Heal Your Codependency with Marshall Burtcher
This podcast explores how to heal and thrive beyond codependency, neglect, and narcissistic abuse. Host Marshall Burtcher offers insights and strategies for recovery and personal growth. The show aims to help listeners break free from unhealthy patterns and build healthier relationships.
Episodes
Your Internal Compass: The Source of Your Answers
In this episode, Marshall Burtcher, your expert in healing codependency, reveals the internal compass all codependents must develop to break out of the painful cycles of incompatible relationships, purpose, and work in life.Whether you're new to codependency or have being in the work of healing it, this episode will assist you in understanding what you've been using as your compass and w
How Believing In Scarcity Keeps You Codependent
[How Believing In Scarcity Keeps You Codependent]In this episode, Marshall Burtcher, your expert in healing codependency, reveals how scarcity beliefs keep you stuck in better-than-nothing relationships, perpetuating cycles of pain, loss, and harm, and how to begin to nurture yourself into a practical, realistic sense of abundance.Whether you're new to codependency or have being in the work o
Persistence And The Foundation You Need
Marshall discusses the importance of persistence, why it is necessary, and how having the proper foundation of emotional regulation, safety, self-trust, self-worth, and community is essential to this.Get the Breakthrough Bundle here: https://bb.freetheself.comLearn more about Marshall's work here: https://www.healyourcodependency.com
Why You Chase Love...
Why You Chase Love...In this episode, Marshall Burtcher, your expert in healing codependency, uncovers the core reason you chase love, tolerate better-than-nothing relationships, and the core self-concept that needs to be shifted for this pattern to stop and your new pattern of loving, available relationships to start.Whether you're new to codependency or have being in the work of healing it,
Why You Can't Keep Your Boundaries (And What To Do About It)
Why You Can't Keep Your Boundaries (And What To Do About It)In this episode, Marshall Burtcher, your expert in healing codependency, reveals the core reason you struggle to keep and maintain your boundaries, and what you need to practice to make boundaries feel safer, easier, and empowering for you.Whether you're new to codependency or have being in the work of healing it, this episode w
How To Heal Insecurity Correctly
How To Heal Insecurity Correctly****In this powerful episode, Marshall Burtcher, your codependency transformation mentor, reveals the true cause of insecurity, anxiety, and feeling unworthy and unlovable and how to begin feeling actually worthy, secure, and confident within yourself. Whether you're facing anxiety, burn-out, frustration, emotional emptiness, feeling lost to yourself, this epis
What If This Work Isn't About Healing Codependency?
It Isn't About Healing CodependencyIn this episode, Marshall Burtcher, your codependency transformation expert, invites you to explore what healing codependency really is about - your life beyond survival. He shares what he sees is possible for you and how he helps you achieve this, starting with FOUNDATION. We heal together. We thrive together.***Take my free "Are You Codependent?&quo
Take Back The Authority Over Your Worth
Take Back The Authority Over Your WorthIn this episode, Marshall Burtcher, your codependency transformation expert, shares how essential it is to restore your worth by taking authority over it. Your self-authority is *why* you get to define who you are, establish your worth without seeking permission, and become the person you choose to be. It is what replaces codependency.Use this episode's
What's Attachment Got To Do With Codependency?
What's Attachment Got To Do With Codependency?In this episode, Marshall Burtcher, your codependency transformation expert, reveals how attachment orientations, like anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and disorganized attachment, are part of the codependent strategy of survival and how it is necessary to build capacity in the nervous system so your attachment system becomes nimble and re
Why You Fixate On Other People's Approval
Why You Fixate On Other People's ApprovalIn this powerful episode, Marshall Burtcher, your codependency transformation mentor, reveals a hidden necessity to healing your codependency and experiencing sustainable, fulfilling freedom and prosperity beyond it. Without grasping and embodying this quality, you will continue to seek permission from others to be, do, and have what you desire in you
How To Correctly Prioritize Yourself
How To Correctly Prioritize Yourself****In this powerful episode, Marshall Burtcher, your codependency transformation mentor, reveals the habit that leads us to emotional burn-out, emptiness, and resentment, and teaches you the first essential skill to take back your power, your freedom, and well-being from codependency.Whether you're facing anxiety, burn-out, frustration, emotional emptiness
Breaking Misconceptions #1: What Codependency Isn't!
Breaking Misconceptions #1: What Codependency Isn't!Healing your codependency depends on you having the correct knowledge, practices, support, and structure.There are powerful, dangerous misconceptions about codependency that are sabotaging your healing and preventing you from succeeding and healing as fast as you deserve to have. Healing your codependency depends on you having the correct k
End People-pleasing With This Shift
How To Stop People-pleasing: Taking Back Your WorthOne of the key entanglements that drives the people-pleasing impulse has to do with your worth. We are taught a transactional model of worth, meaning we earn it by doing xyz. In people-pleasing, what our worth is dependent on is approval and the avoidance of rejection.This creates massive anxiety, hypervigilance, and insecurity in our sense of se
How To Stop People-pleasing: Are You Making Their Feelings Too Important?
How To Stop People-pleasing: Are You Making Their Feelings Too Important?People-pleasing drives us to over-prioritize and emphasize people's negative feelings towards us and towards other things. This can motivate us to try to fix their feelings, which blinds us to important realities about what is happening, including:1) Incompatibilities between you and that person2) Boundary violations th
Are You Blended Up In Them?
Are You Blended Up In Them?Codependency and people-pleasing require a high level of vigilance and emotional enmeshment with others in order to feel some sense of safety.This happens because the nervous system and attachment system discovered that regulating others feels safer than living with the chaos created by the toxic relationship's uncertainty. It found that if it can attune and soothe
The 3 perils of doing it yourself healing
The 3 perils of doing it yourself healing...I have done a lot of DIY healing. Some of it was all I had available to me due to finances. Much of it was due to a deep wound in my identity that said, "be needless. do it yourself" and "when they know you this way, they'll abandon you."Being raised to regulate other people's feelings with the promise that they'll take
Do You Allow Yourself To Change?
Changing our minds is an essential part of being our personal, sovereign authority.And I have changed my mind and made a change.FOUNDATION is rescheduled for later this Spring so I can follow what the energy I feel is directing:People-pleasing Transformed - 6 Weeks To Radical Self-Trust And PeaceThis 6-week journey guides you through unblending from your people-pleasing identity, embodying your Co
What Purpose Is Driving Your Healing?
What Purpose Is Driving Your Healing?We have motivators that drive what we do.The motivators that drive codependency are very, very different from those that drive our well-being.In this episode, I discuss these two types of purpose and how to detect and shift them so you're coming from alignment with your power rather than the reactive nature of codependency, resulting in more outcomes you w
Are You Surviving Or Thriving? My Focus For 2025
2025 brings you and I into a pivot in the work. I will be focusing on leading you to the results that matter to you. This all starts with understanding IDENTITY. And through a 4-step process, you get the results you seek faster and easier than you've thought was possible.I'm calling it, "ACCELERATE". My "Leap The Gap" Training happening December 18th will show you wh
Getting Control of Uncertainty? Is That Possible?
When you've gone through trauma, the brain tends to amplify it's negative bias, creating negative anticipation towards uncertain things.We find ourselves planning for the worst, as it gives us a sense of power and comfort. It makes sense. The negative thing has happened to us in the past and we want to be prepared.This must be balanced with positive anticipation, especially when facing
Is It Time To Be The Power And Authority Over Your Life?
It will be essential, at some point, to admit to and embrace the authority and power you rightly, naturally possess to direct and govern your life.You cannot exit codependency without this vital step, as it will keep you tethered to the power of other people's approval, rejection, disappointment, and agreement.The anxiety of making your own choice, following your own path, even trusting your
How I View Codependency And The Codependent - Important In Choosing Who You Work With
How a therapist, coach, mentor, support community, or even yourself view codependency and codependents directly influences the outcomes, results, and transformation you experience (or don't) in that relationship.This is why it is crucial you're aware of how prospective mentors, therapists, coaches, and so forth view and understand you and the topic you're working with. Today, I sha
The Importance of Identifying And Integrating The Gains In Your Healing
The Importance of Gains:What is a gain? It is a positive outcome we receive through a choice we make or a choice we do not make. An example: I gained my peace of mind by not going back to the dysfunctional person.Why does this matter? Gains are the benefits we receive with a positive, healthy change. If we let ourselves recognize and magnify the gain, it helps our body adapt and adjust quickl
Your Pain vs The Story You Tell
Pain vs Your StoryTransformation of a person's pain-filled life to a joy-filled life is the journey of healing and becoming who you truly be. It has three Phases: Survival, Healing, and Creation And in each of these, there is a work we do around identity and one's pain.In the Survival Phase, the pain and the identity are the same. "I am angry!" "I am shameful!"
The Burden of Cause
Burden of CauseWhat is the "burden of cause"? It is a term I use to describe believing you cause other people to treat you the way they treated you. When we are enmeshed this way, we will internalize people's behaviors as a reflection of some internal flaw or problem that we then must change. This leads us to believe that the other person will change, too, creating a potent fantas
Feeling Lost In Other People's Lives, Feelings, Desires? Here's What To Do
De-centering others and centering yourself in your life is *necessary*, not selfish.It is about understanding what matters personally to you while setting aside other people's opinions and perspectives of what you should be centering in your life.They are not the authority, and they do not live with the outcome like you do.You are the authority. You inherent the outcome and consequence of yo
Knowledge Overwhelm Is Sabotaging Your Healing
Knowledge overwhelm is a primary factor in experiencing freeze, procrastination, and loops of stagnation when you're trying to heal from trauma and instability.The mind's ravenous appetite for knowledge is driven by a fantasy that "if I'd only known better, I could have done better". There's a deep assumption that we're lacking something specific and when we fin
Going Slow - It Is A Must
Going Slow - It Is A MustTo heal, we must sloooooow down.To know ourselves, we must sloooooow down.To find direction in our lives, we must slooooooow down.Codependency, trauma, and the culture of "productivity" demands you speed up.You get it done now.Faster! Faster! FASTER! Healing, thriving, having a sense of self, liking yourself, loving yourself, loving others, feeling satisfaction -
Becoming Your Own Protector To Nurture Secure Attachment
Being neglected, being abused, being shoved into the world without guidance, care, shelter, or protection wired our attachment systems to be on high alert and braced for danger.Depending on what feels safest, your attachment system may try to control external things, resulting in anxious attachment.Or it may choose to avoid the threat all together and be needless and "independent", creat
Emotional Perfectionism: Making sure you feel the "right" things, not the real things
Emotional Perfectionism, Part One: Making sure you feel the "right" things, not the real thingsI define emotional perfectionism as the rigid habit of feeling what one "should feel" in order to satisfy the real or perceived expectations of others.It is a sub-type of General Perfectionism, where behaviors and expressions are tailored to meet external expectations. This is a code
The Three Phases Of Exiting Codependency: Creation Phase - Where you create a life you enjoy
Creation Phase is where you arrive with the ability to determine what kind of experiences you want to have, and then using your personal power, intuition, and skills, go out and receive those experiences.This all depends on knowing what you *actually* want, not what you think you want (which is often a product of trauma controling things rather than a genuine alignment within ourselves).This phase
The Three Phases Of Exiting Codependency: Healing Phase - Where you grow into your real self
The Healing Phase is the deep work of unbecoming your codependency and discovering who you are beyond your pain, trauma, and survival self. This is where we develop the necessary skills, experience and expertise we didn't get growing up, along with amplifying our safety, our belonging, and deeply embodying our self-worth.Learn how I work with this phase and how you can start to in your life i
The Three Phases Of Exiting Codependency: Survival Phase - Where you start your journey
Survival is the phase we all start in. It is the phase where we realize our codependency and begin the big work of healing that codependency and become who we actually are.This phase is noted by the presents of:- Anxiety- Shame- Freeze and fawn impulses in the body- Feeling depressed, collapsed, powerless - People-pleasing, perfectionism, avoiding conflict to keep the peace, and moreLearn what I
Is It Time To Quit? The Uncanny Power of Quitting To Accelerate Your Healing
Quitting - It is necessary in the healing journey.Quitting relationships.Quitting fixing.Quitting chasing fantasy outcomes.Quitting.It makes space for new, healthy outcomes to come into your life.It makes it possible for you to face the pain that needs the loving care of your attention and loving care of community so it can heal.Quitting.That is what we explore in this week's episode.*** STAR
Why you only love yourself when things are going well
Episode: Why you only love yourself when things are going wellWhen we live from a love equation that says "I'm only lovable when...", we are being controlled and manipulated. This leads us to invest precious time, energy, and attention on satisfying these conditions and then *maintaining* them.No wonder we burn out!Learn what do about this in today's episode:*** START YOUR WOR
Two Hidden Factors That Short Circuit Your Self-Love
Two Hidden Factors That Short Circuit Your Self-LoveReally, actually loving yourself is a profound challenge when we come from codependency and love-is-earned relationship and family systems. We are striving to earn the love, earn the permission, become worthy, and demostrate that we deserve it.To break out of this prison, you need to understand the two hidden factors that keep you chasing love.We
The ONE thing that absolutely prevents you from loving yourself
Episode: The ONE thing that absolutely prevents you from loving yourselfTransaction, earned love teaches us that we must - MUST - seek, chase, and perform for love.This means we have to be "just right" in the eyes of the other or we won't get love.This means that when there are challenges, problems, hiccups, mistakes, love is in jeopardy.This means we start LIVING like we're a
Why You Struggle To Really, Actually Love Yourself
Why You Struggle To Really, Actually Love YourselfWhen you're rewarded with praise, attention, or affection for doing something, your body will see performance and love as the same thing.When you're presence is met with warmth, praise, attention, or affection on a consistent basis, your body will see your existence and love as the same thing. You deserve to know the second form of love.L
Codependency And Shame - What's Really Happening
Codependency And Shame - What's Really HappeningYou cannot become free of your codependency until you break free of what I call "Your Root Identity".Codependency depends on a root identity.What is a root identity? It is an identity that you FEEL and experience as utterly true about yourself.You filter the world through this identity and it controls how you live your life.Learn what
3 Priorities For Satisfaction If You're Codependent
3 Priorities For Satisfaction If You're CodependentDo you often feel: - Empty, frustrated, or used? - Wonder why your life is not fulfilling or satisfied? - Feel lost as to what you want, value, or even need in your life?Codependency has us prioritizing others emotionally, physically, mentally, and even financially or intimately. This happens through acts of people-pleasing, perfectionism, a
You're Not Emotionally Blocked - You're In Need Of Love
You're Not Emotionally Blocked - You're In Need Of LoveThe term and concept called "blocks" is prevalent in the self-help and healing world. It is something that sabotaged my healing, satisfaction, and personal alignment with my purposes and joy, as I was drawn to try to fix, eliminate, and overcome these "blocks".This wasted over a decade of energy, time, and money
3 Things You Must Unblend From Others If You're To Thrive
3 Things You Must Unblend From Others If You're To ThriveCodependency has us blending ourselves with others.What is blending?It is confusing one's self with another's reality. An example: You know their feelings and mistake their feelings for your feelings.This is a common form of being enmeshed with another.In today's episode, I show you three critical things to unblend from
3 Things You Must Trust In Yourself If You're To Heal And Thrive
3 Things You Must Trust In Yourself If You're To Heal And ThriveAbuse and neglect conditioned you to naturally distrust yourself. You learned to discount the legitimacy of your lived experiences, the importance and value of your emotions, to seek your worth through pleasing others and being "good", and so much more.To heal, your distrust must be healed into trust.I share the 3 esse
Navigating New or Foreign Experiences That Come From Your Growth And Healing
Navigating New or Foreign Experiences That Come From Your Growth And HealingAdapting to new results because you're choosing different people who behave differently is challenging. It is also one of the more risky parts of our journey, as we may turn to old behaviors to generate a sense of safety or comfort because it is familiar. I share the gentle approach I teach my students that helps the
What secrets does your emptiness hold?
What secrets does your emptiness hold?Emptiness is often something we fear and can be really intense to confront if we're not sure why we're turning towards our emptiness.But what if emptiness wasn't something wrong? What if it could add deeply to your healing? What if your emptiness holds the key to more fulfillment and connection?Learn how to work with your emptiness and discover
What does it mean to fulfill or nurture a need?
What does it mean to fulfill or nurture a need?Needs are somatic - meaning they are experienced in the body, and their fulfillment is found in the body.This makes our needs interdependent experiences - both with you to yourself, you to others, and others to you.A need being fulfilled or nurtured means your body is having experiences that fulfill the desire that need has.Example: I want warm affect
The Anatomy Of Connection
The 3 Sides Of Fulfilling ConnectionFeeling connection and a sense of belonging invovles the interaction of three distinct "movements" we each do towards each other and ourselves.When we understand these movements and deliberately involve them in our relating, we experience more fulfilling connections. What are these 3 movements?- How you relate to yourself (You-to-Yourself)- How you ar
Do You Have Internalized Loneliness?
Do You Have Internalized Loneliness?First of all, what is "Internalized Loneliness?"It is an enduring, profound sense of being emotionally isolated from others and from yourself.I visualized it as my being in a transparent glass box where I could see others, hear them, and they could see and hear me, but we could never touch emotionally.This box also existed within my internal experience
3 Tips That Take The Sting And Shame Out Of Disappointing Others
3 Tips That Take The Sting And Shame Out Of Disappointing OthersDisappointing others is a terrifying thing when we've been rejected, discarded, and harmed by it in the past. Yet, to thrive and enjoy our lives, we must be willing to navigate this, so how do we do that?Today I give you three tips that take the sting, shame, and intensity out of disappointing others.- Tip one: acknowledge the
Create Real Confidence By Doing These Two Practices
A crucial and often not taught or discussed aspect of healing and growth is valuing, praising, and appreciating our efforts REGARDLESS of the outcome.Growing up, my worth and my confidence were deeply tethered to outcomes. If the outcome was the "right one", I was worthy, safe, loveable, and could trust myself. If the outcome was the "wrong one", shame, self-distrust, and rep
Is This Misconception Sabotaging Your Healing?
Is This Misconception Sabotaging Your Healing?In the early days of my healing, I would try tools, concepts, approaches, and practices in hopes they would change things in my relationships, life, or solve my problems.I felt frustrated, discouragement, and even resentment when this didn't happen. This is due to a misunderstanding of what healing is really about and what the tools are actually
Pain Not Healing? Try These 3 Things
Pain Not Healing? Try These 3 ThingsHealing one's pain is a difficult, nebulous concept until we start to actually get *experience* with it. This makes healing a bit of a catch-22. I've found that there are usually three habits that are keeping the pain locked in a loop in your body, perpetuating it's cycle.Once you can identify which of these is happening in your relationship to y
The Important And Necessary Step Of Being Open And Available
The Important And Necessary Step Of Being Open And AvailableBeing open and available enables your deepest healing and reconnection to yourself to emerge and become your normal. This allows you to be able to receive and contribute in a holistic, genuine away far outside the transactional, survival nature of codependency and narcissistic systems.Listen today to learn why openness is essential and h
Isn't It Time To Stop Fixing Yourself And Start Knowing Yourself Instead?
Isn't It Time To Stop Fixing Yourself And Start Knowing Yourself Instead?I discuss the importance between fixing yourself (something is broken in who I am) and knowing yourself (what is this trying to do for me?) when it comes to our behaviors, codependency, and becoming ourselves.****Join my communities here: https://links.freetheself.comDiscover the 3 Secrets To Healing Codependency Permane
How To Make Healing Easier On Yourself
Healing happens in waves, stripping away layers of programming, bringing in deeper levels of sobriety.This can be intense.I'm going to share with you how I navigate this cycle so it creates more peace, keeps you in your capacity, and allows you to integrate your discoveries with care, honesty, and commitment.***Want to learn more about thriving beyond your codependency? Take my free workshop
Got Capacity?
Got Capacity?This one element is central to your peace, healing, and freedomToday we discover the central element that determines how fast we heal, how safe we feel in relationships, and even how emotionally available we are.It gives life to our boundaries and directs us in our lives.Not knowing this central element leaves us feeling lost, burned out, and enmeshed with others.Discover this central
Your Sense Of Emotional Safety Depends On This...
Your Sense Of Emotional Safety Depends On This...Feeling safe emotionally requires that we are able to access, acknowledge, and receive whatever is present for us emotionally.More specifically, your pain.In today's episode, I show you how to do this and what results it gives us when we do this.***Enrollment closes this week for FOUNDATION! Get the details and enroll here: https://foundation.
What Does It Mean To Belong?
What Does It Mean To Belong?We need a sense of connection, inclusion, and belonging with others and ourselves. When this is not present, we are vulnerable to exploitation, to chasing unavailable relationships, and languishing in loneliness. Further, if we do not belong to ourselves, we do not get to define who we want to be and utilize our time, energy, and resources for creating what we value a
Self-Worth Sets You Free
Self-Worth Sets You FreeCodependency has us sourcing our worth from outside ourselves. We chase it through approval and by avoiding rejection. We cultivate it through pleasing others, being perfect, and trying to prove our worth.And we lose ourselves when the other rejects us, discards us, or feels disappointed in us for whatever reason.Your freedom, peace, and self-love depend on you unblending
Do You Have Emotional Safety?
Do You Have Emotional Safety?Our body needs to feel safe before it can advocate for itself.Specifically, it needs to feel safe enough to acknowledge and value it's own emotions and experiences so it can know what to advocate for.Codependency attempts to create this safety by pleasing others and/or being perfect.Liberating ourselves from codependency requries us to develop new means for emotio
Why you are codependent and what to do about it
Codependency is a reaction to unsafe, unreliable relationships. It required us to give up ourselves to secure three specific needs. This episode dives into these three needs, the biological cause of codependency, and the essential nature of resourcing and nurturing these 3 needs in specific ways to activate our advocacy response.Discover this key knowledge and begin the journey of experiencing mo
Do You Have A Mental Block or Is It Actually Something Else?
For 15 years, I was focused on resolving my "mental blocks".This idea that something in me was blocking my abundance, my relationships, my love, my healing, was scary yet very tantilizing.It gave me a thing to blame, a thing to target, and a thing to fix. And yet, to this day, I have never resolved one single mental block.Why?Because mental blocks are not real.What, Marshall? WHAT?Yep.
Why Am I So Confused And Anxious When Someone Is Kind To Me?
Ever feel confused, flustered, and then suddenly anxious after someone is nice, kind or caring towards you?Do you feel the tension of negative anticipation building, like waiting for the "other shoe to drop"?This reaction tells the story of how unreliable and unstable kindness has been for you in the past. It boldly shares the experience of kindness being followed up with some kind of c
If You're Not Healing, This May Be Why
Codependency causes us to seek love, belonging, value, and safety outside ourselves. This happens because we've experienced profound rejections of ourselves that caused us to distrust and fear ourselves.This resulted in a low availability for ourselves and maxxed out availability for others.This leads us into deep states of feeling unlovable, drained, isolated, and burned out.Learn what to d
What Does It Mean To Trust Myself?
Let's talk about trust in the work of healing from rejection trauma and codependency, specifically trusting yourself.What does it mean to trust yourself?In my work, trusting yourself means you regard your interpretations, senses, choices, and actions to be the best-at-that-moment options.This means that mistakes or errors are also trusted because they reveal more clarity and help you refine y
Fear: Understand What It Is Doing For You How To Soothe It
Fear drives much of our behaviors, keeps us stuck in loops of trying to escape it, and tends to cause us to believe that most of life is scary.This is understandable, considering you've lived through very scary events and patterns. Learn today what fear is trying to do for you and how to soothe it and use it to your well-being.***The 2024 Freedom After Codependency Promotion Is Happening. S
5 Things I Do When Things Get Discouraging
5 Things I Do When Things Get DiscouragingDiscouragement is a real, valid part of the work of healing and growing towards things we value.It happens often when when outcomes aren't happening as we're hoping and working for.It happens when our resources start to run low and we're dealing with big uncertainties.It happens when we've been doing big, hard work and not seeing the be
Ask Marshall: How Do I Trust Myself and Believe Myself More?
Ask Marshall: How Do I Trust Myself and Believe Myself More?Belief and trust in ourselves was our first natural state. We were born naturally trusting our own senses, impulses, and experiences.Self-doubt was introduced into our thinking through the reactions of others - namely shaming, questioning, criticizing behaviors, or being dismissed or ignored in what we were sharing.When others did not tr
Bluntcake: What Really Loving Yourself Means And How To Do It
***Tired of being stuck, lost, and hopeless in your efforts to actually heal and experience real peace, freedom, and progress in your life? Join my on-demand workshop, The 3 Secrets To Healing Codependency Permanently and discover how to unlock your natural ability to heal your codependency and thrive in confidence, peace, and freedom. Click here: https://3sworkshop.freetheself.comJoin my email
Essentials: Are You Blended Or Solid In Your Sense of Self?
Essentials: Are You Blended Or Solid In Your Sense of Self?The fawn response focuses our mind and awareness outside ourselves. In my work, I call this the External Orientation. This means we're interpreting our reality through the lens of other people, places, or things. We are not associated with ourselves and not processing reality through our own perception and lived experience.This ori
Essentials: Reclaim Yourself From Enmeshment Through Connecting To Your Innate Sovereignty
Essentials: Reclaim Yourself From Enmeshment Through Connecting To Your Innate SovereigntyCodependency externalizes our sense of authority, personhood, worth, and experience. It outsources these factors to people we feel connected to and dependent on for our sense of being real, being worthy, being lovable, and being "allowed".In other words, the fawn response that drives codependent be
Why Do I Push People Away?
Why Do I Push People Away?This is a potent question, and has many possible answers.It is one I explore myself. "Why do I push away people that like me? That love me?"Or "Why do I push away success? Praise? Recognition?"This is a nearly universal reaction for people who've been neglected, been harmed, or abused.Sometimes we think it is about love, or about worthiness, or
Do I Matter? How To Cultivate A Sense Of Mattering
Do I Matter? How To Cultivate A Sense Of MatteringHaving a sense of mattering to others and to yourself is crucial for well-being and belonging.It is one of our core needs.In this episode, learn what really needs to matter first in the case of healing codependency and how to start fostering that with yourself.***Join my email community to get access to more episodes, tools, my writings, and more
Are You Knowing Your Pain, Or Ignoring Your Pain?
Are You Knowing Your Pain, Or Ignoring Your Pain?Pain is the most neglected, denied, and avoided aspect of our lived experience. It is also the gateway into actually feeling known, loved, seen, and valued - by ourselves and by others. Today, I speak on this, its vital importance to our freedom from codependency, and how to begin nurturing care and knowing of your pain.***Join my email community t
What Replaces Codependency As You Heal: The Inner Advocate
What Replaces Codependency As You Heal?Codependency is a strategy the body creates in order to preserve a sense of safety, connection, and self-worth within a chaotic, unsafe, unreliable relationship.The sense of danger the relationship creates for the individual activates the body's natural fawning response (aka the please-and-appease response), prompting the person to do things that make th
Your Pain Tells The Story of Your Lived Reality
Your Pain Tells The Story of Your Lived RealityMost of my life, emotional pain meant I was either sinning, in error, or expressing some kind of flaw in my nature.I learned to see my pain this way through the reactions I received from my parents and culture. They routinely responded to my pain with:- dismissal- claims that boys don't cry- shaming of the emotion (why do you feel that way???)-
What Is Freeze And How Do I Work With It?
What Is Freeze And How Do I Work With It?The freeze response involves a state of physiological and psychological immobilization, where the person may feel unable to move, speak, or take action. This response is often considered a form of dissociation, where the individual disconnects from their immediate surroundings or emotions as a way of coping with overwhelming stress or danger.In codependency
Anatomy of Codependency Series: Fawning - How To Start Healing It
Anatomy of Codependency Series: Fawning - How To Start Healing ItFawning happens because your body does not feel safe enough to advocate for itself. This points us to what is required for your freedom and healing: increasing your sense of safety. This happens through focusing on three specific areas: safety emotionally, reliable connection, and real self-worth.Learn how this works in today&apos
Anatomy of Codependency Series: Fawning - What It Is And How It Causes Codependency Revisited
Therapists and self-help will often tell you that codependency is the problem and is what requires healing, but here's why that is wrong: Codependency is actually a result of a deep biological threat response in the body called "the Fawn Response". This response is triggered by chornically unsafe, unstable relationships that a person cannot separate themselves from without fearing
How To Empathize and Keep Your Boundaries In Three Steps
How To Empathize and Keep Your Boundaries In Three StepsEmpathy in codependency often causes a person to violate their own boundaries or allow unhealthy behavior to continue with an individual.Boundaries often feel harsh and conflicting while also empathizing with the pain that a person may be expressing in an ineffective way.Use these three steps to empathize with a person while keeping your boun
