When we think of codependence we think of it in terms of its association with substance dependence. We think of a partner who is codependent with a substance dependent partner. But this is not the case. Codependence can be a condition and state of being and dealing with life all on its own.
Codependence comes about from being raised in less-than-nurturing family systems where certain parental practices that are approved by society, or considered normal, actually tend to impair the growth and development of the child and lead to the development of codependence! Some of these practices, in a nutshell, include too rigid or too permissive parenting, or a combination of these.
How this happens is beyond the scope of this article, but here is an introduction to some basic codependence concepts (borrowed from Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody).
The codependence experience manifests itself in two clusters of operating and being. The first, is characterized by people experiencing normal human emotions of shame, fear, pain, and anger with such magnification that they are always in a heightened emotional state.
These people usually find themselves overreacting to everyday experiences and having feelings far more excessive than warranted by a given situation. These people’s experience is colored by feeling anxious, out of control and irrational, dysfunctional, and/or crazy.
The second cluster is characterized by people having the opposite experience. The normal human emotions are so minimized and repressed that they hardly experience their feelings at all including positive ones such as love, joy, pleasure, or contentment. They numbly go through life and hide behind rationale and logic.
People who deal with life through codependence, manage their existence by being perfect and constantly trying to do things better. They think they should make those around them happy and, when they can’t, they feel somehow less than others, as if they don’t measure up, and are not good-enough.
Sometimes their perfectionism is so strong that they are also plagued by procrastination appearing to under function and therefore feeding into their feelings of inadequacy… They try to please and seek approval, which in turn places others in charge of their happiness. When the approval, acknowledgement or appreciation is not given, they become furious – a feeling they can’t always share or show because they are trying to please!
They might then repress their rage which finds a different outlet in the form of sarcasm, criticism, gibes, picking, micromanaging, forgetfulness, ambivalence, or other passive-aggressive behaviors including possibly developing addictions and/or other compulsive behaviors. They might also hold in the rage for a while, but eventually let out their wrath.
Usually these people appear to be gentle, caring and helpful, but underneath it all is their powerful need to control and manipulate those around them to give the approval and validation that is salve to their inflamed feelings.
This shows up in relationships in that both partners exhibit codependence traits, usually opposite in nature, where one partner has maximizing tendencies and the other minimizing tendencies. Respectively, one partner appears very emotional (other and relationship focused) and the other very logical (fearing intimacy)…
The partners tend to take things personally, be hyper sensitive to criticism, assign negative motive and mind read, take on each other’s mood, thoughts and attitudes, be reactive and experience their relationship as being stuck and going around in circles.
These couples do not derive much pleasure from their relationship as their energy is spent constantly fighting their own demons, dealing with their exaggerated or dismissed experience and their impact, trying to get a handle on the last interaction gone awry and trying to figure out how to be in a nurturing connection with their loved one.
Phew! That’s exhausting! Not to fret – there is light at the end of the tunnel. Here is a basic starter tip for each partner:
For the Maximizer: Learn how to soothe your own self and your feelings, and contain them (thicken your invisible boundary around your self and choose what goes out and how, and what you allow in – less is better)
For the Minimizer: Learn how to get in touch with your self and your feelings, and express them (loosen your thick boundary around your self and choose what goes out and how, and what you allow in – more is better)
Go ahead, start working your self and bringing your composed and available self to your relationship with your partner! Start deriving some pleasure from your relationship and enjoying your partner!!
Happy Facing Codependence!!
~ Your MetroRelationship™Assignment
Invite your partner into a conversation about how codependence might be a theme in your relationship. Set up a conducive surrounding for an intimate and safe discussion and interaction: Get rid of distractions (no kids, TV, computer, phones, and other gadgets), get your favorite healthy soothing drink, put on pjs, grab a blankie, etc.
Start the discussion by speaking about yourself and your feelings using I-statements and not blaming your partner. Speak about yourself sharing about your maximizing or minimizing tendencies.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Anger is a poison in our relationship when it is misunderstood and unleashed. It gets in the way of understanding, connectedness, intimacy, love, and satisfaction in our relationship. Anger in its explosive or simmering manifestation, is a sign that something is wrong when it is prevalent. This indicates that there is pain and dysfunction in the relationship and that something needs to change.
I do not consider Anger a real emotion. I look at Anger as more of a temporary (or more permanent for some) state of being. The angry state is a reaction that covers more sensitive feelings. It is a protection for our vulnerability. When we feel angry, we actually have other more vulnerability inducing feelings underneath such as feeling hurt, insignificant, dismissed, lonely, hopeless, invisible, smothered and abandoned.
To deal with the anger in our relationship, we first need to start noticing the anger coming on before we act angry – whether it is withdrawing or yelling and throwing stuff around. Some tale signs that we are about to act angry are getting a knot in the stomach, sweating, feeling our heart beat faster, and getting flushed. Start paying attention to how the anger feels in your body.
Once you are aware that you are feeling angry and are about to start acting out your anger, you can take a second to identify what are the sensitive feelings underneath the anger. It is a bit difficult for some to identify their more vulnerability inducing feelings. If you need assistance with this, I have a huge list of emotions on the site, that you may use to assist you.
Choose the sensitive feelings that are related to your anger, don’t get stuck at the superficial level and identifying other reactionary feelings (i.e., frustration, exasperation, rage, etc.). If you allow yourself to go deeper, you will be surprised to discover more tender feelings.
Now that you know what you are really feeling, you need to identify what triggered those feelings. This is where your partner plays their role. Partners are a good source of triggers. They just have it in them to get under our skin.
In our interactions with our partner, we perceive the situation, we interpret such situation and we think on it. This is what creates the anger and the other deeper feelings. The reason for this is that thoughts create emotions. Think about this. How you think about something creates how you feel about it.
When you perceive your partner as selfish, self-involved, non-caring, or like they don’t care or are taking advantage of you or your situation, you are going to feel angry and upon further exploration you’ll realize that you are actually feeling unimportant, abandoned, abused, stepped on, etc.
Being able to recognize how you are thinking about something and identify the related sensitive feelings is huge. This gives you good positioning for healing and creating changes in your relationship. One way to accomplish this is that in knowing how you are looking at something you can choose to look at it from a different perspective, which leads to feeling differently.
Another way is that by having identified sensitive feelings you can interpret your needs and work on getting them met. Wow!!
This handy-dandy concept works wonders when addressing anger management, AND other issues, in relationships as both partners can benefit from better understanding their feelings and triggers. This creates a fertile ground for making changes and getting needs met.
Say goodbye to the anger and start having your needs met and enjoying the relationship you crave!!
Happy Anger Managing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Take inventory of how you feel when your partner gets under your skin. Search for the sensitive feelings (dismissed, unloved, ignored, suffocated, threatened, belittled, undermined, abandoned, etc.). Share with your partner how their specific behavior makes you feel these and ask for a specific behavior change that would resolve your complaint.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Most relationships have to endure a history of trauma experienced by one or both partners and a current trauma(s).
Traumas include abandonment, neglect, abuse, rejection, control, accidents, assaults/attacks, catastrophes, infidelity, infertility, loss, relocation, birthing and becoming parents, substance abuse, chronic illness, eating disorders, depression, extreme emotionality, obsessions, PTSD, unemployment, disability. Some of these are symptoms of a past trauma, but when experienced in the present they create a current trauma to the relationship.
As partners experience their relationship and each other, they are affected by what is going on with each other. Partner’s personality, coping, expectations, visions, perceptions, needs who they are as people is largely composed and influenced by their history, and current context. Therefore, what each brings to the table has an impact on the nature of the relationship and therefore on the satisfaction quotient of the relationship.
When partners have unresolved past traumas, not only do these influence who they are as people and what they bring to the relationship, but they are bound to be symptomatic. These two factors are major sources of stress, tension, friction, and conflict in relationships.
Partners with unresolved traumas are easily triggered and not fully present in their life and relationship. They also have a host of symptoms and additional stressors that manifest as a result. The current relationship keeps getting hit.
These are the couples that appear to walk around with a black cloud over their head when anything happens to them. They go from one problem to the next, from one crisis to another. The reason for this is that their inherent make-up, coping and relating are crooked attracting negativity and creating situations that are more of the same. They are in a negative cycle that is difficult to break away from.
When one of the partners is the one that is the most symptomatic, it doesn’t mean that the other partner is any less traumatized. It takes two individuals to have a relationship however that relationship turns out. Here the saying, It takes one to know one, fits well. Partners collude with each other to create their reality and their current context.
When one partner is having a real difficult time and appears to be carrying the brunt of symptoms (is less well functioning), this is a sign of unresolved past traumas and a sign for the need to have things change in the current relationship so that it is healing. Remember, our current relationship is a venue to our healing past wounds and becoming whole.
If one or both partners are not doing well, they are not utilizing the relationship well to serve its purpose.
Here is the opportunity to do something different. The signs are there it is time for a change!!
Happy Changing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Plan a Talking Date where you each get to share how you are doing and how you’ve been. Together determine what your traumas were and how they are traumatizing your relationship today. Employ acceptance and caring in your discussion. Please don’t use blame or criticism.
Create a safe environment to bring forth areas that might need some looking into. Then, make a commitment to make specific and concrete changes to address and heal your traumas.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
I often find that couples hold a fairy tale expectation of happily ever after, for which I chide them. I dismiss this notion not because it seems unrealistic, but because couples go about creating their fairy tale all wrong. For you see, “happy endings” are possible… This is called unconditional Love…
I used to think unconditional love in and of itself was unrealistic, but boy was I wrong! I myself, bought into the self-preservation approach to love. That being in a committed relationship and loving someone had to look a certain way, my way…
And, since I’m the Relationship Expert, I knew best! (my poor husband…). Talk about being egocentric… Can you imagine living with a know-it-all, always right, “their s***t don’t stink” person? I’m sure you can…
The moment I “detached” from outcomes, let go of my way, and “freed” my husband to be himself, is when everything changed… I actually beheld my husband for the first time in many years… I know that leap of faith, letting go of control, and trusting that you’d be OK is nauseatingly scary. It is also painful.
As you let go of preconceived notions, “attachments”, and your usual way of being it feels at first like a loss and like your world is upside down… This is the worst of it (taming your ego…) and I know you can get through it… The rest is magical (embracing your and your partner’s Authentic Selves)…
Please understand that true and unconditional love creates freedom, the flame that fuels healing, growth, change, creativity, self-expression, aliveness and joy. This is the Key to our Authentic Self. When we hold dear conditional love, what I call the self-preservation approach to love, we snuff out the flame. Conditional love flows from egocentrism and separatism, fear.
When we have conditions that need to be met, we are saying, “I’m afraid that __________”. This is a restrictive way of being and loving to “make sure” we get what we want, when in actuality this prevents our partner from being and giving from their awesomest self… We are cheating ourselves of something better that actually meets our needs even better!
Conditions are stifling. When we set conditions and parameters we truncate the opportunity for growth and change. We resist change, we resist something different, we resist our partner’s ways, and what we resist persists (a universal law…). Conditional love is your love of love, not love of your partner… Built into conditional love is the fear that your needs won’t be met and you won’t be OK.
But you invariably are guarantying this by restricting your partner from fully showing up for you! Conditional love does not allow for expansion, inclusiveness, connection, and Authenticity.
Conditionality restricts freedom and happiness as we are tied to conditions and outcomes… It eliminates our ability to choose how to show up, Be our best Self, and be Happy at any given moment. You are doing yourself and your relationship a huge disservice by holding on to your fairy tale conditional self-preservation and rescuing approach to love.
You are actually setting up your relationship to fail right off the gate. “Happy endings” are guaranteed only when there is a freedom and unconditional (accepting and compassionate) approach to Love. Take your risk now – accept, detach, and let go!
Happy Unconditional Loving!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Think about the “conditions” you hold your partner to in your relationship. Think about how these can be restrictive to them. How do they limit your partner from embracing their Authentic Self, for your sake…? Note how at the end of the day, neither of you is satisfied… Decide to let go of this “condition” and inform your partner of how you are “freeing” them of this condition (no strings attached please!).
This is an act of Love, a Gift (to both of you!)…
Accept, Detach, and Let Go!
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Being parented by imperfect parents/caregivers is considered a traumatic experience of childhood in some of the trauma and attachment literature and information I have come across. This includes being abused, abandoned and/or neglected to various degrees.
When trauma is defined in this fashion, it follows that most of us experienced traumatizing childhoods to some extent, and therefore were wounded rowing up. This has all kinds of implications for intimate relationships. Please note that I’m not a trauma or attachment expert, I’m simply integrating some additional concepts into my relationships working knowledge.
In very basic and crude terms, when we grow up in an environment where caregivers are not appropriately and consistently available to us, we learn to fend for ourselves for our emotional and sometimes physical survival and wellbeing. This does not give us a chance to develop the secure base necessary for our healthy development.
Instead, we develop coping, defense, mechanisms that allow us to do the best we can. The result is that our developmental tasks are barely accomplished and so continue our development with limited emotional resources.
To make up for this deficiency and manage our life as we become adults and involved in significant relationships, we continue using our defense mechanisms making them more sophisticated overtime. These can pick up any form: super-achieving, perfectionism, obsessions, compulsions, addictions, depression, anxiety, panic-attacks, and other forms of being over or under involved in our relationship.
This is great news in that we can have a better understanding of why we have some afflictions and how we can get stuck in dissatisfying relating in our relationship. According to relational and other theories, we would pick a partner with whom we can recreate the hurts from childhood.
Some of the reasons we do this are because 1) it is familiar territory so it feels more comfortable than the unknown, 2) to get now from the interactions what we couldn’t get then, and 3) to complete developmental tasks becoming healthier adults.
How do we use this information on our daily interactions? One way to start the healing process is to hold our own from a non-reactive place. When we react to something, become angry or upset, it is a sign that we have been triggered, that our boundaries have been compromised, that we are being hurt in some (old) way.
Therefore, it is our job to identify how we are hurt or how our needs are not being met, and to figure out how to meet them without trampling on someone else.
When we do this, we start to find ourselves, heal ourselves, complete our developmental tasks, develop healthy coping mechanisms, meet our needs, be present for our partner, and accept our partner’s love and nurturing!
Wow! Figure out those hurts and start feeling the love!
Happy Un-Wounding!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Going back to growing up, identify how you were hurt or disappointed by your caregivers. Remember, we were all hurt to some extent. Identify and capture the flavor of the wound that was caused and name the feelings associated with it. Now find similar feelings in the present, in your current relationship. What is your partner’s behavior that engenders these feelings his is how you are triggered.
Translate these feelings into needs.
Create a list of very concrete and specific behaviors that you and/or your partner can do to meet these needs.
Finally, create a plan on how to have these needs met: schedule things in your calendar, hire services, ask your partner for concrete behavior changes or nurturing gifts.
Do this from a non-reactive stance. Keep your cool. Be respectful of your partner’s needs. You don’t have to agree but learn to accept and love each other for who you are.
NOTE: this might be intense work or create ripple effects in your relationship/life that might feel frightening. You don’t have to do this alone, get professional assistance if you feel you are on shaky grounds.
Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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