Are Toxic Relationships Exhausting You?
Do your relationships always end up feeling out of balance and leave you physically and emotionally depleted? Do you ever wonder why loving another person can lead to you taking care of them? Is there a world where you can have happy, healthy, codependent-free relationships?
Remember, these relationships can be with a romantic partner, parent, child, friend, co-worker, etc.
You're in luck, because Johanna Lynn, AVAIYA University Teacher & founder of the Family Imprint Institute, provides us with an answer below:
This is definitely a big piece of the codependency puzzle and we rarely think to look back and inquire: “Hey, was my way of loving looking after a sad or depressed mom? Was that how I learned to fit in and what love actually ended up meaning for me?”
I'll never forget this client I had. As a 10 or 11-year-old boy, he'd race home from school on his bicycle to clean up his dad's alcohol bottles and any of the pornography that was left about before his mom would be home from work, in order to safeguard her feelings.
Now he's an adult feeling overwhelmed at work because he's looking ahead to, “What does everybody need from me?” He’s overwhelmed by the lack of boundaries of what's mine and what's yours that can be so common when raising your own children, or even inside of your own marriage.
A lot of these ways of loving can look like constantly asking, “Who does someone else need me to be in order to make sure everything goes okay?” When we bring that into our loving relationships, it can cause all kinds of complexities and complications.
I'm sure so many people in our AVAIYA Family who find themselves loving from within a codependent relationship relate to some kind of experience like this. Isn’t it amazing how growing up in a situation where we make ourselves responsible for something like this can totally shift who we become? Then we find ourselves, maybe years down the road, having a relationship with somebody, but we're really in a relationship with our parents.
“That's our first love, so that's the set point,” Lynn summarizes. “We don't even question it. Subconsciously, this is what love means to us. It can take some untangling to really step in and live in a more healthy, balanced way.”
Are you ready for your next step to healthy, balanced relationships?
Watch the FREE Breaking Free from Codependency BREAKTHROUGH MASTERCLASS for more valuable insights from renowned AVAIYA University Teachers. It's Completely FREE And You Can Watch It Here Now!
Leave a Reply