Why Can't I Just Accept Myself? Have you struggled to "just accept yourself?" Do you feel a resistance, a judgment, or sense of "but I'm not acceptable!"? This is common for people who have suffered through frequent criticism, critiquing of themselves, and rejection from family, peers, or community. These patterns of rejection taught that person see themselves as unacceptable or unwanted. This becomes encoded in the body as sensations of shame, loathing, and resistance towards themselves. In the...
Jul 12, 2023•17 min
This One Practice Unlocks Your Actual Healing Often we respond to our pain with judgment, with force, with denial. In fixing, we take on the pain as a thing to correct, alter, eliminate, or change. Warmth, curiosity, and care are the ways pain is received in my work. What does warmth mean? It means the person with the pain turns towards the pain concern and care (much like a parent does towards a hurting child or how one might treat a hurting friend, person, or pet). There's an interest in what ...
Jul 07, 2023•12 min
Why Mindset Is Not Healing Your Pain From 2003 through 2009 I was a mindset junkie. I was constantly working on changing how I thought, how I perceived things, and how I interpreted the experiences I had. I found this to be partially helpful, as it helped me learn how to nurture curiosity and begin to disconnect from reacting to all my thoughts as though they're real. But what didn't change was how my body was reacting to situations, nor the anxiety or shame I was drowning in. I wasn't actually ...
Jul 05, 2023•11 min
Are You Emotionally Auditing Yourself? Are you trying to choose the "right" emotional response to what you're experiencing? When you experience something upsetting, activating, pleasurable, or emotional, do you find yourself wondering what the "right" emotion is and what you "should be feeling?" This comes from attempting to find the emotional response that will either please or regulate the other person. In chronically toxic relationships, this habit was essential to surviving and tolerating it...
Jun 30, 2023•10 min
How Do I Know I Am Actually Healing? Real healing has signals and milestones. These show up through the changes the mind and body have towards past, present, and future experiences. In the Actually Heal Trainings, we focus on four specific signals of real healing: 1) The gap between where you were and where you are 2) The reduction of pain, reactivity, or intensity a person notices after completing a processing session (usually noticed within a few days or weeks) 3) A change in how you respond t...
Jun 29, 2023•8 min
Are You Doing The Spaghetti Approach To Healing? I call it: the spaghetti-healing approach This is where you try out a series of random tools in hopes something sticks (or works). I did this for nearly 8 years of my healing journey, causing myself deep pain, anguish, fear, and frustration. I often wondered if something was wrong with me because these tools weren't doing anything for the pain, anxiety, shame, guilt, or trauma I was living with. But a part of me was sensing that it wasn't me, and ...
Jun 28, 2023•14 min
#bluntcake This is one that took me a good while to embrace. Go gently. You are not entitled to anyone's acceptance. And you are not entitled to people's lack of disappointment with you. Accepting this was very difficult. It brought up a lot of anger, hurt, and fear. "But then what happens to me? I'll be alone!" This statement from within myself speaks to the trauma of being stuck in transactional relationships. I had never known being liked, chosen, or valued for who I am. My relationship exper...
Jun 23, 2023•9 min
Isn't it healthy to have certain expectations? In healing your codependency, your understanding of what expectations really are and how we use them to foster well-being and happiness must shift. For most, expectations seem like a logical, normal, healthy factor in relationships. In my work, expectations are the center of a lot of conflict, misunderstanding, and unnecessary pain. This stops when you shift from expectations to desires and standards. Learn what this means and how to do it in today'...
Jun 21, 2023•11 min
"How Do You Manage Escapism, Marshall?" Firstly, what is escapism? It is the tendency to seek distraction and releif from painful realities. In codependency, escapism shows up as: 1) Being hyperfocused on the realities of others, their feelings, and their lives (so you can escape your own emptiness, loneliness, or pain) 2) Medicating emotional pain through food, sex, needlessness, work, productivity, and avoiding conflict 3) Fantasies about finding "the one", being made complete in a relationshi...
Jun 13, 2023•13 min
#Reinforcement Episodes: The Two Commitments You Must Make With Yourself COMMITMENT ONE: Honesty with yourself and safe others. This involves being willing to acknowledge what you feel, what you are experiencing, and what is actually happening. This involves the end of fantasy making and toxic hope. This means acknowledging the pain you're feeling, their abusive and neglectful behavior, and any habits of denying the patterns of behavior and impact in the relationship. This also includes confront...
May 31, 2023•15 min
How To Empathize Without Violating Your Well-being Many of us struggle with a sense of conflict between caring for ourselves and caring for the other person. This is especially pronounced when the other person is also the person who harmed us. One's trauma bond with a harmful person along with one's natural care and empathy can create a divide within the codependent that is trying to navigate feeling empathy and concern for the other person while also trying to prioritize and care for themselves...
May 26, 2023•15 min
Is Being "Too Much" A Real Thing? Have you been told you're "too much" by someone? Have you questioned your own level of needs, desires, and wants due to that? Have you felt shame, confusion, doubt, or guilt for what you want or need, and how much of it you want or need? This is a very, very common impact we feel from others. It can be especially painful if we're repeatedly told we're "too much" and shamed for it. Conversely, you may also be told you're "not enough", too, creating a mass of conf...
May 24, 2023•15 min
Consequences are key to learning, to growing, and to maturing. When we interfere with a consequence someone chose through their behaviors, we are interfering with their ability to grow and mature. Learn more about how consequences are actually love in action. *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com Submit questions for the YouTube Liv...
May 17, 2023•24 min
Are You Being Selfish? Or Is Your Self-Interest Being Weaponized? "You're selfish" or "Stop being so selfish" or "You have to share!" These are phrases I heard a lot in response to me saying no, to having a boundary, or wanting to keep something of mine, mine. I was also raised to believe that sharing was the ideal and that having boundaries or saying no meant I was doing something "selfish" or mean because it "deprived someone else of something they wanted". This kind of treatment of our autono...
May 12, 2023•19 min
The One Question That Reveals Compatibility Fast "How would you define compatibility in relationships? What could I look for to determine if he is compatible with me?" This question comes to me a lot, especially in Focus 6 of the Codependency Healing System where I teach students the fundamentals of healthy relating. Much of what is taught about compatibility centers around mutual values, interests, and even lifestyles. Yet, I've learned personally these are poor guages of actual, real-life comp...
May 10, 2023•17 min
Self-doubt caused by gaslighting, lying, and betrayal leaves us highly vulnerable to harm and leads us to question if we know what is real and what is not real. We are left to struggle to understand what is happening and what "right" choices to make. We turn outward towards others to define reality, and often towards those that are gaslighting and harming us, as we want to feel safe with them. We must return to sanity and knowing what is real if we're to experience lasting freedom from codepende...
May 03, 2023•16 min
Stacey and Marshall discuss the origins of codependency, how needs are factored in, and how to actually heal and be free of your codependency. You can follow Stacey Steinmiller here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCCy1EfJy-VR8XI9yEO6gaw *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com *** Connect with me on social media and via email, and l...
Apr 28, 2023•54 min
Dating Again? Boring Is The Green Flag You're Looking For Healing your codependency means you're evolving your nervous system's attunement to choose something different. Put another way, as you heal, you will become more attracted to what your brain may call "boring" because it lacks intensity, threat, and unrealibility. Learn why boring is the green flag you are looking for in today's episode! *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to ...
Apr 26, 2023•13 min
Do you avoid positive outcomes because of pain? This is really, really, really, normal. Healing your codependency involves learning how to receive joy again, especially in things that you really want and carry a lot of loss trauma in them, like relationships and love. Learn how this was formed and how to navigate receiving what you've lost in the past and adapting to having it in your daily life in today's episode. *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Communi...
Apr 21, 2023•14 min
The Essentials: Restoring Sanity Is Fantasy Sabotaging Your Relationships And Your Life? In codependency, fantasy is a core element of how we cope with relationship systems that are not changing, yet we feel deeply dependent on for our sense of well-being, safety, connection, and worth. The brain creates fantasy as a way of giving us direction and something to hope for, especially when we do not have the resources or the capacity to confront what is really happening. Often, these fantasies start...
Apr 12, 2023•16 min
Do you feel like there are "people" in your head that tell you what you should be doing, must be doing, or else? Do you feel like others are watching or scrutinizing you? When you go to make a decision or do a thing, do you find yourself evaluating if it is the "right" thing to do or find yourself fixated on what others may think or feel about it? Do you feel like you don't have a right to make choices for yourself, but instead should be following a rule? These are expressions of internalize opp...
Apr 07, 2023•11 min
The Essentials - Sanity: Do You Struggle To Believe Yourself? In abusive, harmful systems, we are taught to doubt ourselves and question our feelings, senses, and lived experiences. This is gaslighting in action. To heal our codependency, we must restore sanity back to our daily life. What is sanity? Sanity is the act of being consciously in contact with the facts in reality and operating from one's own lived experience and senses so one can make decisions that are accurate to their reality. Lea...
Apr 05, 2023•14 min
Get More Loving Relationships & Friendships With This Shift The shift is simple: My responsibility is to love and care for myself and choose connections with people who show they love and care for me. I am not responsible for getting people to love me, choose me, respect me, or value me. Learn how to start implementing this in today's episode! Caring for yourself: - Emotional warmth, respect, and valuing your pain and your pleasure. - Respecting your lived experiences, senses, and awareness ...
Mar 31, 2023•13 min
What To Do When You Have Big Resistance To Your Pain Resistance to pain is often vilified. It is seen as a block, a problem, a thing to solve. It becomes the problem, the hindrance that is preventing your healing and success! What if resistance was a teacher? What if it was a protector? What if it was a signal for the need for more safety? Discover how resistance is an ally in your healing and not a problem to solve in today's episode! *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your...
Mar 29, 2023•9 min
End The Judgment Trap: "I love you anyway" Practice We fix, pursue, chase and try to create healing. We are stuck in transactional relationships with our healing, ourselves, and others. Often in an effort to have worth and feel lovable. This is the trap of transactional love. Let's start breaking of this with the approach of loving ourselves anyway. Learn how in today's episode! *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experimen...
Mar 24, 2023•13 min
Real Healing vs Transactional Healing *** Bluntcake Episode *** Watch after checking with your capacity and availability for hearing information that can be confronting. *** Often, we get into the healing work in order to try to fix, prevent, or cause something else to happen. This fast becomes a trap, as we start expecting specific results from our efforts. When those do not materialize, we get angry with our emotions, our efforts, ourselves, or others. It leads to a sense of defeat, frustratio...
Mar 22, 2023•18 min
The Essentials: Warmly Welcome Emotions Today we will practice welcoming emotions warmly and what to watch out for. *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency Community and get access to weekly experiments, practices, and support in your healing journey: https://community.freetheself.com *** Connect with me on social media and via email, and learn more about how I heal codependency permanently even when therapy and self-help efforts have failed you: https://links.f...
Mar 17, 2023•19 min
The Rush To Forgive is A Rush To Fix The rush to forgive is a rush to fix. This is the fawn impulse driving us to regulate our distress and discomfort with their feelings, as well as try to prevent more harm happening by rescinding the accountability the other person inherited with their behaviors. Learn how I address this and help nurture more safety and personal allyship to my emotions and experience in today's episode. *** Seeking help in healing codependency? Join The Heal Your Codependency ...
Mar 16, 2023•19 min
Are You Ultra-Independent? Do you say, "I don't need anyone!" You are in a trap. The trap called "counter-dependence". Counter-dependence develops as a reaction to the enmeshment experience of codependency. For many, enmeshment and connection are confused with each other. The deep sense of being highly close or engulfed by another feels intense. It is often draining, overwhelming, scary, with moments of ecstacy and euphoria. It can be very, very painful. They give everything to the relationship,...
Mar 10, 2023•10 min
Does Approval Equal Permission For You? Codependency has our authority and personal power attached to other people's perspectives, feelings, and ultimately their approval and rejection responses. This is why we often fixate on and try to control someone's approval of us. We believe it grants us permission for certain things. This permission can pertain to one's worth (I'm worthy because they love me). It can pertain to permission to do or have certain things (They like this, so it is safe for me...
Mar 09, 2023•11 min
