa East – Facilitating Transformations

Co-dependency

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 12:06:34 +0000

Co-dependency is something I have always written about and recently had cause to revisit the topic when a post came up on my social media post which stated simply:

‘List the most Co-dependent tune that you use to rock to back in the day’

Co-Dependency in Society

I thought about the lyrics from some of my favourite tracks in my 20s ‘your my better half’, ‘baby, I live for you’ ‘your my everything’, ‘I can’t breath without you’. Added to this were tunes about being overly self-sufficiency and not needing no man (like they were enemies).I thought about the amount of women and men who longed to have someone to live for, to call their everything, to make them feel complete or whole………….. What happen to healthy inter-dependent relations?…….you’d think we weren’t capable of having or supposed to have healthy loving relationships either with ourselves or each other

It got me thinking about some of the different ways that co-dependency showed up in society.

What co-dependency looks like?

Co-dependency is an addiction to getting your internal needs met, such as for validation, externally whilst abandoning yourself.

Suppressing, rejecting or ignoring a part of yourself including your emotions, thoughts, gut feeling/intuition
Not recognising what you are feeling
Not honouring your emotions
Not honouring boundaries, particularly to caretake another
Not honouring boundaries, particularly to caretake another
Placing a lower priority on your own needs while being preoccupied with the needs of another

Co-dependency shows itself up in a range of patterns of behaviour as well as roles which we may occupy.

In relationships it involves enabling the behaviour of another particularly to addiction mental health, irresponsibility, under achievement etc. There is usually a power imbalance in the relationship and one individual may feel like a giver and other a taker.

Caretaker/Rescuer

The role’ of rescuer, sometimes used interchangeably with caretaker, is one of the more common roles occupied by co-dependents. The role often involves taking on the responsibilities, burdens and issues of other people.

The outward focus takes attention away from issues that the rescuer/caretaker may be finding challenging to face. An addictive hit may be experienced from the praise/reassurance received from assisting others in this way and being able to control the response receive by the other by giving them what they need or require which can help the individual occupying the rescuer/caretaker role feel safe. Ultimately as with others, these roles are mechanisms of self preservation developed in childhood which have now become maladaptive.

Other indicators of Co-dependency:

Expresses negativity in indirect and passive ways
Does not recognise the unavailability of those they are attracted to.
Value other’s approval of their thinking, feelings, and behaviour over their own
Need to appear to be right in the eyes of others and may even lie to look good
Have trouble setting healthy priorities and boundaries
Extremely loyal remaining in harmful situations for too long
Compromise own values & integrity to avoid rejection or anger
Are hypervigilant regarding the feelings of others and take on those feelings
Fear expressing their feelings and beliefs when they differ from others
Become resentful when others decline their help or reject their advice
Have to feel needed to want a relationship with another
Attempt to convince others what to thin, do or feel
Use blame and shame to exploit others emotionally
Act in ways that invite others to reject, shame, or express anger toward them
Suppress feelings or needs to avoid feeling vulnerable

Root of Co-dependency

There are different causes of co-dependency with the unhealthy way of relating to Self and others being both something passed down generationally as well as learnt in younger years. For example, during childhood, you may have felt like you were only validated for doing things rather than for being yourself, or you may have grown up in a family where your basic needs such as for safety, love and belonging were not met.

We know TV and social media to be a massive socialiser, particularly of our young children who can spend more time with these mediums than they do with their parents. It has an impact on how we see ourselves, our identities and therefore how we relate to ourselves and others. There is a lack of diversity portrayed generally in society of healthy loving relationship, between black men and women, with black women’s role in relationships ranging from typical mammy style servers of the men through to oversexualised golddigging females who see men as worthy of objectification only. Men are often portrayed as being overly sexualised and incapable of meaningful connection, or hard done by because of crazy women. We see the rescuer and caretaker role, exploitation of others to retain control and avoid intimacy, low self esteem and worth and a general lack of selflove.

Society also rewards behaviour typically associated with co-dependency. Ifyou can imagine in the work place for example an employee whoworks hard and puts the needs of others before their own, people pleases and avoids conflict, is excessively complicit and does what is necessary to keep the peace. This would be an ideal employee for many making co-dependency conducive to success in the workplace.

Healing Co-dependency

Co dependency speaks of a disconnection to our authentic Self which is naturally self assured, esteemed and confident. Our authentic self is courageous, connected, decisive, creative, nurturing, caring, firm, strong, balanced and most of all is Love. Working through co-dependency involves identifying who you are not, by healing the core beliefs and emotions taken on as a result of your wounding and hurt. This is done with a view to reconnecting with and remembering your true identity.

Anxiety: Stepping out of Survival Mode

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 12:00:43 +0000

Living in Survival Mode

Living in the West is like having to go through a gauntlet was the view of Malidoma Somme, having lived in both his native West African and the USA. There is an information overload, fast paced life and consistent trials and tribulations that bombard our souls as we adjust to living under a system that has oppression of women and people of colour woven into its fabric. A system that suggests that if we adjust who we are, chase the clock by studying hard, getting good grades, working harder, getting the mortgage, partner, kids, friends, holidays, pay the bills, get the latest clothes, shoes, gadgets, look our best at all times and then hand over a significant portion of our earnings in bills and taxes (energy) to the creators of the system – we may just have done enough to find that illusive happiness and possibly some peace (our natural state of being). Instead, we may find ourselves feeling, amongst other things, constantly stressed, highly anxious and as though we have neglected ourselves.

Imbalanced Living – Polyvagal theory

The polyvagal theory speaks about how we store stress within the body and suggests that there are three states autonomic nervous system states?? that we experience and may move between moment to moment:

Ventral Vagal – during this state we feel safe, are able to relate and connect to and empathise with others, and are also present to experience. In this state, we are fully aligned ourselves.

Sympathetic Activation (SA)– this is a state of mobilisation implicated when we are seeking to take action on something such as motivating us to deal with any threat by going into fight or flight. This state is also correlated with tension, anxiety and feeling chaotic or frenzied.

Dorsal Vagal Shut Down (DVSH) – this is a state of immobilisation which shows up as collapse or freeze. It is correlated with feelings of lethargy, despondency, lack of motivation, hopelessness, shame, feeling incapable or as though lacking agency.

The layers of stress that we experience(as mentioned above: environmental, family, cultural etc) puts us in sympathetic activation, which takes us out of alignment with ourselves. Overtime this can be detrimental to our health, and our bodies will use the DVSH to modulate our system by putting a lid on things to prevent an explosion. This means that a person can appear calm outwardly until their inner experience bursts through such as with an anger outburst.

Self Preservation

Being in Sympathetic or Dorsal Vagal Shut Down is an act of self preservation and a state of survival. Being in these dysregulated states impacts on the amount of energy you have access to and can impair your mental cognition and ability to connect to and relate to others. The lack of internal instability we experience from constantly being in a state of survival can leave us feeling insecure (unsafe) and inadequate, both considered to be common root causes of anxiety.

Realignment

The antidote to tackling anxiety at its core is to come back into alignment/balance within ourselves.
Take some time to monitor your internal experience and get use to identifying which state you are in at any given moment.
You can the use the following exercises to support you in returning to a state of realignment (i.e. the Ventral State):

Meditation – consider incorporating some form of mediation into your usual routine.
Learn effective breathing techniques – practice these a few times daily. There are some included below. Exhaling activates our internal rest and relaxation response and is probably one of the simplest ways of entering the ventral state.

Ultimately, we are creators and can with practice determine how we interact with the stressors that we encounter in our lives. It’s about us reclaiming our power, our sense of peace, our ability to be able to control and narrate the story of our lives going forward and disempowering the anxieties which do not serve us in the process.

If you require assistance in managing your anxiety or if they are result of personal trauma that you require support with, do get in contact.

Breathing Techniques

When we are stressed or anxious, our breathing becomes shallow and we generally tend to breath from the chest area. Whist doing the breathing techniques below, consciously take deep breaths that cause your stomach area to protrude, also known as ‘belly breathing’.

Hand on abdomen technique

Place one hand on your abdomen (just around your navel) and now focus attention on that area. Just allow yourself to breath in and out, becoming aware as your hand raises up slightly with each inhaled and falls as you breath outward. As you inhale, maybe allow a short pause, before releasing the breath in an exhale. Perhaps allow a warm comfortable feeling to pass all the way down your body each time you exhale. You might want to place your other hand on your chest and imagine the chest muscles relaxing so that the hand hardly moves at all.

Coloured Vapour Technique

With this breathing technique, allow yourself to go within and become aware of any tension that you might be holding in your body. Take some time to give your tension a colour and with each exhale that you release, imagine that you are breathing out vapour the colour of your tension. As you continue to breath out the vapour, you might become aware of how much more relaxed you begin to feel as you allow the vapour (and your tension) to drift away. Just drifting away until you begin to feel more calm and relaxed.