A Hard Truth About Codependency

 Sick of feeling like an imposter or a fraud?  Yet, notice how you don’t quit showing up to your job or class where you feel like an imposter.  You’re a good person with impeccable integrity, so why would you stay somewhere where you believe that you’re a fake?  That’s because there is a bigger part of you that KNOWS who tf you are and that you fucking belong.  The imposter and fraud thing is a long ago coping mechanism that no longer serves you and you can choose to give it up at any time.  Find out more about how in my Irreverent Imposter Syndrome Guide:  How to Finally be Your Full F*cking Self here. 

Today’s Fairy Dusted Lesson

I realized something so obvious about being a codependent/people pleaser/fawn the other day and it has me uncomfortable.  

If I am codependent, by definition, that means I refuse to let other people be independent.  

Ouch.  I don’t like that at all.  Always at the core of this is, “but I’m helping” or “I am needed here” or “I must assist.”  Unfortunately, I’m finding that if I go to the root of the root of the root of all of this “helping,” I find that I am simply encouraging dependence on me and that gives me power in the relationship.


After coming to terms with this, it made me realize that I do have a belief of “what good am I if I don’t help?”  Another way of saying that is if I didn’t help, then why would people want to be in a relationship with me?  And that makes me really sad for a couple of reasons.


One is that maybe some people won’t want to be in a relationship with me and our relationship will have to fall away.  For some crazy reason, that feels easier to bear (perhaps it’s all the well-worn neural pathways from years of experience).  The second and way more hard to take is the incredible vulnerability of being loved because I’m me.

It’s a sacred and scary thing to be loved for being yourself.  It requires nothing of you.  

Which brings us back to that horrible thought most if not all CPTSD kids have which is “I am not enough.”  I have added so much to myself to try to be enough.  Now I’m seeing that the goal of individuation is subtracting all that I have added and bringing myself back – as close as I can in this lifetime – to being fully myself.  Then, because I want everyone else to have that freedom, eliminate every last bit of codependency to allow others the freedom and independence they deserve.  Instead, I just choose to love them.  And if I’m lucky, I’ll be loved in return.