Co-Dependency – Part II

By Viola Edward & Michael de Glanville….

Any Questions for us?

Question:

I have read the article about Co-Dependency and I realised that I am caught up in the process you were explaining with my friends, I mean I can be so immersed in a friend’s situation that is not mine that I forget my own obligations, I can go through separation, divorce and fights for the children when I am not married, even not in a relationship. How can I find a way out of this?

Dear Reader,

Shifting from Over-Empathizing to Compassion and Empathy is a huge work for the “giver and helper” personality type. Already realizing it and writing about it to us is part of the healing process. It is wonderful to care for others but when you internalize other people’s problems and take on their pain as your own, then no one is being helped because you could easily lose the balance between being there for your friend and being there for yourself. Taking on someone else’s problems and emotions could be second nature to you, following a subconscious idea that when people need you more they love you more. Many people don’t know how to love and care for someone without identifying with them in an attached way.

Like you, many caring and loving people become over-empathisers and this can lead them into co-dependency. There are even cases where instead of letting their joy and well-being touch and connect them with other people, they will go in the opposite direction and allow other people’s emotional states to become theirs, getting immersed in the other’s feelings, making themselves responsible for others’ happiness or lack of it.

For healing and to become interdependent, it is crucial to dismantle the beliefs that have led you to behave in this way and also to transform the limiting emotional habit that you have been repeating for so long.

The habit of being too empathetic could be so deeply ingrained that you need some assistance to work at finding another way to relate. Nowadays, we have so many opportunities and different ways to work on our behaviour, there are Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Psychotherapists, Relationship and Life Coaches, Breathworkers, Counsellors, Hypnotherapists, etc…

If you decide to do this work, please choose a technique that appeals to you, contact the professional of your choice, work together and re-empower yourself and reclaim your right to be happy even when people around you, whom you care about, are not. Sometimes just love is enough.

This could be a very challenging pattern for you to break. Even for us as holistic therapists, one of the major professional life lessons is to be close enough to feel the pain of our client and far enough to always remember that it is their pain not ours. Another important consideration is that everybody who comes to us seeking guidance and support are coming not only with their problems, but also with skills and capacities that they have been using so far to deal with their problems. Our duty is to remind them and support them in the best use of those capacities. When you realize this in your process of healing, we hope that a huge burden will lift from your shoulders without changing your essential ability to love and care.

Contact Us

If you are interested in deepening your knowledge about “Co-Dependency” you can participate in sessions with Viola and Michael, in person and online.

We would love to hear from you with your comments, experiences and questions. Contact us info@violaedward.com.     Mob. 0533 867 3685.   FaceBook: ViolaEdward Coaching

You can download a free copy of Viola’s book “Breathing the Rhythm of Success” and find a collection of previous articles in this series from   http://www.violaedward.com

About Viola & Michael

Viola came to Cyprus from Venezuela in 2002 to join Michael who was born on the Island and returned from France in 1999. Viola and Michael are both trained therapists in Breathwork and they founded Kayana Ltd in 2003. Viola specialises in Relationship Coaching, Business Consulting and Colour and Image. Michael has an Engineering background and specialises in Massage and Watsu.