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Post by mysteryuser on May 7, 2023 4:37:28 GMT
Of late, I've been grappling with learning how to value my needs instead of fawning when I feel like I'm being abandoned. In my previous relationship, there were multiple times where I "agreed" (unconvincingly) to do something that I didn't want to do (no abuse! I was safe. Just matters of communication and compatibility) because of the fear that not doing something would mean the person would leave me. Whether or not they gave any indication of that, the thought of someone I'm *that* attached to leaving me was crippling for me and I was willing to neglect some of my needs to make the other person happy/stay. Needless to say, on some primal level, I felt like I needed that person to survive like I felt towards my parents as a child despite my adult self not *needing* them. I've been learning how to remind myself of this and work through this by reading and therapy and self-work.
An example that comes to mind is how I find it hard to say no without providing long-winded and elaborate excuses for the smallest of things. I'm working through the reasons and causes of all of this (I was "parentified" a lot as a child), and I rationally know that a healthy relationship needs two people to be happy and comfortable, and that I can't be expected to meet every single need of my partner if it's not comfortable for me. I rationally know I have the right to say "I am unable to do X because it makes me feel Y, but how about we find a middle ground instead?", but I can't help but feel selfish prioritizing my own needs before someone else's. I feel like not doing some of these "small" things makes me a bad partner. E.g., my ex preferred planning our meetings at the beginning of the week so that he could plan his week better, and he wanted me to initiate some of this planning. I felt like this wasn't needed because we had fallen into a routine of meeting on specific days and only had to decide whose apartment to meet at based on our (largely standard) schedules, and remembering to plan every Sunday felt like a chore to me. If I had validated my feelings about this and communicated it, we could've easily found some sort of middle ground. But I couldn't communicated because I didn't even think my feelings were valid. I felt like I *had* to comply, to make him happy, because I could "easily" do this "small" thing or I'd be selfish/ a bad girlfriend. This was exacerbated during heated arguments when I would "agree" to do whatever to keep him (including claiming I could stay in a city knowing I didn't want to stay in to make him stop breaking up with me, though later we got back together and this was figured out and we were able to come to a middle ground until the second/last breakup).
So I've noticed if I view my need as reasonable and valid, I am able to communicate it well. But how do I communicate a need that I'm invalidating? Something that I feel selfish for validating? How do I stop feeling guilty or selfish for prioritizing myself and putting myself before the other person? How do I stop feeling responsible for the person's happiness?
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Post by alexandra on May 7, 2023 6:00:35 GMT
Does anyone have good recommendations or sources for working through codependency? I think that's the answer to the question, but haven't read through or watched specific resources I'd suggest.
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2023 6:28:06 GMT
I don't have advice coming from the AP perspective, but I've been caught in the people pleasing trap as an avoidant. For me it's not been to retain someone's interest, rather its from not being in touch with my own feelings to register discomfort until its wayyyyy too late. Either way, It does suck.
One thing I can say, is that it's unpleasant to experience people pleasing from BOTH sides. If you think you're actually pleasing the other person, by always acquiescing or half heartedly agreeing, rest assured, you're not. There's something unsettling about a person who never says no. Or who goes along to get along, and it's obvious.
I'm not constantly trying to make everyone happy, not that I don't care but I don't take full responsibility for everyone's well being. I don't overfunction that way. I try to be considerate, but I'm not always able to understand what would be best for another person, and so I really need for people to be able to assert themselves and take responsibility for their own well being. I hate knowing that someone can't or won't take care of themselves and so the burden seems to be put on me, to look out for them over every little thing because I know they won't tell me if something really isn't ok. It's exhausting and annoying.
I'm not saying that to be unkind, and I fully recognize that there are avoidant strategies that are exhausting and annoying as well so I'm not pointing fingers. I'm just saying that people pleasing isn't attractive, it's not healthy, and its not fooling anyone really, so that could be a helpful perspective. You aren't the only one who suffers from it, the other person suffers as well unless they are an absolutely self centered person who truly doesn't care about what is good for you at all. That person might appreciate it. But your average person really would prefer you stand up for yourself a bit.
I say this meaning to be helpful, not to make you feel ashamed or embarrassed. I could see if you thought that the other person truly benefits it could be more difficult to approach change, because you may think that the strategy is at least partly effective. But it probably backfires more than you realize, in terms of negatively impacting the relationship (not just negatively impacting you.)
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Post by anne12 on May 7, 2023 6:38:53 GMT
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Post by mysteryuser on May 7, 2023 12:53:03 GMT
I'm not saying that to be unkind, and I fully recognize that there are avoidant strategies that are exhausting and annoying as well so I'm not pointing fingers. I'm just saying that people pleasing isn't attractive, it's not healthy, and its not fooling anyone really, so that could be a helpful perspective. You aren't the only one who suffers from it, the other person suffers as well unless they are an absolutely self centered person who truly doesn't care about what is good for you at all. That person might appreciate it. But your average person really would prefer you stand up for yourself a bit. I say this meaning to be helpful, not to make you feel ashamed or embarrassed. I could see if you thought that the other person truly benefits it could be more difficult to approach change, because you may think that the strategy is at least partly effective. But it probably backfires more than you realize, in terms of negatively impacting the relationship (not just negatively impacting you.) Don't worry - definitely not unkind and needed to be said. This definitely helps, although I did have vague feeling that it not being good for the relationship would be more convincing for me than it not being good for me, which in itself is something I need to explore, because I don't want to view the relationship as more important than myself.
I think part of why it was hard to get out of the loop was also that he drew his entire emotional support from me. Didn't talk to family, friends, therapists about his feelings - just me. When I tried to suggest asking a PT about the emotional impact of surgery/recovery even to get suggestions for resources, I got a "no, I need support from you". Fawning by sending him long texts after an argument often worked better than anything else I could do (until it didn't). I guess to some degree there was some enabling going on e.g., if I procrastinated on an assignment and didn't finish it earlier than the deadline which led to us meeting a bit late, he felt bad and he said he would appreciate if I planned and completed my work in advance, so I did. It's funny that the following few lines actually reminded me of him instead of me: "...I really need for people to be able to assert themselves and take responsibility for their own well being. I hate knowing that someone can't or won't take care of themselves and so the burden seems to be put on me, to look out for them over every little thing because I know they won't tell me if something really isn't ok. It's exhausting and annoying."
Thank you for the perspective, it's helpful.
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Post by mysteryuser on May 7, 2023 12:56:42 GMT
Shadow work - so you don’t want to be selfish? - can you use other words than selfish ? - what are the benifits of being more selfish ? - are you the cool girl ? What are the words you don’t want to be called/that you do not want to be identified with ? Being a bitch, indifferent, cold, being difficult ect…. ? How can you try to integrate being more of the things/words that you don’t want to be identified with ? I definitely have a long way to go. I was recently looking for apartments to sublet and speaking to a few people. I couldn't even say no to some of them without some sort of long-winded apology even though they could probably find another tenant easily and I have the right to live where I want. I guess part of it is definitely growing up as the "good girl" where all parents, teachers, professors liked how "dedicated and hardworking" I was with the good behavior and the 4.0s. To this day despite not living in the same country as most of them, I care about what some of these people might think about my personal decisions today.
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Post by iz42 on May 7, 2023 18:07:52 GMT
Does anyone have good recommendations or sources for working through codependency? I think that's the answer to the question, but haven't read through or watched specific resources I'd suggest. I haven't read Codependent No More, but I found this interview with Melody Beattie to be interesting and definitely worth listening to: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/codependence-how-to-stop-controlling-others-with/id1564530722?i=1000583772346. If this link doesn't work, it's from a podcast called We Can Do Hard Things and the episode is from October 24, 2022. I've done a lot of work in this area and I have more of a handle on my own people pleasing at this point, but it's been interesting watching my avoidant partner work on it from his side. While my need to control was more about directly trying to avoid abandonment, it seems like his codependency has been more about controlling other people's view of him. So he will hide things or people please me in order to control my reactions to him or my perspective on who he is as a person (though it all leads back to abandonment because if he can control how others see him, he won't be abandoned). It's been frustrating for me because I can tell him until I'm blue in the face that I love the authentic version of who he is, but until recently he truly believed that if he showed me too much of himself I would abandon him. We have finally started to make progress around this on both sides where we are both being more authentic and not doing it out of an attempt to control the other person or preserve the connection. It's a big relief. I have seen a lot of similarities here in terms of AP and DA reactions. For instance, I was AP but I don't think I ever saw focusing on my own needs as selfish, rather, I had genuinely repressed them to the point that I didn't know what my needs were (which I think is similar to DA). The work has involved excavating and validating my authentic needs a little bit at a time so that I'm more consciously aware of them and I don't feel shame around them. The fear of selfishness might come from shame.
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Post by alexandra on May 7, 2023 18:44:05 GMT
I started off asking actually if anyone read and can recommend that specific book, but I looked up reviews that said it gets really into being the partner of an alcoholic, and AA / religious tenants. So my takeaway from the polarized reviews was it has some helpful concepts but it's probably out of date for younger generations at this point (since it was written in the mid 80s, and the professional understanding of such things has evolved too). But again, I haven't read it either.
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Post by iz42 on May 7, 2023 19:10:15 GMT
alexandra I agree with this based on my own research -- the book was written for a different generation and probably is a bit out of date. The reason I like the podcast episode is because Beattie explains the context of the particular 1970s-80s context when she wrote the book. She destigmatizes codependency and nails down the underlying concepts that can be applied in our current moment. I was personally turned off by the term because I was introduced to it in AA within the context of "wives of alcoholics" and that felt weird and old-fashioned to me. I also heard the term a lot growing up as the child of psychologists and it was always used as a negative label. I didn't even know what it meant, but I learned that "being codependent" was very bad and shameful. But I have since learned the wider applicability of the term and the fact that nearly all humans struggle with control to some extent because we want to protect ourselves from getting hurt. It's more about understanding and accepting where this comes from and learning how to handle it.
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Post by mysteryuser on May 7, 2023 19:33:27 GMT
The more I think about this, I think codependency is an appropriate way to describe it. To be fair, I didn't realize not living up to your partner's expectation is an option for *anybody*, and to some degree I expected this of him too. My ex tried to meet my needs in every way as well, and I don't think he ever said no or any qualifier to limit the scope of what he could offer. After the first break up, I needed a lot of reassurance and at first he was happy to offer it but over time it wasn't easy for him -- and instead of communicating that he would keep trying but inadvertently seem frustrated, likely because he felt he "had" to live up to my expectation. I suspect he's FA leaning AP. Over all I think we severely lacked the skills to co-regulate in a healthy way, draw boundaries, and nurture inter-dependence. He was a middle child in a large family and wasn't given much attention as a child despite his parents being lovely people who were busy attending to his baby siblings. My heart goes out to him.
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Post by iz42 on May 7, 2023 21:18:38 GMT
Over all I think severely lacked the skills to co-regulate in a healthy way, draw boundaries, and nurture inter-dependence. These are three challenges that I think all insecure attachment styles share, at least in my experience. Working on co-regulating, drawing boundaries, and nurturing inter-dependence has helped me on the path to earning secure. Recognizing limits has been very hard for both me and my partner, though for different reasons. He used to believe that setting boundaries involved disappointing me or letting me down and therefore meant he was a bad partner (this played into his shame). On my side, I wanted to rescue him from feeling that shame or fear around setting boundaries. I had to learn to regulate myself enough to let him struggle and just allow him to be in his pain without stepping in or protecting him from his own feelings.
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Post by mysteryuser on May 8, 2023 0:08:13 GMT
Over all I think severely lacked the skills to co-regulate in a healthy way, draw boundaries, and nurture inter-dependence. These are three challenges that I think all insecure attachment styles share, at least in my experience. Working on co-regulating, drawing boundaries, and nurturing inter-dependence has helped me on the path to earning secure. Recognizing limits has been very hard for both me and my partner, though for different reasons. He used to believe that setting boundaries involved disappointing me or letting me down and therefore meant he was a bad partner (this played into his shame). On my side, I wanted to rescue him from feeling that shame or fear around setting boundaries. I had to learn to regulate myself enough to let him struggle and just allow him to be in his pain without stepping in or protecting him from his own feelings. I think it was very similar for me. I felt like I was a bad girlfriend for not living up to his expectations even if doing so was hard/unrealistic for me. I'm trying to read up on boundary-setting and trying to implement it in my life in very small ways, like saying no to small things without an explanation especially to strangers. I read somewhere that my refusal to do something isn't selfish if it only inconveniences others, it is only selfish if I actively do something that hurts someone. The people that value me would be open to finding a middle-ground solution that is comfortable and convenient for both of us.
I remember one incident where my ex after a very minor miscommunication (where I misheard something) said he thinks we're "smart people" and "know each other well" so we should be able to minimize miscommunication. I felt miscommunication was inevitable, but I asked him what he thinks that would look like. I think it may have been a more productive conversation if instead I mentioned that the expectation put pressure on me and tried to find a middle-ground solution.
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Post by cherrycola on May 8, 2023 1:44:48 GMT
I've read both codependent no more and women who love too much. Both helpful and had nuggets. How to be an adult by David richo is an excellent read and I would suggest it above the two on codependency. He also has how to be an adult in love which I am working thru very slowly due to how much he packs into it.
It might be the avoidant part of me, but I intellectualize setting boundaries. Not setting boundaries = resentment and unhealthy relationship. And then I brace for all the uncomfortable feelings. There is no way around them. I also try to remind myself the earlier you set the boundary the better, though it's never too late.
Over time it does become a tiny bit easier.
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Post by mysteryuser on May 8, 2023 13:22:54 GMT
cherrycola I'm able to intellectualize them, but that's the thing - unless I adopt this notion emotionally, it won't stick when things are heated. For the first few months of the relationship, we had relatively secure tendencies and boundaries in place. Once we got attached and fell in love, it all broke down. Admittedly we were each other's first loves and we didn't have experience with relationships before, so there was a lot of learning to be done.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2023 15:08:08 GMT
Have you ever written your needs down so they are fully articulated? Have you defined them?
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