Tags: Am I too sensitive?, boundaries, boundaries - personal electric fence, boundaries and recognising discomfort, Code amber & Red behaviour & Issues, codependency, early stages of dating, gaslighting, Gut & Intuition, ignoring yourself, listening to yourself, rescuing and saving, The Debit and Credit Trust System, trust points
One of the biggest struggles people have when it comes to trusting their judgement and intuition is being able to recognise and act upon red flags, or what I call code amber and red alerts. Ignoring or second-guessing early warning signs always leads winding up knee-deep in situations that are a bigger manifestation of the original potential issues we dismissed or rationalised. In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I do a deep dive into code amber and red alerts. What do they mean, why does this matter so much and knowing when to call it.
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Nuggets from the episode
- Someone’s perceived potential is often a barrier to people registering and acting on red flags. In these situations, we’ve already decided how we want things to be. Sometimes our focus is what we want to get out of the situation. Thinking about things in code amber and red terms can then mean that in a situation where we’re ignoring ourselves to chase potential, this is an alert that we are going against us.
- Whatever we ignore in the early stages of a relationship or situation always comes back to bite further down the line. Not only do we have the same issue in a bigger way but only now we’re more invested in the situation, but we also pay the price of ignoring ourselves.
- Anxiety and fear aren’t ‘bad’. It’s ignoring or misusing them that cause us to run into problems.
Code amber alerts mean stop, look, listen and proceed with awareness (and/or caution). Code red alert means stop, don’t proceed, danger, incompatibility. Both are asking you to be more boundaried.
- Code amber alerts want you to get grounded. Get a sense of your surroundings and what you’re thinking, feeling and doing. Assess the situation. Notice yourself. Acknowledge whether there are gaps of knowledge that you need to fill in before you can proceed with confidence.
- If it’s not super-obvious why something is an issue or we know that we’re unsettled but we just don’t know why, it’s a code amber alert that by acknowledging it, we take better care of us. We also become open to gaining further clarity and resolution.
- Anything that’s a code amber will be temporary because it will go green (resolved) or go red.
- Code red alerts cover incompatibility and danger. Anything that isn’t congruent with us living and loving with love, care, trust and respect is a code red.
- Anything that compromises our character and wellbeing isn’t a fit.
- An ignored code red alert intensifies both in the level of the problem but also in the alerts we receive.
If you barely know someone and you’re already getting code amber and red alerts, is it really worth ignoring yourself to proceed?
- One of the incredibly handy things about being willing to listen to ourselves and acknowledge alerts is that we see things that we didn’t see before in the past. Maybe we didn’t understand why something was an issue, and now it clicks into place. Perhaps we finally see how aspects of our childhood wounds have been making themselves known through some of our interpersonal relationships.
- Sometimes we have to wonder what on earth we see in someone we barely know when we’re willing to ignore us so quickly into the proceedings. What would we do if we knew someone for longer?!
- Any type of rescuing dynamic is a code red alert that we’re in a codependent pattern and that we have fuzzy boundaries.
Making out our problem is that we’re too needy/demanding/difficult/sensitive or whatever is a code red alert that we are dismissing, minimising, criticising and harming us.
- We don’t need to turn our noticing code amber and code red issues into a sport of trying to catch people out.
- Outside of issues of abuse, when we recognise that an issue is big enough that it puts a wrecking ball through being able to proceed from a place of being in a mutually fulfilling relationship, romantic or otherwise, with love, care, trust and respect, the relationship can’t proceed as is. The code red issue has to be acknowledged. The boundaries need to reflect recognition of the issue.
- Our subconscious is our mental filing system. We only have awareness of a small percentage of the billions of files. If we attempted to have everything open, it, like a computer, would put huge pressure on our ‘resources’. When we intuit that something is off or wrong, often that information is coming from those files. Sure, there will be some misfiling in there, but there’s also plenty of handy data about what does and doesn’t work for us if we’re willing to be curious.
Links mentioned
- Understanding code amber and red issues
- Getting grounded about intuition and anxiety (ep 107)
- Value – following through on intentions and words with actions (ep 186)
- Boundaries are two-fold (ep 134)
- Ambiguity (ep 95 )
- Gaslighting (ep 185)
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Oh goodness, this came at the right time. I have been dating someone since March and very early on had many problems! I got out of an abusive marriage and was single for 8 years, never dating anyone. I am 52 years old. I am getting stronger. I dated this person who is in the process of divorce. He is 13 years older than me. He has an STD (we never had sex, thank goodness). I thought I really liked him but was hesitant about some things so I have retreated often, due to my instinctive response to back up. At those times he would be more pressuring, saying how much he loves me and how good we are together, how we “fit” together and how I should not throw it away. Backing up, 3 weeks into just dating he wasn’t able to reach me one day because I was at the DMV. I was busy. He left many messages that he was “worried” that I didn’t respond. That bothered me, but for some reason I let it go. Another time I was working out and didn’t call him at 9:00 pm as I said. I got distracted and called at 10:00 but it was too late. I thought not a big deal and texted that I was sorry I got distracted and hope he sleeps well. He made a HUGE deal out of it, that I was unreliable, that I missed the appointment. That threw me off kilter, as we had only been dating about 6 weeks. There were other similar things where he would lecture me about how I am not putting my 100% into the “relationship” as he is. He is convinced that we are right for each other. Oh how this sounds familiar, my two decade emotionally abuse and painful marriage in which I stayed only for my children. I was so unhappy and lost so much of myself I was invisible by the time of my divorce. I do not want a relationship with this man anymore but I feel responsible and obligated. He is always saying how supportive he is of me and how he loves me. Yet he is still in process of divorce. I had to take years to recover from my marriage and get my act together before I considered dating. I have felt like I am losing myself again, like I don’t have choices. I want to end it but I don’t know how. I hate this. I appreciate any advice on how to get STRONG!!! I know my instincts are sensing SO MANY THINGS WRONG, but they are not necessarily on your list of reasons to bail. It is just my senses telling me to RUN. There were some times that I could not understand why, but I felt such an urge to run, but I didn’t have any concrete reason. I just felt an overpowering sense that this person is bad for me. Whenever I tell him that I feel that things are not right, that I need back up, he tells me that I am letting my fears control me. A few times he told me things like, “Well when you said you felt this way I took it seriously.” Well, my feelings changed with each upsetting episode. He would have me on the phone for hours listening to how I am not passionate enough and how I am being a child, how I need to grow up. How it isn’t fair that he always has to be the “man”. Every conversation like that would paralyze me for days. I would just escape into naps on the weekends, and he would say he was sorry and that he had no right to tell me where to be in the relationship. STILL I feel smothered even though he is giving me “space”. I am LISTENING to my fears because I feel that my fears are the only thing that can help me. U recently said I would take him out for his birthday because I feel obligated. He took me out for my birthday. He is always offering to do things for me. He says he wants nothing in return but I feel I owe him. Thanks for listening. How in the world do I break from this? I have been getting more and more unhappy, but I am single, I am free, I have choices. I am trying to remind myself that I have a CHOICE in this yet I am sinking back into old patterns of not having any rights.
” I do not want a relationship with this man anymore but I feel responsible and obligated.” This right here. Jan, breakups aren’t a democracy. Just because he’s decided that you’re right for each other as he’s bellowing at you about being unreliable, not keeping appointments and telling you that you’re not putting in your 100%, that doesn’t mean that you have to agree. This man’s behaviour, as well-meaning as he might believe that it is, is invasive and boundary crossing. Even if there wasn’t all of this going on, you don’t feel the same way and obligation is no reason to get into this relationship. The funny thing is that he’s actually unwittingly corroborating why you two are not a fit. You’re not happy and he’s not happy, and you doing what he thinks he wants won’t make that any better. And he is *not* giving you space. The thing about doing things out of obligation instead of desire is that it *always* leads to resentment and guilt. Because you don’t desire to be with him or in this relationship, you have to go with what you feel and want, not what he does. It is OK for him to be disappointed. You don’t owe him a relationship, sex, time, *anything* just because you or he thinks that he’s done some nice things or because he’s into you. Women have been socialised since time immemorial to believe that just because someone is giving you the time of day or showing interest or demanding a relationship that we should roll over and be with them. This man is bullying you, and you’re emotionally blackmailing you into continuing. And he *does* want something in return, otherwise he would have backed off. “I absolutely agree with you that I am not, as you put it, ‘passionate enough’ and that some of my responses have been, as you put it, ‘like a child’. I know that this is hard to hear, but I don’t want to be with you. I hold my hands up: feeling obliged and, yes, sometimes feeling afraid of displeasing means that I haven’t owned my part in the relationship and been more assertive about my desire to end this relationship. As a result, this has continued on longer than it should have and been frustrating for both of us. While it’s also important for me to acknowledge that you haven’t listened when I’ve attempted to broach anything with you and that I’ve been uncomfortable with you berating and pressuring me, I apologise for not being more honest and forthright with you about this sooner. It would be wrong for us to continue any further. I wish you well.” And then distance yourself, fast.
Thank you for this. Hard, but must be done!