Healing is Selfish

Healing is selfish. It has to be. I would also argue that suffering is selfish, and if you believe in the law of polarity you’d probably agree. This idea, that healing is selfish, began with a term I discovered a few years ago when starting my healing journey that I now identify with. The term is codependency.

There is a stigma and misunderstanding around the word codependency, and I am hoping I can clarity it for some people. I am not a professional, I am just a learner who is no stranger to the deep, dark well of codependent patterns.

Codependency defined

So, what is codependency? Codependency is an addiction to being needed. Often these people are referred to as love addicts, and wind up in relationships with people who tend to be needy. The term codependent was developed by Alcoholics Anonymous to describe partners who were with alcoholics, however you don’t necessarily need to be with an alcoholic to be codependent.

How do people become Codependent?

First, imagine a seed in the soil.

To germinate, the seed needs oxygen, water, temperature and light. Then when it is ready, it begins to root. The first organ from the seed appears, the primary root. The root acts as an anchor, and grows downward into the soil. As the plant grows, roots branch off the primary root stabilizing the plant, allowing the seedling to be strong enough to stand and survive.

Our brains, as children, are similar to earth. When we are children our surrounding environment is constantly planting seeds in our brain. Seeds, in our analogy, are behaviours. How to listen, fight, express ourselves, speak, think, cope, learn and love.

Our parents are planting these seeds (or behaviours) and are nourishing them with the consistency of whatever behaviour they are displaying. The more nourishment that seed gets the stronger the roots will grow, and more firmly rooted the plant will be to stand strong and survive on its own.

In other words, the behaviours our parents teach us are rooted deeply within us, and we are then conditioned unconsciously to be a certain way. They are our first nurturer.

We sometimes forget how similar the process is, but we aren’t that complicated, human or plant, the type of TLC really does make a difference in how we develop and grow.

So, how do we become codependent?

Codependency is a symptom of being raised in a household where one of your primary caregivers needs takes priority over your own. Often this was described in families who had one or both parents struggling with addiction, but isn’t necessarily exclusive to just that. There is research out there that talks about how this is also relevant in families with a parent who struggles with severe mental health issues.

When children grow up in a family where there is a parent struggling with an addiction, then often life is unpredictable, unstable and chaotic. Often family members feel like they are walking on eggshells around the person who is struggling with addiction, or constantly catering to them and their needs, because their chaos or emotions trump anyone else’s. So, as children you learn that your needs are not priority, and what you want comes second to what the parent with addiction wants because their emotions and needs are bigger, scarier, more chaotic or more intense. So, what happens? The children become conditioned to cater to that person’s needs because that is how they feel valued and important. This is where the addiction to be needed is developed.

We take that into adulthood, unconsciously, because that is what we knew, how we were conditioned to be, and this is then how we behave in our relationships. People who grow up like this, find themselves in these kinds of relationship dynamics, with people who are needy or chaotic in someway, and that fuels our codependent need to be needed. People who struggle with codependency are fixers and helpers and can figure things out when adrenaline is high, because they were literally raised doing this their whole lives.

Here are symptoms of Codependency:

You feel responsible for fixing others problems

Saying “No” in relationships feels impossible or anxiety inducing

You feel resentful when you don’t get praise for how much you do.

You may need to feel in-control all the time

You avoid conflict

You feel a lot of pressure to meet people’s needs.

Your purpose and value comes from how you fix and take care of others.

You do anything to hold onto the relationship even if it is toxic.

You will do anything to solve others problems.

You may not know what your feelings or needs are.

You Only feel important or valued when you are needed.

I want to summarize the list of symptoms above into 5 characteristics: Caregivers, controlling, having no boundaries, dependent on their relationship and having low self due to their lack of self.

So, why is healing selfish?

So, why do I think healing is selfish? Notice how all the symptoms listed above are reliant on there being an “other”? A codependent’s world revolves around someone else and not themselves. The hardest thing to come to terms with when I was in therapy was the fact that being codependent meant I had a lack of relationship with myself. Although it was because I was conditioned to think of others needs before my own, it didn’t make me feel less shameful about being this way. There are ways to rehabilitate your codependency and to decondition your behaviours. However, the attention and focus a codependent is putting towards others, needs to be fiercely and selfishly directed towards them selves. Healing is selfish, and to get results, it has to be.

If you are interested in more about codependency visit: www.frommulch.com