Women & Codependence

The lines can easily blur between being a loving, caring person and being codependent.

Codependency is defined as the process of losing yourself in intimate relationships, friendships and parenting. It’s easy to lose yourself when you give so much.

Women oftentimes become codependent because they are natural caretakers.

Symptoms of Codependency

Low self-esteem or feeling you aren’t good enough
Comparing yourself to others
People pleasing
Letting the needs of another take precedence over your own
Poor boundaries to increase one’s feeling of value
Taking care of people because it makes you feel better, not because they need the care
Dysfunctional communication
Trying to control others
Anxiety
Shame

If you’re flooded with feelings of shame and not being good enough, you’ll reach outside of yourself to try to control a situation that you see as causing the anxiety.

You have to learn how to heal the inside instead of looking for something on the outside to fix it.

Codependency usually begins in childhood and builds over a lifetime. Families generally do the best they can with what they have. Sometimes it’s learned over generations and children pick it up.

Saving others may protect you from feeling all those intense emotions you feel around YOU.

Exploring your own thoughts and emotions may help you find the root of your codependency. Bring emotionally healthy people into your life who want to know what you think, feel and need. Find a tribe. Psychotherapy can help. Exercise is a great therapy, especially walking to clear your thoughts.

Listen in as Kristina Wandzilak shares how codependency works for women and how to work through it.

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Featuring:

Kristina Wandzilak

Kristina Wandzilak has been a leader in the addictions industry since 1995. Kristina is highly respected and renowned for her compassionate and effective work and is credited with helping thousands of addicts and their families through her work as an international interventionist, author and television expert.

In 1998, Kristina founded Full Circle Intervention, a private intervention practice that has grown into an internationally respected intervention practice. She went onto open Full Circle Recovery Center, offering Intensive outpatient treatment, long-term recovery care and a premier sober living community.

Kristina is the co-author of the acclaimed memoir The Lost Years: Surviving a Mother and Daughter’s Worst Nightmare, which she co-wrote with her mother. The Lost Years is a triumphant and inspirational story of addiction, hope and the deep love between a mother and daughter. The movie rights were sold for a major motion picture.

Kristina is the expert on Lifetime’s docuseries Intervention: Codependent. The five-episode series is about her work with addicted and codependent couples and their families. Intervention: Codependent premiered in March 2016, as one of the highest rated reality shows on the LMN channel. Extended episodes will air in early 2017.

Kristina was the expert on TLC’s Prism award-winning reality documentary, Addicted. She can often be seen on Good Morning America, as their regular addiction specialist, commenting on addiction issues for the national media.