I am currently soliciting participants to call in and submit your questions and relationship challenges, so that they can be included in the introductory episodes for this podcast. I will also use this material as part of a weekly blog I’ll begin sending out in February with relationship advice, mindfulness meditations, and somatic practices for healing attachment wounds and surviving emotional abuse.
At its core, this podcast is about belonging. If you could use an opportunity to just speak your challenges related to primary attachment relationships, past romances, friendships, workplace dynamics, or in relationship to yourself, please call (719)-759-9471 and leave an anonymous, detailed message (up to three minutes). You are also welcome to submit your questions in writing to help@askdoctorcindy.com.
Episode 6: The Trap of Enabling
People pleasers have good intentions when they take on the burden of trying to make someone feel better. We truly just want to help and to offer our own wellbeing and happiness as a resource. After all, wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could keep people from getting depressed in the first place? But not only is this endless output exhausting for the one doing all the work, it also limits the other person from developing the skills to cultivate their own emotional health. Happiness takes effort and action, and if we believe it is our job to make the other person happy, and we take too much responsibility for their wellbeing, we may actually be leaving them in worse shape.
Episode 2: Reclaiming Yourself from Emotional Abuse
Protecting my right to peace, motherhood, and wellbeing has been a long, difficult journey. In this episode, I’ll explore the path of reclaiming my mental real estate in the face of ongoing harassment, and developing skillful responses to emotional abuse and threats to my belonging. Tune in to find out how to interrupt the cycle of co-dependency and take back your right to have your own experience of being human, without having to become small, compromise yourself, or be a bandaid to another's gaping emotional wounds.
If you’re experiencing emotional abuse, compromising yourself in order to meet the emotional needs of someone else, or if you’re enabling someone else’s depression or mental illness, there are a few manageable things you can do to interrupt the cycle of co-dependency.
Stop Playing The Blame Game
Before I blocked communication with my ex-husband, he texted and emailed me multiple times a day blaming me for his unhappiness and anger.
Eight years after our divorce, these messages are still coming, even in response to simple logistical questions like “can you pick up our daughter from school.” His constant harassment and the way he jabs at my abandonment wounds invades my thoughts and keeps me awake at night. His accusations even make me short-tempered with my daughter, which breaks my heart, because all I’ve ever wanted was to be the mom I didn’t get to have.