Being involved with emotionally unavailable people or with shady folks are examples of codependent relationships. You might feel excessively emotionally responsible for others and find it difficult to have boundaries, often seeing relationships as the definition of you or even your salvation. Or, you are guarded as a defence against feelings of excessive emotional responsibility. In the latter instance, you use walls to make yourself fiercely independent.
[Hyper] independence as self-protection and a defence isn’t the same as independence as an expression of your values. And losing yourself in others isn’t ‘love’ and ‘care’.
All codependent relationships feature boundary issues and living in the past. The healthier boundaries you have, the more yourself you become, and the safer and more capable of intimacy you feel. You will also choose healthier relationships because you will no longer want to lose or distance yourself. You will be able to co-exist with others while retaining a sense of self because you know your responsibilities.
When you’re afraid of vulnerability and tend to view certain feelings as ‘bad’, it inhibits your availability for mutually fulfilling relationships. If you desire a loving relationship, you will need to feel more of your feelings. You will, in essence, need to be more emotionally available. But your concerns and patterns contain clues about where you can become a partner in the relationship you truly want.
Scared of losing your independence?
Your relationships have been guiding you to learn to trust yourself from a healthier place and to learn to trust others. Your fears and feelings are an invitation to discover how to depend again from a place of interdependence. The degree to which you’re scared represents the degree to which you need to depend some more. And, of course, that takes vulnerability.
Scared of becoming more independent?
Your relationships have also been guiding you to learn to trust yourself from a healthier place. It’s time to allow yourself to grow instead of living in the past where you’re in a child role and people are ‘authorities‘. Your fears and feelings are an invitation to be independent again from a place of interdependence. The degree to which you’re scared represents the degree to which you need the independence from learning where you end and others begin.
Relationships are guidance. You are healing, growing and learning to become interdependent. You have a sense of self and know where you end and others begin. By having these healthier boundaries, you can safely and happily co-exist in your relationships because you can be yourself and be on a team. You have a self in and out of a relationship.
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