How to Heal Co-dependency

I wrote about two types of attachment style in my previous posts and that’s all nice and dandy. Now what? What do you do if you are one of the types in a relationship to the other?

As with anything else, the key is awareness.

Awareness of what? Each individual has to become aware of their own patterns, of their natural way of interacting. Awareness of the dismissive and the preoccupied attachment styles will bring about a terrifying truth: they seem to crave totally opposite relationships: the dismissive seems to want to be alone, while the preoccupied seems to literally live through another. How do you merge those? How do you work through a reality where the person who wants solitude has to arrive at a point where they want companionship? How do you make a person thrive in being alone when all they seem to want is to be merged with another?

First, acknowledge that it is so! This is the first step: ACCEPTANCE: this is who I am and this is who you are. There’s no way around it. Can this be changed? Maybe, maybe not, but in either case, this is the reality of the present time, the reality that you are living right now. As I say in every single one of my posts, pulling at reality isn’t going to change it. It’s only going to make your experience of it more and more frustrating. This first step, in and of itself is the biggest gift you can give to yourself and ultimately to another. You don’t even have to like the reality of who you are. You just need to know what it is. The key is in the observation, in the constant awareness of what is.

Accepting the reality of oneself is a subject for another time though. In this article I want to give some practical tools for healing a relationship between a dismissive and a preoccupied:

1. I am what I am – become okay with the fact that you are the way you are and that your partner is the way s/he is – at the end of the day, you love this person…don’t you? Both of you have not only the right but the duty towards yourselves and towards one another to be yourselves as you are right this moment.
2. Personal responsibility – another service you can do to yourself is to ONLY look at YOUR issues, as opposed to trying to fix the others’.
3. Reward – pay close attention to your partner’s ways of fulfilling your needs. For example, say you are the dismissive and your partner goes out of the room for 5 minutes – consciously or not, willingly or not, they gave you a bit of your much-needed solitude. Reward them by offering back what they themselves need: companionship. Make, as much as possible, a conscious game out of rewarding each other, out of giving the other what they need. Learn to excel in positive reinforcement rather than frustration and bitterness.
4. Demand!! If you are in a dire place where you yourself are feeling even more overwhelmed than usual by your own needs, don’t be afraid to voice your needs in a “lab-like” way. Here is what this might sound like: “I am in need to be alone right now and I want you to know that this is not against you, it has nothing to do with you but with me respecting and affirming my own needs. I need to be alone 10 minutes/one hour/one day/one week so that I can feel whole and happy. In exchange, I will be helping with fulfilling your own need for togetherness as soon as your need will be such”.
5. Play a game of ping-pong, where you pay attention to the ball, instead of the partner. Make things flow, instead of focusing on how the other is being the problem. Keep the ball moving by building the awareness that one cannot play ping-pong by oneself. If such is the case, there’s no relationship and what is actually happening is (self)torture.
6. Be proactive even if you don’t seem to get your needs met by the other person. Decide, either by yourself or together, on a time-frame where you allow yourself to give give give with seemingly no return from your partner. Some of us have become so hurt by life, it is hard for us to even acknowledge when healing is happening and when we are being embraced by another. Build a sort of a storage house from where your partner can nourish themselves with what they need from you. If you are the dismissive, give one day of uninterrupted attention to your partner. Help them fill their happiness tank. If you are the preoccupied, remove yourself from your partner for a defined time. There needs to be an understanding that a person with a full tank of happiness is way more likely to play ping-pong than an empty tank person.
7. Resentment – realize that keeping negative tabs on your partner is the main circumstance that stands in the way of your own happiness and fulfilment. It is as simple as that. Look into self-destructive behaviours and lack of self-esteem and self-worth. Resentment, in the form of silent treatment, reproaches, passive-aggressiveness, being either demanding or cold – think of all these as you yourself throwing the ball over the fence and then make your partner responsible for the failure of the game…
8. To avoid things being unbalanced on one side of the other, have weekly or monthly “ceremonies” where you express clearly, logically, what you feel you gave and what you perceive has not been rewarded. Having a journal really helps with this. This is also where personal integrity and other aspects of each partner’s character need to be assumed. One way this could be done is through a “Relationship’s Big Book”, similar to a Wedding Book (or a Condolences Book as the case might be :D), where you write down, as neutral as possible, what comes up for you. The key here is to write about yourself and what you are feeling or not feeling, rather than talking about the other – which will most likely sound accusatory and would only contribute to the game failing.
9. Personal Agendas – I will write more about this very soon
10. Ending the relationship – last but not least, allow yourselves to be honest with each other and most importantly with yourself, and assess periodically if the game you are playing is ping-pong or is it one of constant (self)abuse… Ask yourself: why do I keep co-creating this relationship in my life? How is that fair for myself? How is that fair for the other?

Have you been inspired by this post? Then please