#499: Codependency is Keeping You Small

If you do not decide who you are, someone else will tell you who to be and you will be that. That's a painful reality that if we don't have access to our own self-expression and determining what we actually want from our life, the types of relationships we want to create, if we don't fully embody that, then we will allow other people to determine who we are. Now, we would know this as the term codependency or people pleaser. And there's a saying that the people pleaser is a disease to please, but it's not really a disease to please. It's a desire to create safety and we're trying to create safety by minimizing conflict, by making sure that you like who I am. And as Kapoor Matte talks about, he says that all humans have two needs. We have the need to be authentic and we have the need to belong, but when the authenticity threatens belonging, belonging usually wins, which essentially means that if you being you ends a relationship or puts it at risk, you won't be you to keep the relationship. This would be very something like someone with anxious attachment, right? That's why there's always these overlaps in different frameworks of how we see relational behaviors, but someone who's anxiously attached, prioritizes other relationships over themselves. Other people become ahead of them, but when someone else comes ahead of you, which I'm not saying, of course your kids can, of course people can, and there will be times, but the line between actually compromising and self-abandoning is very thin and for people who self-abandon and are codependent, that line's gone. It doesn't even exist. It's like, I will lose myself to keep you. I will forget about my dreams and my passions and my self-expression and my anger and my grief. All of that is going to go to the side because I want to accommodate you. I take care of everybody. I'm sure everyone in us else is okay and I am suffering. Now at the core of this is that we can't differentiate that how you feel about who I am is your feelings. Instead, what happens is is how you feel about who I am becomes how I feel about who I am. Do you see the BS in that? So essentially, I can't draw a line. There's not a boundary between where I end and you begin, right? Because that's what boundaries do is they draw a line around who we are. So we have to understand what are our values? What do we mean? What do we want? What's important to us in our lives? What kind of life do we want to create? People who have this pattern in their life, they learn it really young. They learn it from their childhood by trying to protect everybody from a parent who's angry, eruptive and alcoholic. So they learn how to oscillate around other people. Maybe they had someone with a chronic illness, someone who emotionally enmeshed in them. But what happens is we become externally focused and we source our value from how people feel about us instead of how we feel about us. Now if I was to like draw this out, which look, I love drawing some shit out. It's one of my favorite things. It's like if I was to draw this out, I would say that you're in these relationships and basically how you do relationship is you're always focused on everybody else. And so you're willing to come million for them. You want to be who they want you to be in order to make sure they like you, which ultimately to create safety and belonging, etc. But what has to happen if we want to bring our dreams to the world, if we want to create the types of relationships we want, is we have to be able to feel like we can be ourselves in those relationships. Now look, most relationships are not healthy. I know that sounds like a big claim, but it's true because most relationships involve two people. I know some add more and that's more complex. We're not going to get into the math on that. But what happens is is the relationship is who they are. If I lose my relationship, I lose myself. Relationships should be an aspect of your life. They shouldn't be your whole life. That's not romantic. I know it sounds romantic, but it's not. You know, you complete me not a romantic line. I know it sounds hot. It was in Jerry McGuire, which I'm aging myself, but if you're too young to know that, just don't use that line. It's not hot. Because basically what I'm saying is I'm incomplete without you. Now look, I'm not saying that you can't find a soulmate or someone that you really love who feels like you knew them forever and you're going to bring something beautiful alive together. But the version of the thing you bring together shouldn't include the absence of yourself. So you're choosing anyone or anything and it doesn't involve choosing you. It's not for you. That's an absolute rule. But what happens in most relationships is they end up breaking up where they have total disconnection because unconsciously, they blame the other person for the loss of themselves. But a real healthy relationship is not like that at all. It's like this, two people, and then the thing they create together. And that is what you put deposits into. Most people ask to say the statement, I'm not getting what I want from relationship. Instead of exploring what does my relationship need from me in order for it to feel the way I want it to feel. So then we see we're a co-contributor, a collaborator and creating something bigger. Now, most people when they're in the early dating process still think, especially for young, no offensive, you're young, but I did this when I was young. It's like we think about power dynamics. Don't over text. Don't do that. You're going to be whipped, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're going to give away your power. But as soon as you start to think about relationships as having finite power, like if I text you, then I've lost my power. I'm starting to think that there's only a certain amount of power. And I'm starting to play games. I've already lost the plot because if you text somebody and they don't want to be with you because you texted them too much, you need to lose them because they're not aligned and you also need to lose them so you can learn the balance between over communication and regular communication. But I digress. What we need to be able to learn is how do I actually create a relationship that makes me more free? Because what happens in relationships when they fracture is because they need to separate because they've lost themselves. So they need to re-individuate. And you see this happen all the times in relationships is when they're like this, this needs to end or a pattern needs to end. One person starts to grow and one person starts to change. The other person starts to get afraid and then maybe clings more or shames them or tries to get them back in the container of the relationship because they're afraid if you grow, you might grow away from them and you might have done this to someone else. You're afraid they're going to grow away. Grow away. So you kind of like poo poo on their new dreams, on their passions because ultimately what you want to do is keep them in this box because you're afraid of leaving the box. So they become a mirror to your unlived life, but you're afraid of losing them. But the healthiest relationships are not about staying together. They're about growing together because if you prioritize staying together over growing together, you won't have the conversations that grow both of you. So it's essential that you start to see relationships as being a space that is separate from who you are. You are an organism that needs to be nourished. They're an organism that needs to be nourished. And both of you need to nourish the thing that lives between you and also nourish each other. Now let's get back to the original part, which is if you are only operating in this relationship to keep it together, you'll be who they need you to be. You also, if you're in charge of their happiness and their well-being, you're going to resent them. And no one should carry the weight of someone else's happiness on their shoulders. I'm not the reason you're happy. I might contribute to your happiness, but I can't be the reason you love life. You have to love life, and I'm part of the life you love. I don't want the pressure that if something went wrong, then all of a sudden, you're every part of your well-being depends on us, right? That's why it is actually hot when someone says, "Hey, like I love you and I love us and I also love being." And like, yeah, if our relationship ended, that would be devastating. But I think I would be okay. That doesn't sound hot, does it? Right? I think I would be okay. We want the romantic idea that someone is destroyed by a relationship, destroyed by ending. And I've been destroyed by a relationship ending, and I could tell you every time it happened, it was because I betrayed myself in the relationship. I placed too much emphasis on the relationship. I wanted to stay together more than I wanted to be connected to myself. Like one time, I agreed to seeing other people when I didn't want to. And then guess what happened? I got cheated on. Because she broke the rule about the seeing other people. And of course, I ended up in circumstances where I got betrayed because I betrayed myself. And this is a controversial date, but almost all external betrayals occur because we internally betrayed ourselves much earlier. Like, think about that. All external betrayals are created by internal betrayals much earlier. Now, look, that's delicate because we have to go back and take responsibility for where we had an intuitive knowledge that we needed to say something and do something and we didn't do it. We didn't stand for ourselves. And then we ended up in a circumstance where we got betrayed. And then we're super upset. I'm not minimizing the experience of the trauma of betrayal, of course. But I am saying if we're willing to look at it, we could see where we weren't telling the truth to ourselves and or to the relationship. All these are opportunities to learn how to grow and change and become a better partner, but a better human. So let's get back to this. When we want to heal this people pleasing and codependency, we need to get incredible access to the word no. So I want you to right now in this moment, and I'm going to tell you why it's so important, but I want you to in this moment, audit your life and think, who do I have a hard time saying no to? What do I have a hard time saying no to? Right, because we're not talking just people. And in this example, we are not saying no to who these people want. us to be. So we are at their back and call our personality and what we do with our words and our movement and our choices in our life is determined on whether they agree with it and whether it aligns with what they do with their life. That's why when you want to bring a dream alive and you're not surrounded by people who bring their dreams alive, they're going to be like, we don't do that. Get back in line and you have to understand that when you start to break those agreements, what happens is your nervous system has to hold the tension that you're violating of an agreement amongst a group. A simple way to understand this is if you're in a group of people who get hammered all the time and all of a sudden you say, I'm not drinking anymore and you'll face the resistance and also simply put, you know, when you go to a party and you're not drinking, you can sense the tension in your nervous system that there is a shared agreement that you are not participating with. So if you go to a bar and you don't drink, you can feel the tension. I want you to see that your codependent people pleasing behaviors are actually a superpower in sensing an environment. They allow you to understand your radar is on and it senses energetics and other people. And ultimately what comes up in this example when you go to a bar and everyone's drinking and you're not is that their nervous systems are going, Oh, I'm agreeing to the shared agreement. I'm saying I'm going to drink and maybe that's fully aligned for them, but there will be some people who have a drinking problem. There will be some people who actually didn't want to drink that night, but they didn't have the cojunas to say no. They didn't have the individual power to stand in the face of an agreement and hold on to themselves. That's the word no. So if you can't put down a drink, you can't consensually pick it up. Do you see how powerful that is? If you can't say no, I can't do that. I can't help you move your house on Saturday, Tracy. I don't like moving people and I don't have the time and I don't have a truck and I don't want to. If you can't say that, look at, of course, you can help people when you want to, but don't help people because you feel like you have to help people because you choose to that it comes from a contribution place. Otherwise, you're just creating these unconscious, codependent contracts where you're lying to people. You're saying, I'd love to help you move. You're a liar. Stop lying to people. I would not like to help you move. I don't want to move, especially when someone's enough of an adult that they can get movers, they can hire people. Look, if someone's tight, your students and your moving houses, again, it's all about discernment. I just don't want you to lose access to the word no because if you don't have access to the word no, when you say yes to stuff, you're full of crap. It's not an embodied yes. And look, this is almost everybody. I just want you to understand that. So if you're listening to this or watching this and you're like, Oh, damn, I knew that. Everybody does it till they don't, till they realize like, no, I have no interest in that. I don't want to live a life where I sell myself out. I don't want to live a life that other people want me to live. And this is a big awakening that most people have in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, their 50s is like, holy crap, I've been living this life. I don't even want anymore. And how did I even create it? I created it because other people expected it of me. No, I don't want that. And so we have to become really sensitive to our bodies to where the word no has just been bypassed, right? Where we just agree to stuff because we learn at a very young age to not disagree with people to create safety. They learned at a very young age to be at a chameleon. Again, beautiful adaptive strategy. So important for you to get to this moment right now where you're like, wait, what are my dreams? What do I want to do? Because if you don't heal codependency, it will affect you in terms of bringing your dreams alive because you'll want to start that YouTube channel. Do that thing. Start the podcast. Start the business. Change jobs. Do a different school. Do whatever. You'll want to do that. And other people's opinions of what you want to do will be prioritized over your own opinion of yourself. Your nervous system can't feel safe in your own body. Of course, you have anxiety. Of course, you get depressed because you can't even trust yourself not only to put the drink down and not choose to pick it up or not do the drug or not doon scroll or not check Instagram, right? Because our phones are a great magnifying glass to this. If you're picking it up automatically hundreds of times a day, you are affecting your ability to say no to other people and other things in the rest of your life. Because when you want to actually bring your authentic self-expression to the world, as soon as a troll says, I don't like what you had to say or you're ugly or you're, you know, one of the first ones I got when I went on Instagram live was, hey, your hairline's thinning. I could never have gone on Instagram live ever again because of this one guy. Don't give it wrong. There's more than that. More than one guy. But it's like, imagine if that's what stopped me. You know, the other day I was thinking about it when I was posting stuff and the post weren't doing well. I was like, this is where most people stop or you get a troll or a DM like, I don't like that. I'm following. Who gives a crap? If I let that rando who drops into my DMs or the bot farm that's in charge of triggering your very wound that is unheal. Like if I'm your angel, if I'm the person who's in charge of you rowing and changing, I'm like, I'm going to create a bot farm that challenges the thing that you need to heal. I created a bot farm and now they just come for you. Got unworthiness? No problem. You're sensitive about your hairline. Got a couple of people for you. They're going to have cat profile pictures. They're not going to talk about anything themselves, but they're going to be upset with what you do and do not talk about. Stop outsourcing what you want to do with your life and who you are to other people. It's a losing game because not only will you never ever be able to keep everybody happy, you will siphon your life force out of your body. So that's even another part of it. That type of code of end of behavior is correlated to autoimmune, right? Anxiety, all the things. And all of that is so important to understand that it affects your physiology. The conflict you are avoiding outside of you, you are swallowing. It is staying in your body. It is swimming in your being. You could read molecules, emotion, biology, a belief. It's epigenetics. It's like you could turn genes on. You could turn them off. Do you want good genes turned on? The ones that like promote your well-being, reduce inflammation, lower your cortisol, bring you alive, or do you want the ones that get you glow, doom and gloom? Life's not good. Stop watching the news. Stop putting imagery in your heads of people getting pew-pued. Stop looking at all the stuff that makes you stressed and angry and makes you think that the world is the worst place ever. I'm not saying there aren't bad parts. Just it's not the whole part. There's so much beauty to humanity. There's so much beauty to who you are. And if you can't stop watching the news because of whatever reason you have, and it's all right reasons, then you don't have access to the word. No. If your activism comes at the cost of your own well-being, that's not activism. Because the best thing you can never do is bring yourself fully alive, get yourself fully in alignment. Do the things you want to do. Speak your truth. Do it in a way that is intentional and loving, create amazing relationships. That is revolution. That changes families, communities and worlds. That's the system you actually can impact because you're in it. Get your own house in order before you go complaining about all the other houses. If your house isn't in an order and you're off there complaining about everybody else and every other system that doesn't work, your system isn't working. Heal your own stuff. The disorganize the evil in the world, all that stuff, the darkness. We have that within us. We have to clean it up. We have to get to know it. And when we are afraid to say no to something or someone putting down a phone, putting down a drink, when we do that, we are saying that that thing has power over our choices, what we choose and who we are. Never let someone else determine who you are. And if you are not creating, you'll be hooked by consumption. Instagram and Tik Tokle have no problem stealing all your time and attention because you're not bringing your gifts to the world. And you might have all the reasons in the world and I'll share something that my mentor has said to me, you can be committed to your dreams or your excuses, but you can't be committed to both. I remember when I heard that, it was like a kick in the soul nuts. I was like, damn, yeah, you got to choose. You either are going all in on your dreams or you're going all in on your excuses, but you got to decide both are hard going all in on your excuses, sucks because you feel like you just abandoned yourself. You feel like you can't trust yourself and going all on and on your dreams is hard because you got to do hard things. You got to step into the unknown. You got to have conversations you never had. You want to have the relationship? You want to have a dream relationship. You better become a dreamy partner. I want to have a dream job. Better get real laser done. How to do that? What does it look like? What are the habits of the type of person that gets the type of thing you want? You have them. If you don't have the habits, you got no business asking for it. You want an amazing relationship, an amazing partner. You want honesty. You want mutual growth. You want them to take responsibility for themselves. Are you honest? Do you have humility about the areas you need to grow? Are you committed to transformation? We have to become the type of person that we seek. There is no greater call to your integrity than the areas that you feel friction. The areas that you're afraid to grow. And you know, when someone says to me, what should I do? I'm like, go to the thing that scares you the most because that's probably where the most growth lies for you. And so I rant on this for 22 minutes because it's so important to me that you understand that you need to become the curator of your life. You need to decide what you go towards and what you walk away from. You need to know. that you're in charge, that you do not protect other people's feelings when it comes to your liberation. You do not soften the truth so that you can protect someone from reality. You did not put your dreams in a box because you're afraid a bunch of people around you haven't lived their dreams are afraid of your power and your dreams and your possibility. You surround yourself with people who are already doing that kind of stuff so that you can be brought alive by them so you can be surrounded by their energy of possibility because if I'm in a relationship with you and you say, "Mark, let's use our relationship to become the best possible versions of ourselves." Let's actually point to the places where both of us need to grow. Let's actually help each other pursue our greatest dreams that we could do individually and together. Let's do that. That magical. Like if I saw a Tinder profile that said that, I'd be like, "Damn, that's hot." Now living it's very different than a Tinder profile, much like when someone says, "I'm 5/11 and they're really 5/9. I've never done that, of course." Because that's done because when someone actually meets you in person, they're like, "You're not 5/11." Just like when someone's like, "I'm 32 and then you meet them, they're like 58." Come on guys, stop lying about everything. Just be who you are. Be proud of who you are and if you're not proud of who you are, become someone to be proud of. That's it. Okay, I'm done. A beautiful day. Hit like, subscribe. I want to hear a comment what's going on. Can't wait to see you on the next video. Much love.