My mother was here last week for my book launch. (Yes! My new book – The Anxious Achiever – an FT Book of the Month, no. 1 New Anxiety Release on Amazon and Next Big Idea Club Book of the Month is on sale now!) In earlier conversations, I told my mother it was a bad time for me but she came to visit anyway.  I really needed physical and emotional boundaries from her to focus on my work and my own complicated emotions about my work. But I did not set those boundaries. Despite years of therapy, I did not protect myself. I fell back into the co-dependent pattern of my childhood.

Listen to my interview with Melody Beattie here.

One of my very first big moments in therapy was in my late 20’s. It was about my mother. My therapist told me that my mother and I had a codependent relationship. We were enmeshed. I lost myself trying to please her and make her happy, and she had relied on me too much before I was ready. I recreated codependent relationships in my life, my love life, and my work life. And I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

As my guest this week, author Melody Beattie says, “We will keep growing the same flowers that we're familiar with in our life, until we go inside and heal that part of us….If we had an extremely controlling parent, or even a narcissistic parent who always made us feel wrong.. If we encounter another person like that at work or through dating, we're gonna get extremely triggered, not just by the person, but by the reminders from our childhood. However, if we have not dealt with these reminders that are still living inside of us, we'll just stay there and we'll keep interacting with that person until we get it. Whether it's healthy or not.”

Codependency can be defined as any relationship in which two people become so invested in each other that they can’t function independently anymore. In a codependent relationship, one person fixates on taking care of or even controlling another person - forgetting their own needs. Boundaries fade away.  Your source of comfort, love, and satisfaction is external, which can leave you feeling empty inside. Codependency theory emerged as the result of years of studying interpersonal relationships in families of alcoholics and was popularized by Melody Beattie. Over 4 million copies of her book Codependent No More have been sold since it was first published in 1984, and she's rereleased an updated version.

Codependency isn’t just for families. Do you rely on colleagues or your manager for a sense of professional completion and worthiness? Do their moods affect yours? You may be bringing codependent behaviors into work. Or you might have a boss who is overly involved in your work and life. They may need your help in making decisions and they may want to solve problems all by themselves. Your boss or colleague might be codependent.

Anxiety and codependency are “best friends” according to Beatty. Taking on your anxiety – or recognizing your boss or colleague’s anxiety – is the first step in untangling a co-dependent relationship. Anxiety can fuel very controlling behavior, or it can be the reason behind a sort of smothering caretaking. Understanding and unpacking our anxiety is the beginning, followed by practice setting (and keeping!) boundaries. 

I love this article by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT. She lays out different types of boundaries and how we can practice setting and protecting them. Consider:

Emotional boundaries distinguish separating your emotions and responsibility for them from someone else’s. It’s like an imaginary line or force field that separates you and others. Healthy boundaries prevent you from giving advice, blaming or accepting blame. They protect you from feeling guilty for someone else’s negative feelings or problems and taking others’ comments personally. High reactivity suggests weak emotional boundaries. Healthy emotional boundaries require clear internal boundaries – knowing your feelings and your responsibilities to yourself and others.

And let me tell you- I still struggle after years of therapy. I opened this email talking about the visit from my mother. I really needed physical and emotional boundaries from her and I did not set them. I did not protect myself. It’s a learning process - but we can all get there.

Yours,

Morra

PS: I asked Melody Beattie how she became “Queen of the Codependents," and she said:

“Like many other people who have started recovery, I wanted to help other people find what I had found. I wanted to work with addicts. And so I took a course at the University of Minnesota where I was living back then. I got married and ultimately started working in a treatment center where my husband worked. And then one day the administrator of the program called me in and she said, “In order to keep our funding, we've gotta start doing something with the families.” Visions of working with my mother crossed my mind. And I thought, no, that is not what I want to do. I said, “I don't know anything about that. And she said, well, we don't either. You're the new person here, so you get the job.” So that started my destiny. And then as I sat in the groups I was running, I began to see so many similarities between the people in the group and myself. It began to profoundly impact me. And at that point, I think I realized, you know, I am my mother.

And so are many of these people in the group. They have been so affected by someone else's behavior that they're completely obsessed with changing that person, and they don't see themselves, and they don't see their own life. And slowly my interactions began to transform not just the people in my group, but began to transform me. And I became obsessed with finding out what is this thing that can transform such brilliant, loving people into raving codependents? And that started my quest.”