You really know your codependency peaking when you can’t hold your boundaries and yourself up around people who have their best intentions at mind with you.  Avoiding closeness and creating some sort of physical distance is a mechanism to protect your mental space and capacity. I called it avoidant-codependency, it is referring to avoiding intimacy in order to hold your feeling of self up. But true healthiness means being able to hold yourself up in the presence of others because you don’t fear to communicate where you end and where you start. 

I noticed I hold a lot of judgement towards how I am feeling. We have this inner judge of what we are not allowed to or supposed to be feeling, but feelings should never be judged and labeled as good or bad. Emotions can not be dictated and they stay put when we hold resentment towards feeling them.

It can be hard setting boundaries with people you love because you don’t allow the line you set too close to your skin  to be stretched to the extend of imaginary ungratefulness. You not being your true self means that you already made a judgement about yourself that the fullest of who you are is strange or undeserving of love and understanding. 

Oftentimes what we fear is actually reasonable because going to the fullest extend of being yourself with awkward first attempts of putting a no in place can make you feel incredibly lonely when looking into the eyes of another and feel the need to explain yourself in order to keep their love in place. People might not be able to relate to the decisions you do for yourself right from the start, but the conclusions we make are the ones hurting ourself the most.  With time you will learn how to not let that judgement be an agreement with your inner self-hate. Your very own heart needs to know that no matter what happens, you are not going to abandon yourself for what you feel or how you acted and you never label whatever comes up or whatever you need as wrong or right.

Here are some signs that you are diluting easily into others/ codependency aka poor boundaries:

• people pleasing

• Pour boundaries

• You become defensive and reactive when somebody disagrees

• Problems with intimacy, either of getting to close or clinging too tight

• you feel disconnected from yourself after spending time with people

• You become self-destructive when not being understood 

• Having difficulty identifying your feelings around others

• The other persons happiness becomes top priority

• You loose your own sense of identity, interest or desires when being around people

• You are giving more than you get as a general dynamic

• You take on your partners struggles as your responsibility or you expect your partner/friend to take on your problems

• There is control, or conditions in your relationships for example controlling what another person can or can not supposed to do so you don’t feel xyz, overpowering expectations can also be a sign of pour boundaries and trying to control circumstances so your fears will not be addressed. Keep in mind that holding up your standards is not the same thing, you are allowed to define what behaviors are unacceptable for you personally and what you can and can not live without. We can sometimes see the difference by the mindset we are in when creating those rules. Triggered control is oftentimes accompanied by a sense of underlying panic to not feel whatever this issue brings up to us.

• Being unable to open up deeply or when doing so dissolving into how the other person reacts to your vulnerability 

• Disfunctional communication like not being able to set boundaries when not 

• Dependency on other peoples approval to feel ok with yourself or waiting for confirmation/permission of others to believe yourself

When some of those characteristics resonated with you personally, you might have noticed that there is a need and dependence on other people to fulfill something you are denying yourself and are afraid of stepping into yourself because you see your perception and voice to be less than others. And that is what codepency is: dependence on others. This dependency doesn’t only apply to people who are clingy, it applies just as well to people who avoid intimacy all together because of not being able to hold themselves up in the presence of others. 

I just want to make clear that all of these are just indicators, it is only time to tacke what comes up naturally when you create space for yourself to heal. Are there some of your behaviors you hold judgement against within yourself? What is it that you are not allowing yourself to feel?