Codependency & the Illusion of Safety
By Cheryl Fidelman, The Conscious Codependence™ Coach.
Are you holding back your life because you’re sold on the myth that if you lived as the truest version of your Self then you’d have to give up everything that you’ve built? And if you did have to give up everything that you built, do you trust yourself to surf that wave? Are you believing that if you were the real you that you’d have to get divorced or quit your job? Or that some version of a radical change that’s beyond your control that you don’t think you could handle would have to happen so it’s best to just conform to your current circumstances because it’s the “safest” bet? That if you were truly aligned with your Self the people around you would judge you or get mad at you so to avoid their reaction you only reveal the parts of your Self that you feel safe to reveal?
Codependency will tell you that you’re not safe with a person. It will make you feel like you can’t be around a certain group of people because they’re not safe people. It will have you scared of speaking your truth because it’s convincing you that you’re not safe to do so. It will make you think that you have to choose between repression or divorce – like if you spoke up your world would collapse, so silence seems like a much “safer” option.”
What if your nervous system just doesn’t know what safety is? And if it knew what safety was it wouldn’t hold you back from living so much. Just because you don’t feel safe doesn’t mean that you’re actually not safe. What does safety even mean? When you say that you don’t feel safe, what do you mean by that? What is the threat or impending threat that you and/or your nervous system is anticipating?
Is it a threat to your experience of belonging? A threat to your self worth? To your value? To your identity? Are you being nice in order to preserve their perception of you? Would it be a threat to your support system? In other words, if you were living as your truly aligned Self, do you think you’d lose a level of emotional, familial or financial support?
For a lot of us, at some point in our upbringing, our nervous system lost its ability to tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat. So then almost any feeling that we have can be interpreted by our bodies as an unsafe experience. And in our Codependent moments, those unsafe feelings get put onto other people as if they are not safe. But what The Conscious Codependence™ Process reveals to us is that it’s not other people that are not safe, it’s our limited capacity to feel that is unsafe. In other words, our Codependency tells us that to have feelings of our own or to cause feelings in another is wrong & unsafe – so let’s just play it small & quiet and no one will feel a thing – this is what Codependency calls “safety.”
If your heart rate increases, or you feel the pit in your stomach, or you feel embarrassed or bullied or dominated then you may have the interpretation that some sort of punishment is pending. But if you can feel those feelings, include them in the moment and stay connected to your Self & others, than there will be ALL the space in the world for YOUR TRUTH.
A feeling is YOUR truth but it is not a true reflection of what is actually happening. Just because you feel unsafe does not mean that you are actually unsafe. Just because you’re feeling bullied, doesn’t mean that someone is bullying you AND your feeling is valid and safe for you to feel it. In The Conscious Codependence™ Process, you will know what is a threat & what is a perceived threat, you will hear your intuition & trust your Self again.
In The Conscious Codependence™ Process, once your capacity for your own feelings increases then your true Self will exist. And your true Self will be able to witness other people in their feelings without caving in on itself. You will build the trust in yourself to know when you are actually unsafe. Because in your Codependent moments you are avoiding others & labeling them as unsafe. But in your moments of personal freedom & independence, the only person you’re ever really avoiding is your Self.
You can get your FREE PDF of The 3 Codes to Clear Codependency at www.cherylfidelman.com. The PDF lists the common developmental roots & behavioral patterns of each Code and also some questions to customize them to your experience.
