2 Steps To Increasing Safety As You Heal And Grow

By Marshall Burtcher.

Codependency is about conformity, consistency, and lack of change.  It tries to keep us compliant to the expectations of others in order to successfully appease or please them.  Further, it uses perfectionism to drive how we regulate and manage ourselves in hopes of attaining safety, belonging, and worth through obtaining approval and recognition.

This makes growth, change, and evolving who we are terrifying.  Such acts jeopardize safety, connection, and our sense of worth when they’re not coupled with a community and support systems that will have our backs and assist us in handling the outcomes that happen as we grow.

Further, we have learned to distrust ourselves, our awareness, our perceptions, and any growth that might risk relationships, worth, or belonging.

This makes growth challenging, bringing up questions like:

“Am I doing it right?” 

“Will I be loved this way?” 

“Am I worthy of wanting this?”

“Can I trust that this is ok?”

Our growth and healing can suddenly get stuck here, preventing our growth and development for years (that’s what happened to me).

Resolving this trap is crucial to your liberation from codependency and your embrace of your power and well-being.

Here’s what I lead my students through as they heal and grow through my work:

1) Trust first that your growth is safe to have

This step helps raise the level of safety we have about growing and changing.  We heal at the speed of safety, and trusting that our growth is safe makes it easier for us to integrate it and give it space to expand.

You can start nurturing this trust with a What-Shift’s Question:  “what shifts when I trust, just a bit, that my growth is safe for me to allow?”

Allow whatever emerges as it is all valid.  Usually students experience some relief and expansion.  Sometimes, though, there’s pain, fear, or contraction.  Use the next step to navigate this.

2) Give yourself permission to feel the way you do about it

Permission reduces judgment, resistance, and analysis and opens you to feeling more of what is present with you.

You can do this with another What-Shift’s Question: “What shifts when I give this emotion permission to exist?”

Allow what emerges and take your time to feel into it and experience what is there.

These two steps are helping you navigate into an important aspect of your healing:  The occupation of your personal authority and power.  

Abuse has largely taught us to give our power away to others outside of ourselves and to seek their approval and permission to be, do or have what we have in our lives.

Being free, being sovereign, being powerful in our lives requires us to recall our power, own it, and deliberately embody it.  

Trusting our growth, granting ourselves permission to have that growth AND allow our emotions to be allowed is how we begin to embody and express this power and authority.  

My friends, may these two steps help increase safety in your growth and in the use of being the authority of your personal life.

Remember, go gently!

Marshall Burtcher is a Codependency Transformation Expert. He specializes in helping codependents, people-pleasers, and perfectionists get aligned with their real worth, purpose, and satisfaction so they create a life they enjoy. Learn how to start actually loving yourself in his free CLARITY course: https://clarity.freetheself.com