In this episode, we’re talking to Jessica who has been a long-time podcast listener with a success story to tell.

Every now and then I like to mix it up a little bit with personal success stories.

What’s so inspiring about this story is Jessica’s sheer grit and determination to have a better life, and the way she frames her “disease” of codependency as being more of an opportunity for learning and growth rather than a handicap.

Get ready to be inspired. Here’s the interview!

Interview on Codependency Healing and Recovery with Jessica

Brian: Hey, Jessica. Welcome to the show. We’re glad to have you today.

Jessica: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited about this.

Brian: We’re excited to have you on. We’re going to have you telling a personal story. You’ve done a lot of work in recovery and we want to share that with other people for inspiration so thanks for coming on and being willing to share that.

Questions: You mentioned the first time that we talked that you had this kind of ‘identity crisis’ at a certain point in life. I just wonder, what was life like for you up to that point? And can you tell us about the ‘identity crisis’ that you had?

Jessica: Absolutely. I come from an abusive home. My mom is very emotionally, mentally, verbally, and physically abusive. Both my parents were alcoholics. But my dad hid it a lot better than my mom did. I was bullied throughout school and early in my career. I had a lot of trauma growing up as a child too. My dad died when I was twenty-three and my mom just died a couple of years ago.

From all that, I really became like the quintessential codependent. All of my happiness came from external forces; from work and my romantic relationships. I really aimed to please. I went above and beyond with little or nothing in return. I had zero boundaries and I felt very unloved no matter what I did.

About a year ago, I hit this really low point in my life. My mom was really my codependent anchor. I enabled her, I pleased, and I was always problem solving with her. I actually got sicker and it got continually worse. Then the year after she died, I felt very lost and very empty. I really needed to fill that void so I put all of my energy into my work and in romantic relationships and trying to make them work. I was involved with a married man, something I swore that I’d never do.

Everything came to an ultimate bubble and that bubble really burst at the end of August of last year when I had my one year review at work. I was expecting to go in and hear, ‘You’ve done a great job. We love you. You’re fantastic,’and get all this praise. But instead I got, “We’re reorganizing the company. You’re going to get a different title. We’re going to give you a raise. Typically we should give you this much but we’re going to give you a little bit more.”I took the delivery of it very personally. I walked away from that not hearing, ‘You got a promotion and a raise.’ I walked away from that feeling like I wasn’t worthy and I wasn’t worth it because I didn’t get all this praise that I was expecting.

So I hit this major low point where everything was falling apart. There’s an episode in your podcast (I think it’s Dr. Dean Robb) and he says that there’s like this ‘rock bottom’ that you hit and I really hit this rock bottom. With that, there is this identity crisis because there’s this part of me that’s trying to get out and be authentic. But I’m so fake all the time and I’m doing all these things that aren’t meaningful to me. Even though I have the great job, I have the car, and I have a beautiful home, I was miserable. That was a major turning point for me where I realized something was really wrong and I needed to make some changes.

Questions: There were several mini crises that all culminated in this for you to realize that you needed to do something about it. How much do you the feel the volatile home that you described had to do with the relationships that you got into as an adult?

Jessica: Oh, I think it had everything to do with it. The more I’ve learned over the past year, the more I really recognize that a lot of that came from the way that I was raised. I grew up in that environment where there were a lot of addiction problems, fighting, negativity, and abuse. My adult relationships were really a reflection of my childhood home environment – my emotionally unavailable dad; I was getting involved with emotionally unavailable men – because there was a part of me that was trying to fix that relationship with my dad in my present life. It took me a long time to recognize and realize that.

Now I’m not seeking the emotionally unavailable guy. Now I’m like, “Oh, I want someone who’s emotionally healthy and who wants to be in a relationship.”That was a big turning point as well. I always really hoped that someone will come along and rescue me from my life. I’ve been involved with drug users, alcoholics, and narcissists. I recognized that was because of those learned dysfunctional behaviors.

Questions: Whenever you came to this conclusion here, I wonder what it was like at that point. Did you start to investigate this thing? How did codependency come to your awareness? What did you learn about it and what did you start to do at that point?

Jessica: It was actually a friend of mine who has been through codependency recovery himself. He suggested that I read this book called Codependent No More. I picked up the book and as I started reading it, I thought, “Wow, this is my life. This is everything that’s going on in my life.”Every page I turned I was like, “Oh, my goodness.”Then as I started down that rabbit hole, I just started going deeper and making discoveries about myself. Then I was turning to more books looking for more information. Then I decided that I really need to focus on this recovery. I want to change my life and I need to change the things that I’m doing in order to do so.

Then I picked up Facing Love Addiction. Then I picked up a book called Adult Children of Alcoholics. Then I still wanted more, so I started looking through podcasts and found this podcast. Everything that I’ve been learning, especially through this podcast, has been so concise and so helpful. When I was listening to certain episodes about your shame core, toxic shame, and all these other things, I thought, “Wow, this is incredible, and this is actually a ‘thing’ I’ve been trying to deny for so many years that, ‘No I’m fine, I’m going to be okay,’ but it’s really not, it’s actually a real thing.”There were a lot of things that I started to do after learning from the books, the podcasts, learning about my true self, mining my shame core, doing inner child healing, and stuff like that. Those really helped me reflect on the past and understand that behavior so I could look at the future and how I want that to be different.

Question: Whenever you picked up that first book, Codependent No More,and then that led to another book and another book – correct me if I’m wrong – it sounded like it made sense to you and it described you, but did it motivate you immediately when you started reading those books, or did you have to read several things and then find the podcast and then just one day you said, ‘Okay, enough is enough, I can’t deny this anymore. Let me do something about it?’

Jessica: The denial was before I picked up the first book. But once I started reading Codependent No More, everything really started to make sense. All of my behaviors; my all or nothing mentality, the way that I conducted my work life, my social life, and everything like that, really started to make sense. The denial was before but no matter how many times my brain thought, “No, everything’s fine,”I couldn’t deny it anymore.

Question: Once you got this knowledge and had this epiphany here, what sort of things did you start doing at that point that helped you start to turn things around?

Jessica: Oh, my goodness. That could probably take our twenty-five minutes alone but when you grow up in an environment with addictions, you need to ask yourself, ‘What are my addictions?’I had to really look at my life and think, “Okay, what are my addictions? My addictions are work, love, cigarettes, and sometimes, alcohol.”Sometimes I could really binge in alcohol. I derived myself worth from work and I derive my happiness from romantic relationships.

Cigarettes are still a challenge for me and still something I’m still working on. I want to have that nipped in the bud here very soon. I learned to trust myself and what I was thinking. I learned to stop and ask myself questions. When I’m angry, I would stop myself and I would ask why; “Why am I angry right now?”When I’m sad I ask myself, “Why am I sad?”What do I need? What does my body need? What does my heart need? What does my brain need to get through this thing? What emotion am I feeling? In codependent behavior, you really ignore your emotions. When you’ve been ignoring your emotions for thirty some years, it’s really hard to recognize what an emotion is. I really had to learn that.

All of this stuff that I was going through with podcasts, books, and all of that stuff was stuff that was happening in my everyday life. There’s a podcast – I can’t remember who it was – but they’re like, “Stop and ask yourself the question, ‘What