Mid-Life Mayhem; A guide to functioning in your 40's & beyond
This podcast features us having candid conversations about how to navigate all things mid life, including:
- Relationships
- Mental Health - anxiety, stress, depression, grief, fears, trauma (including generational trauma), estrangement, aging, parental aging and more
- Nervous system care & daily practices
- Sex
- Perimenopause & Cycle syncing
Mid-Life Mayhem; A guide to functioning in your 40's & beyond
Unraveling Codependency: Shifting Relationship Dynamics for Healthier Connections
What if the roles you play in your relationships are not a conscious choice, but rather a subconscious programming dictating your actions? Join me, Katie Kovaleski, as we unravel the complex threads of codependency and relationship dynamics, promising you a journey toward understanding and shifting automatic behaviors for healthier interactions. With insights drawn from my years as a marriage and family therapist, I spotlight how early subconscious programming can put us on autopilot, affecting our responses and perceptions in relationships. Learn how increasing your nervous system's bandwidth can be a game-changer in managing stress and embracing self-awareness, allowing you to break free from negative patterns and enhance your relational health.
Explore the often unseen roles of rescuer, victim, and villain that women unconsciously adopt, shaped by societal norms and early conditioning. These roles, while initially serving as coping mechanisms, can lead to burnout and necessitate a re-alignment with one's true essence as personal growth unfolds. We'll also touch upon the dance of masculine and feminine energies within relationships and the importance of finding equilibrium. Tune in for honest discussions about the energetic roles in partnerships and the crucial need for self-awareness and communication. Your questions and personal stories are welcomed as we continue this exploration, with new episodes launching on my birthday, October 18th. Let's embark on this enlightening journey together.
You can reach us here:
Katie:
Website:
KatieKovaleski.com
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/coach_katiek/
Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiekovaleski/
Natalie:
Website: http://www.jupiterbloomwellness.com/
Instagram: Https://www.instagram.com/jupiterbloomwellness
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-diaz-182592318/
Wavier & Release of Liability and Disclaimer: The information provided by the therapist(s) is not intended, nor is implied to be a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice. The listener is advised to always seek the advice of their health care practitioner or other qualified health care provider with questions regarding medical conditions, or the mental health and welfare of the listener. I (listener) accept that neither Kathryn Kovaleski or Natalie Diaz, is liable for any injury, or damages, to person or property, resulting from listening to this podcast.
Welcome to Midlife Mayhem, a podcast about how to function in your 40s and beyond. I'm Katie Kowalewski and I'm looking forward to talking to you about all things midlife, including hormones, relationships triggers, sex and perimenopause. Stay tuned for today's episode, which is just a sneak peek into what we'll be offering in the next two weeks when our full episodes launch. Enjoy will be offering in the next two weeks when our full episodes launch Enjoy. So today I just wanted to riff on a little bit something I see frequently when working with couples. So I've been a marriage and family therapist since 2010 and I love the challenge of working with couples. It's a really interesting dynamic that's much different than doing individual therapy and it's it's sort of like a more complicated puzzle, because my job in those sessions is to kind of learn each partner's patterns and their own traumas and programming and things and then sort of bridge the gap so that they can learn how to communicate and how to see each other and how to solve problems in a new way with a new understanding. So it's like putting together a puzzle, so it can be really interesting.
Speaker 1:Something I see a lot of revolves around codependency. So in the last five or so years I've done a lot of work and a lot of research into codependency and the best way I can describe codependency is we all have programming for everything, right. We have subconscious programming. It's primarily formed in the first 14 years of our lives. That programming again resides in our subconscious and really drives our perceptions, our narratives, our attitudes and our behaviors. Most of the time we're operating on co-pilot not co-pilot, that'd be nice the opposite of codependency. We're operating on autopilot and most of us don't realize that.
Speaker 1:So the first step in understanding your own patterns or in growing is to bring awareness to your reactions and responses to things. Most people are not self-aware enough to question their own reactions and responses and wonder where they came from. So when we're finding ourselves responding to something really strongly, we're consistently offended by something defensive of something engaging in the same arguments and patterns and sort of that negative or toxic regard. Your first step is bringing awareness to it and that's in questioning your responses and your reactions. Often when our reaction or response is very guttural, it's very deep, um, it's very emotional, whether it's flooded with anger or sadness, jealousy, shame, sort of those deep quote negative emotions. Um, the emotion is so strong that it kind of takes over our experience and we're not able to slow down and stop and question the response. We just roll with it, we react to it, we have an emotional response. It feels very, very strong and we think this must be really valid. This is how I really feel. This is really justified because I feel it so deeply. And that's just not true. That just means that that response, that reaction, is deeply rooted, with a deep, deeply rooted subconscious program at play there. That's all that means, and so the the key to getting unstuck in our patterns is to be able to slow down and pause and question our responses before we react to them and think where did this come from? Why is this such an intense response on my part?
Speaker 1:Especially if that intense response, if you're responding, you're reacting to your response, it's an emotional response and it's causing upheaval in your life. So if you're consistently triggered by your spouse or your partner or whatever it is, and you can't stop yourself from reacting in a certain way and that reaction ends up causing a lot of destruction in the relationship, then we really need to, first step, bring awareness to the pattern. Um, this can be really difficult if our nervous systems are taxed, so if we are already burnt out. If we have, you know, a high stakes job that keeps us really busy, and we have kids and we have all of these things that are filling up our lives, but they're also bringing in a lot of stress, our nervous system is not going to be able to come to a place of equilibrium long enough for us to pause in those moments of upheaval, upheaval in those moments of intense reaction or response. So step number one is deciding. I want to bring self-awareness to my patterns, because some of these patterns are causing destruction in my life in one way or another. It doesn't even have to be with a spouse or a partner. It could be with a job, it could be with a child, it could be with you, it could be with your body, it could be with weight. But the first step is saying okay, my responses and reactions to blank are counterproductive, they're causing destruction in this area of my life. I want to, and intend to, bring awareness to this, to my reaction and response.
Speaker 1:The second step is making sure you have enough nervous system bandwidth to be able to pause before you react or respond. That doesn't just happen, you know, if we're in a state of heightened stress all the time stress and anxiety. What that really is is just a state of fight or flight. Our nervous system is in a constant state of fight or flight. We're not built to stay in a constant state of fight or flight and at some point it'll start to have really destructive effects on our health. Um, that's when we start having actually physical health problems, um, in addition to, like, the emotional problems and things that come with that.
Speaker 1:So our second step, after deciding intentionally we want to bring self-awareness, is learning how to increase our nervous system bandwidth and really take care of our nervous systems. To increase our nervous system bandwidth and really take care of our nervous systems. I teach an entire class on this. If you're interested in how to gain nervous system bandwidth and soothe your nervous system and become kind of your own physical soother, reach out and let me know. I love walking people through this because it is an imperative step in being able to gain self-awareness and change negative or destructive patterns in your life. So we have to do those two things first. I'll dive deeper into that in different episodes, as I do solo podcast episodes. I'll focus on each of these areas. So we'll do an entire episode on nervous system care and what that looks like, and give you examples and things like that and what that looks like, and give you examples and things like that.
Speaker 1:The third piece here is understanding what role you play in your relationship. So relationships, like everything else, are often driven by our subconscious programming. So once we have the awareness that we want to change it, once we have established some nervous system bandwidth, then we can really get in there as a society, as a generation. There are a lot of patterns that most people fall into in their relationships or in their family unit. As I dove deeper into that topic with that understanding, I recognized that many of those patterns could be directly summarized and characterized as roles of codependency. And I was just blown away. I'm like, wow, we're not playing necessarily unique roles in our family system. We don't have unique programming. A lot of this is just repetitious in every household.
Speaker 1:It's codependency and there's three primary roles of codependency and in a second episode I'll really dive deep into what those are, because one of those roles is of the villain, and a lot of behaviors that people now currently, in a trendy way, characterize as narcissism is actually the villain role in codependency. There are typically very few actual diagnosed narcissists in the world, but people tend to throw that term around when they don't like someone else's behavior and they're judging it to be selfish and egocentric and all these things. So as we look at our pattern and tendencies in our romantic relationships or partnerships, even even in friendships, any relationship with another human, a lot of those toxic patterns can be broken down and characterized by the rules in codependency. I call it the codependency triangle. There's three primary roles victim, rescuer and villain triangle. There's three primary roles victim, rescuer and villain. Again, the villains often characterized um as a narcissist. And the thing with codependency is, if we have that programming which, again, almost everyone I meet does in some way, because generationally, um, our parents were programmed that way. Um, these roles were very programmed generationally, it's. It's really interesting if you look at the lineage of it.
Speaker 1:Um, a lot of women were taught to either be rescuers or be victims. I either need to be rescued and I'm a victim, and that's how I get my needs met, or I'm the rescuer. It's my job to show, improve my value by rescuing, saving, fixing, prioritizing everyone and everything above myself. Um, often the role of the rescuer is glorified, it's validated. Look how selfless that person is oh my gosh, they put everyone before themselves, um, et cetera, et cetera, when, in reality, being the rescuer is a way to get validation, get our needs met and control other people's perceptions of us. Now, none of these roles are chosen by us. These aren't things that we're like Ooh, that looks good. I'm going to try on one of these three roles and that's the way I'm going to survive in my family unit and then that's the role I'm going to continue to embody in all my relationships throughout my life.
Speaker 1:Um, they're unconscious. Um, our subconscious is processing like millions of bits of information, information per second that we're not consciously aware of and is taking all of that information, assimilating it and then creating programs based on it, and those programs are like this is how we see the world, this is how we respond here. Our subconscious wants to make our lives more streamlined and efficient and it wants to protect us. That more streamlined and efficient and it wants to protect us so that we have a higher chance of surviving. So it's going to take in billions of bits of information as we grow up in our first 14 years and it's going to say okay, based on all the information I've gathered and different experiences that we have. This is how I need to be and who I need to be in order to survive in this household.
Speaker 1:No-transcript. Um, also, we tend to rotate roles. If we play the victim, again, this is not a choice, but if our role to get our needs met and our needs are met most when we're in the victim role, we get the most attention, the most validation and our needs are met when we're in the victim, uh, we're going to stay there. But if we're in our victim role, we're playing it really well and our needs are not being met, we're not getting that attention, that and the reassurance. We're going to shift roles. We might decide to go into rescuer and if we don't go into rescuer, we're going to go to villain, which can also be referred to as the burnt out victim. So when the victim and the rescuer, when their needs are not getting met in those roles anymore, they tend to burn out in the role. Right, we burn out in anything we continually do. If it's not giving us that feedback, right, if we're not getting the validation, if we're not in a positive feedback loop, we keep trying harder but there's no return, and so we burn out. When we burn out, we end up in the villain role. Um, so all of us have played that at some point again.
Speaker 1:This is like a generationally um programmed rule set. That's what codependency essentially is. So a lot of times when we're attracting a partner, we're attracting someone who is going to be able to play opposite of us. So if we're, say, going through a really tough time in our lives and we need some help or some support, then essentially we're in the victim role and we might attract a rescuer. We might attract a woman or a man, um, that is going to rescue us, that's going to give us that support, who's going to be empathetic, who's going to try to solve our problems with us and or for us, and that might feel really good.
Speaker 1:But as time goes on and we're no longer in that victim role, we've healed, we're moving forward. That's going to leave a disconnect in the relationship because the initial roles we stepped into are no longer relevant for the dynamic and perhaps at that point the person that's healed doesn't want the rescuer to be rescuing anymore, because when there isn't a situation to be rescued from, the rescuer role looks a lot like masculine energy. It looks like fixing, saving, solving all the time jumping into action. It's a very masculine energy. It's a very masculine role and if there's nothing to save you from and I'm still in that energy it can feel a lot like there's two partners vying for the same role in the relationship. So even if there's a partnership of two men or two women, or a man and a woman, we all embody masculine, feminine energy.
Speaker 1:Some of us are more naturally equipped to slip into one of those energies. One of those energies is going to feel more like home to us. The feminine is the right brain. It's very receptive, it's nurturing, it's open, it's empathetic. It's not about action, it's not about rescuing, it's not about fixing, it's not about saving. It's about opening up, it's about receiving. The masculine is all the opposite things Left brain logic rushing into action, fix, saving, rescuing, providing solutions. They balance each other out In order to have an optimum relationship, even with ourselves. Other out In order to have an optimum relationship, even if it's with ourselves. We need that balance. We need to be able to embody both and in a relationship with another person, we need to know which role we naturally feel more comfortable in. That's our true kind of essence.
Speaker 1:Because so many people have codependent programming, they're disconnected from what their natural preference is right, if I am taught to be a rescuer, and that's how I get my needs met, and that's how I attract love, and that's how I find validation, and and, et cetera, et cetera, um, and, and it turns into a very masculine energy. That doesn't mean that's my preference, naturally, but what it does mean is that I'm going to have to decondition and deprogram that role that I play. I'm going to have to look at it, I'm going to have to get in there. I'm going to have to do some subconscious change in addition to bringing awareness, understanding and then taking different actions and have different responses. And so all of this is to say that most of the way we show up in relationships is based on our programming. For many, many, many people, generationally, those roles can be defined as codependency. They're codependent roles.
Speaker 1:If we're in relationships that have negative feedback loops, or they're negative cycles that cause destruction in the relationship dynamic, we have to look at those, and when we look at those, we need to decide and see what role we've historically played. We need to deprogram that role. We literally need to create new wiring in our brain towards what we want instead. That's going to be healthier. And we have to decide which role feels better for me. Am I more of a masculine energy by nature Is that when I feel my best, or does the feminine energy feel better to me? And we really have to decide, and we can only decide that, once again, we have set the intention to do it. Our nervous system has enough bandwidth to be able to create these new programs and new responses. And then we have to look at the role we've historically played in our lives, um, and the role that we were taught to play, and so there's a lot of different inner workings there, um, there, when it comes to creating new habits and patterns for a couple, but that's essentially primarily what I walk people through. What role am I playing in the relationship? How did this serve me as a child and throughout my life? How is it not serving me now? What role would I like to play instead? Let's deprogram that on a subconscious level, create some new supportive programming or what you want instead, and then, based on that, decide what energy you want to be in.
Speaker 1:And for a lot of women, their preference might be being in the masculine energy. But what's gonna happen if they're dating someone who whose natural tendency is to be in the masculine, whether they're a, a man or not, is that they're going to end up fighting for that role. And it's called polarization. When we both have a tendency to naturally want to be in the same energy, whether it's masculine or feminine, we're going to vie for that role and one person is going to win that energetically and it's going to push or force the other person into the opposite in that energetically and it's going to push or force the other person into the opposite. And if they're not naturally meant to be in that energy, there's going to be a lot of fighting in the relationship because it feels unnatural. I don't like the role you're trying to take.
Speaker 1:And so, as we work with couples, just deprogramming the codependency and the role they've always played is really important. And then finding what their natural preference is, not what they've been taught, not how they've been programmed, but what's your natural preference. And if you have a man in a relationship who likes to take the lead and who wants to be in that masculine energy, um, and as a fixer, solver all the things, and you have a woman who's doing the exact same thing, there's going to be a lot of friction, um. So that's essentially like the framework that I work with when I work with couples, um, and after doing that for a long time, essentially those are kind of the boil down pieces Um, what role codependency am I playing? Let's deprogram that.
Speaker 1:And then, energetically, what role have I been playing? How does that feel for my partner? Probably not great if you're having all that negative feedback, oops, and fighting Um, and then being really honest, well, you know it's not working for my partner, but this is the energy I feel best in. This is who I'm supposed to be and how I'm supposed to be, um. And if that happens, then we have some choices to make, right? Um? The energy that we stay in is going to really directly influence the quality of our relationships, and then we have to decide if we want to move forward and how we want to do that.
Speaker 1:But typically, if you have two people that want to play the same energetic role in a relationship, you're going to have a difficult time Again.
Speaker 1:One of them is going to be forced into a role that doesn't feel good for them and and energetically, it's the same thing that happens in codependency, um, if we're vying for the same role, um, we're often going to be an impasse, right, only one person can play that role.
Speaker 1:Well, so, um, I'll be diving more into again each of those topics, really diving into the three roles in codependency, talking about narcissism, diving into, um nervous system care and bandwidth, and all of those things too, um, but if you're listening to this and it resonates and you have any questions or personal stories that you'd like to share anonymously, um topics that we can kind of pick, dive into and pick apart, um, please feel free to DM me or email me and I'll make sure to address those in upcoming episodes. I hope you enjoyed today's mini-sode. Upcoming episodes will be launched in two weeks, on October 18th, which is also my birthday. If you have any questions or would like to dive deeper into these topics before the next episodes are released, please feel free to DM or email me. My contacts are in the show notes and I would love to connect.
