Online therapy for codependency in United States

Online therapy for codependency

Codependency and Self-Expression in Family Relationships

What would you share with a complete stranger but wouldn’t think to share with a family member? Are there things you’d tell a friend about who you’re dating but you wouldn’t tell your mother? Would you openly share your husband/wife (or partner) things that you would never tell your sibling – or vice versa?
Online therapy for codependency
It is important to honor the context of each of our relationships. We don’t have to share everything with everybody. There are so many different kinds of connections and relationships that we juggle in any one phase of life. It can be beautiful to keep some things sacred & private with certain people in our lives. Aside from our moments of honoring privacy & context, codependency can have us completely hide parts of ourselves from our nuclear family.

Understanding Codependency and Its Effects

In our codependent moments, we may only share with our family what we think they can understand.  We may tailor our personality or expression to fit into their ears. We become muted versions of ourselves with our family (or certain members of it).  We only share what we feel safe to share in anticipation of an off color response that they may have. Ultimately, we are not avoiding THEIR response. We’re avoiding how WE MAY FEEL as a result of their response. 

In the Conscious Codependence™ Process, we learn how not to resist our own feelings. We learn how not to avoid other people’s feelings. And when we become adept at expanding our threshold for feeling, we no longer place our permission to share ourselves in other people’s hands. 

The habit of hiding parts of our inner world from our family members is regressive – as is Codependency. The act of avoiding being misunderstood by our family keeps us in a younger version of ourselves around our family. It has us dissociate from our True Nature around them and, in turn, they cannot see what we are not exposing. We can evolve beyond measure when we no longer regress around our family.

Embracing Personal Evolution Beyond Family Expectations

We certainly don’t have to share everything with everyone. But the greatest access points to personal evolution can be found in re-orienting your self-expression around your family. Shedding the learned behavior of codependently shutting down around your family can cause positive shifts in all areas of your life – personal and otherwise. When our access to personal safety is no longer in the hands of our family, we greatly diminish any suffering in relationship to them.

I’m not implying that this is easy. It can be so automatic to slip into our Traumatic Identity around our family (or certain members). This is the identity that developed within us [during childhood] in order to survive their reality.  It can be like an unconscious habit to be dominated by our family’s truth in order to find our own. As adults, it’s no longer a need to survive their reality. 

An important rite of passage in adulthood is to no longer need our parents (or certain family members) to see and understand us. We now get to see and understand them while giving up the need for reciprocity.  And by ‘understanding’ I don’t mean agreement. We don’t have to agree with someone in order to understand how they tick. In the Conscious Codependence™ Process, we get to have our reality and our voice survive and thrive in any environment and so do those around us.

Cheryl Fidelman

The Conscious Codependence™ Coach

As a leader in the Human Potential Movement for the past 15 years, Cheryl focuses on Codependence because it’s one of the most obvious ways that we demonstrate our unhealed trauma in our relationships. Her Conscious Codependence™ methodology blends a mix of somatic experiencing, cognitive behavioral therapy & intersubjective meditation to reestablish her clients’ self worth by cultivating a deep sense of belonging within their psyche, spirit & nervous system.