Codependence and spontaneous combustion.

One of the main reasons we keep doing that f*cked up codependent dance with certain others in our lives is because “part” of us truly believes it’s necessary for safety or survival. 

Codependence is frequently rooted in the “fawn” trauma response. 

Our nervous system believes that if we aren’t who “they” want or need us to be, we’re in danger. 

It’s not that we “choose” it, exactly. 

It’s more that we don’t know how to not do it. 

We don’t know how to tolerate the anxiety that would come with not doing it. 

We may not even know who we are if we didn’t do it. 

The reality is, our identity is very often entwined with who we are to and with others. 

For example, many of our beliefs about who are are are overwhelmingly influenced by who our parents and family believe we are. 

Even now, the easiest way to evoke an emotional flashback in me is to toss me back into a situation with my family of origin— my nervous system, my personality reflexes, even my physiology will start responding to who I was to and with them, decades ago. 

We don’t choose those intellectual and emotional and behavioral reflexes, any more than we “choose” any other trauma responses. 

And breaking out of those codependent loops requires a ton of effort, because it requires us to tolerate a ton of anxiety. 

“Anxiety” kind of undersells it, actually. “Doom-certianty” is closer. 

Our nervous system and “parts” truly believe that certain doom is imminent, if we opt out of those old interpersonal patterns. 

The thing is: it’s not. 

No one has ever spontaneously combusted beucase they opted out of a codependent dynamic, choose not to be who someone else expected them to be. 

We’ll survive opting out of a codependent dance, at least physically. Our anxiety might try to convince us otherwise, but we will. 

And but also, the fact that we’ll survive physically doesn’t speak to what the person we refused to “dance” with might say or do. 

They might, in fact, try to make us feel guilty. Or wrong. Or selfish. 

And, yes: they might try to damage us socially, for the “sin” of abandoning our codependent dance with them. 

I’ll never be flippant about the real costs of opting out of a codependent “dance” with someone who has relative influence in our life. It might not be pretty. 

But you know what else isn’t pretty? Feeling trapped in a self-defeating “dance” with someone we may not even like, just because we’ve been conditioned to keep the beat. 

That’s not pretty for our self-esteem, our values, or our goals— you know, those things that define our trauma recovery. 

No— codependent patterns are not a “choice.” 

But breaking out of them has to be. 

And of course, choices do have consequences— but not all of those consequences are bad. 

Some of them can be quite liberating, even if others mean them to be destructive. 

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” as Ms. Joplin reminds us.