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LIVE Coaching with AV: The Codependummy Dilemma
The Codependummy Dilemma: Live Coaching with AV
New segment, who dis?
In this week’s episode, I’m introducing an inaugural segment: The Codependummy Dilemma where I help a brave listener walk through an aspect of her life where she’s caught up in a codependent quagmire. “Do I do what want or what other people want, need, expect of me?” What’s a codependummy to do?
Listen in to hear me walk AV through her current codependummy dilemma: do I let my anticipated disappointment from others dictate my next move–or do I let my own feelings decide what I do next?
Thank you for listening!
Be sure to join the Facebook group, The Codependummy podcast at facebook.com/groups/codpendummy. I’ll be opening the doors on March 1 to offer live coaching, Q&A, and info about Codependummy’s Lonely Girl Social Club launching April 1. Request to join the Facebook group today at facebook.com/groups/codpendummy–don’t be a dummy and wait till February 28. If you sign up this week, I’ll send you a free link to my workshop Self-Care in Self-Quarantine: How to Prioritize Your Mental Health At Home. Hop on it sis!
Go to http://www.tryframe.com/dummy for their offer to listeners for $20 their first three therapy sessions!
In this week’s episode:
-Marissa walks through, LIVE, with a listener, AV, a Codependummy Dilemma she is having where she is having to confront her codependency–GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATIONS–and needs solutions and coaching to get through it.
-AV opens up about how she has been rewarded to put the needs of others above her own and how that’s led her to feel exhausted by her codependency as a young woman because “I don’t really know what feelings I’m having in the moment. It’s just tears but I can’t verbalize that which is exhausting.”
-AV leaves the Codependummy Dilemma with a clear plan for how she can cope with her codependency as she navigates the next two months while hearing back from graduate schools. She commits to prioritizing herself and her feelings in order to decide her next move–and not letting other people’s feelings influence her.
Introducing The Codependummy Dilemma segment! In this inaugural episode, Marissa sits down with listener AV to walk through a current dilemma she’s in thanks to her codependency. As codependents, you likely often get into situations where you are trying to decide: do I do what I want to do or what others expect of me? Should I say how I am actually feeling or stay quiet to maintain the peace? Should I cancel that appointment or keep it lest I disrupt someone else’s plans???
In addition to providing psychotherapy, Marissa is also a Codependency Coach! Unlike therapy which is more focused on the past, coaching is all about the present and future. Marissa asks AV about some aspects of her codependency that she’s experienced in the past but then dives in to how that is impacting AV currently as well as how it may dictate her behavior in the near future–maybe even compromising her dreams to attend graduate school!
We start with asking AV about ways she has been raised, reinforced, and rewarded to put the needs of others above her own. AV talks about how she was rewarded at home by her family to “be quiet and not push back.” She also experienced this at school where she was rewarded to be “very adaptable and I was rewarded for that. I got good grades and saw that these behaviors were desirable to be successful.” Marissa highlights how, at home and school, AV was taught “don’t push back, don’t talk back, be quiet, and how to not to get in the way.”
We then hear how that’s led to her being exhausted, exasperated, and enveloped in crap relationships, including the one she has with herself. AV reveals how she has a hard time confronting others or worries about saying her truth since it may negatively impact others. AV adds how she’s trying to learn that it’s okay for her to speak up and confrontation isn’t such a bad thing. AV describes the exhaustion of letting other people’s feelings take precedence over her own feelings. She often “turns to tears” and is not able to express her anger, frustration, or other negative emotions. AV’s relationship with herself suffers since she struggles with setting boundaries with her partner, mother, sister, and others. She adds how she often questions herself and if she is taking up too much space, saying the wrong thing, and worried about “being unlikeable.”
What Codependummy Dilemma did AV want to talk through? Her fear of disappointing others if she doesn’t get into graduate school!
“I was worried about what people would think about me not getting into grad school versus what was going to happen about me not getting into grad school. I was worried about their pity instead of what I would do if I didn’t get in.” Marissa highlights how AV is picturing the pity and disappointment from others so early into the process and how that is starting to impact her plans if she does not get in.
Instead of letting the presumed disappointment and pity from others dictate your next move, AV, why not be really intentional the next 60 days that you hear back from schools and then you decide, on your own, what your next move is???
“Do I allow the possibility of others disappointment, pity, and rejection dictate my next move–or, for the next two months, do I intentionally focus on taking it one rejection at a time, feel my feelings, welcome my own doubt, and let that dictate my next move?”
AV opens up about how, after receiving a couple of rejections, she thought “I quit” since she did not want to disappoint others. Marissa highlights how she can journal, talk with supportive friends, go to therapy, and use other coping skills the next two months to be more intentional and then decide what she wants to do. AV agrees how she can be more intentional the next two months and then decide what she wants to do.
AV and Marissa role-play a hypothetical interaction where AV informs her “mother” that she was not accepted into graduate school. Marissa is AV’s “SAD MOM” and responds how she would if she didn’t get in. What would AV say in response in order to avoid letting her mother’s pity overwhelm her or dictating her behavior. AV practiced how she can talk about other options in order to assert that she has a plan. AV agreed how she can emphasize that she needs more experience, has research options, and will continue to apply.
AV talks about how she is trying to unlearn ideas of perfectionism. “I am working on learning it is okay to make a mistake.” Marissa also helps AV check in with reality about the process of applying to graduate school, the average age of graduate students, and how she needs to let go of her mother’s black-and-white thinking in order to pursue her academic goals.
Thank you for listening. Join the Facebook group at: facebook.com/groups/codpendummy
Go to http://www.tryframe.com/dummy for their offer of $20 off your first three therapy sessions after you match with a therapist!
