Do You Have High-functioning Co-dependence?

Feeling exhausted despite "having it all together"? You might be trapped in high functioning co-dependence. Especially with trauma and ADHD, we’re so conditioned, from a preverbal age, to ignore our own knowledge, wisdom, wants and needs and prioritise others’. And it’s never too late to step into your power.

In this episode, you’ll:

· Learn why capable, independent people often ignore their own needs while constantly caring for others

· Learn how the "Good Girl" and "Independent Woman" conditioning keeps us from asking for help, accepting support or even knowing what we truly want

· Discover practical tools to break free from the cycle of over-giving

· Recognize when you're accepting "floor fries" instead of what you deserve and

· give yourself permission to know what you know and want what you want without guilt. (Tomorrow’s Sole to Soul Circle special will dive deeper into this).

Stop exhausting yourself trying to be lovable. Remember that you already are worthy. Exactly as you are. You’re totally lovable exactly as you are. You’re enough. You’re not too much and the moment you recognise this, everything gets easier.

Resources mentioned: Terri Cole (Boundary Boss), Kasia Urbaniak (Unbound), Kara Loewentheil (Unf*** Your Brain) Meggan Watterson (Reveal etc) and Gloria Steinem (Revolution from Within etc)

#HighFunctioningCodependence #SelfCare #Boundaries #ADHD #Trauma #WomenEmpowerment

Feel Better Every Day!

Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on. With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you:

• Feel... regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from

• Love... accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing and

• Heal... turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large

Thanks for watching. New episodes come out every Tuesday morning (Ireland time) and if you subscribe (via your favourite podcasting app or by joining the Sole to Soul Circle), you’ll be notified about each new episode. Sole to Soul Circle members get deeper dives each week.

WANT TO WORK WITH ME?

• There’s the book – 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing – and all the book bonus videos.

• All the free resources (for trauma, ADHD, menopause, solopreneurs, anxiety, sleep, confidence, resilience, finding purpose, meaning and joy and more) across my platforms and the library of self-care ideas and practices at https://selfcarecoaching.net

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• If you want to support my work but don’t want to commit to a membership, even for a month, you can choose any amount at https://ko-fi.com/evemc

• Find out more about my private practice for one to one work. If you’re based in Ireland or the UK, it’s worth completing the short form at https://selfcarecoaching.net/contact to book your free telephone consultation in the hope that we can find a mutually convenient time to work together (trauma-informed and ADHD-friendly therapies, Self care coaching, clinical supervision and supervisor’s supervision).

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CHAPTERS

(0:00 - 1:42 ) Opening thoughts on exhaustion and high functioning co-dependence

(3:10 - 4:35 ) Introduction to episode topic and Terri Cole’s definition

(4:35 - 5:21 ) Kasia Urbaniak and the “good girl” and “independent woman”

(8:12 - 10:03 ) Shifting attention away from yourself to the aggressor

(13:09 - 15:48 ) The “smoosh” and losing power in relationships

(20:48 - 23:09 ) Kara Loewentheil’s “floor fries” metaphor

(33:38 - 34:55 ) Gloria Steinem’s toilet training and fascism insight

DISCLAIMER

The content I share is not a replacement for one to one trauma therapy (etc). While you can do an enormous amount to support yourself, please always seek appropriate medical advice. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe / follow and share with someone who you think will benefit from this episode.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Also notice the times when you feel exhausted and be honest with yourself about the potential for high functioning co-dependence and is there someone or some area in your life where you're more prone to it, where you feel like you have to do, you have to go along with, you have to, whatever it is, in order to be lovable, in order to be worthy. And just know, even if you have to keep telling yourself, know with every fibre of your being that you already are.

Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma informed and ADHD friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself and your Self with that uppercase S for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself.

The idea is to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from so you can feel better every day and you can find out more at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. For deeper dives into each episode, including bonus interviews when they're interview episodes, plus access to a rich archive of exclusive material, including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle and there are other resources like the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and lots of book bonus videos on the website selfcarecoaching.net

And lots of other free resources around trauma, ADHD, anxiety, stress, confidence, perimenopause and menopause, self-care for solopreneurs, confidence, I can't remember if I said that, resilience, decolonising yourself, trying to think what I've forgotten, but I've kind of spent a lot of time in the past year or so trying to create more of a library type feel for each of the specialisms to make it much more accessible and easy to use.

I hope you find that helpful and do let me know what you'd like more of and if you have any questions. That's selfcarecoaching.net.

For today's episode, episode 72, we're looking at high functioning co-dependence and it's a term I learnt from the American author and podcast host, Boundary Boss, Terri Cole.

Basically, it also confirms a lot of what Kasia Urbaniak talks about when she talks about the Good Girl and the Independent Woman actually being related. What Terri Cole explains around high functioning co-dependence is you wouldn't think of yourself as a typical codependent person because you're not sitting around weeping and wailing and unable to function.

Instead, you're the one who is doing everything for everyone and you seem like you have it all together, but the point is that you're utterly exhausted because so much of your time and energy and attention is on what other people need.

I thought I'd explore it a little bit today, but am very much encouraging you to check out Terri Cole's work. She does entire courses around this and she has some really lovely podcast episodes and the book. Kasia Urbaniak is another, like I mentioned, the Good Girl and the Independent Woman.

She talks about the Good Girl and how we were all conditioned through thousands of years of patriarchal conditioning, where women condition obviously as well as men, but it's to benefit the patriarchy.

Because if anything bad happened to a girl or a woman, because she was blamed, all the kind of shaming around sexuality and clothing and behaviour and very much conditioned to be a good girl, a marriageable girl. It's only relatively recently that women could have their own money, their own credit cards, their own businesses. That is something that might sound familiar, but it's more likely that you'll be like, “Nope! That's not me! I had lots of choices. I was told I could do whatever I wanted, be whatever I wanted.”

And this is where she starts talking about the Independent Woman. The Independent Woman sounds like a wonderful thing, but the way she describes it, it's basically, we have created a situation where we are independent, we can do what we want, but it has left us unable to accept help and support and also too scared of feeling too bossy.

If you're too much, then it's the “too bossy”. And if you're in Good Girl, it's “too needy”. Kasia used to work as a dominatrix and I've been recommending her work to everyone. She is phenomenal. She also trained for 12 years as a Taoist nun.

She was doing a lot of energy work and set up The Academy to support people in finding their power. She works with women because it's women's conditioning that makes our attention go inward when we're under attack. Whether it