Codependent Doctor
Podcast focusing on codependency. Learning how to create healthier relationships, healthier self and healthier lives.
Codependent Doctor
47: Codependency & Mental Health: How People-Pleasing, Guilt, and Burnout Are All Connected
Mental health and codependency intersect in profound ways that affect how we treat ourselves, not just our relationships with others. We explore four key patterns that keep us stuck in cycles of burnout, guilt, and emotional exhaustion while providing practical steps toward healing.
We will explore how:
• People-pleasing isn't just politeness but a nervous system survival response developed in childhood
• Self-abandonment occurs when we consistently put others first regardless of the cost to ourselves
• Chronic guilt and shame keep us stuck in patterns of overgiving even when it's harming our wellbeing
• Emotional over-responsibility leads to burnout when we take ownership of others' feelings and problems
Whether you're deep into your healing journey or just beginning to wonder why you're so tired all the time, this episode offers both validation and practical steps forward. Because you don't need to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm.
I am so excited to share my codependency recovery workbook with you. Click on the link to be brough to Enough As I Am on Amazon.
Today's episode is for anyone who's ever been called the strong one, the reliable one, the one who has it all together, the one who's constantly showing up for others but struggling to show up for themselves, because today I'm going to be talking about the hidden ways that codependency shows up in our mental health, not just in relationships, but in how we treat ourselves. This episode is short and sweet mainly because I've uploaded too many episodes this month for Mental Health Awareness Month and my Buzzsprout account only allows me to upload a certain amount of podcasts, so initially I had something else planned for today, but I'm going to need to push that into June so that I can do it some justice, so today's episode is gonna be a little shorter. So, whether you're already deep into your healing journey or just starting to wonder why you're so tired all the time, stick around, because this episode is for you. Welcome to the Codependent Doctor, a weekly podcast focusing on all things codependency. Are you struggling to love yourself, feeling burnt out or having trouble forming loving and meaningful relationships? I can help you heal from the past and move forward with healthier selves, healthier relationships and healthier, more fulfilling lives. Join me as we reclaim your authentic self. I'm your host, a family doctor and fellow codependent, dr Angela Downey. We can do this together. Here we go. Hello to all my wonderful podcast listeners and welcome to the 47th episode of the Codependent Doctor. I'm your host, dr Angela Downey, a family doctor and fellow codependent who used to think that burnout was just part of my personality and boundaries were just something that other people got to have. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about something that sits right at the intersection of mental health and codependency. Things like people-pleasing, self-abandonment, chronic guilt, emotional over-responsibility not as a quirky personality trait, but as signs that your mental health might need some attention. So I'm going to take a look at these four key ways that mental health and codependency intersect, the first one being people-.
Speaker 1:People pleasing isn't just politeness, it's emotional survival. This topic is a classic for codependence. We often think that people pleasing is just being nice, but it runs much deeper than that. For many of us, it begins in our childhoods. Maybe home didn't feel emotionally safe, maybe there was a parent who was unpredictable, or you never knew what mood you'd be walking into when you came home. So your nervous system adapted and you became this helpful, agreeable, low-maintenance person, not because that's who you were, but because that's how you learned to stay safe. Now as an adult, that survival pattern, learn to stay safe. Now as an adult, that survival pattern.
Speaker 1:It lingers and you say yes when you want to be saying no. You might apologize for things that weren't your fault. You avoid disappointing others, even if it means disappointing yourself. From the outside this can often look like kindness, but underneath it all it's fear. It's a fear of rejection, of conflict or being seen as being too much. And here's the truth People pleasing isn't a personality trait, it's a nervous system response.
Speaker 1:And healing doesn't mean becoming selfish or cold. It means finally including yourself in that equation. So healing can look like pausing before saying yes and checking in with what you want, or choosing honesty over harmony, even if it's a little uncomfortable, or maybe letting that guilt rise and not letting it make your decisions for you. Eventually you realize that you don't have to be easy to be loved. You don't have to earn your place, because you matter even when you're not performing. And that's when your yes it becomes honest. Your care becomes a gift, not a survival tactic, and you stop abandoning yourself just to keep the peace, because you finally made peace with who you are.
Speaker 1:So that's going to bring me to the second thing I want to discuss, and that's self-abandonment. It's what happens when you always put other people first, no matter the cost to yourself. You ignore your needs, you push past your limits. You smile when you're hurting and you tell yourself that you're fine as long as everyone else is doing okay. But that's not selflessness, it's disconnection. It's disconnection from your own feelings, your boundaries and your truth, and over time it's going to chip away at your mental health. You're going to become anxious and resentful and numb. You stop trusting yourself because you've spent so long overriding your instincts and most of us learn this pattern in childhood. Maybe your feelings weren't welcomed, maybe you felt like love was conditional. So you learn to stay quiet, you are agreeable and helpful and you learn to be the easy child. But now it's costing you your peace. Healing is going to start when you begin showing up for yourself with the same care that you offer everyone else.
Speaker 1:So here are a couple of simple ways to begin Pause before saying yes, don't respond right away, just give yourself a minute. Don't respond to that text message. You don't have to answer the phone, you can let it go to voicemail and this way it gives you the time to think about do I really want to do this? Do I have the energy for this? Am I saying yes just because I'm feeling guilty? Even just saying let me think about it can give you some space to choose instead of reacting. So the second step is to get honest about your needs. So every day, you should be asking yourself what do I need right now? Where have I stayed silent when I need to speak up, and what boundaries should I be addressing? This is not something that we do instinctively. Like I said, we've learned to override some of those instincts that we had just to stay safe. So choosing yourself doesn't mean that you stop caring about everyone else. It means that you stop disappearing to keep them comfortable. You don't need to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm, and that real healing is going to begin when you learn to put yourself first and realize that it's not selfishness.
Speaker 1:The third thing I wanted to discuss was chronic guilt and shame and how they can keep you stuck. These are two emotions that keep people pleasing and self-abandonment alive. For many of us, guilt it's going to show up the moment that we try to care for ourselves. If you say no, you might instantly wonder if you've done something wrong. If you rest, maybe you think that you're being lazy. If you set a boundary, you start questioning if you're being selfish. But guilt doesn't mean that you've done something bad. It just usually means that you're doing something different. So that's when shame steps in and whispers that you're the problem. So we go back to overgiving and overperforming, not because it's right, but because it feels safer for us. Overgiving is where we're used to be and it's where we're comfortable.
Speaker 1:You've likely been taught invisible rules like always be kind or keep everyone else happy, Don't take up too much space. But guilt it's not a moral compass, it's a conditioned response, and just because you feel it doesn't mean that you're wrong. You can feel guilty and still take care of yourself. You're allowed to rest even though you feel uncomfortable about it, and you can say no even though it makes you feel uneasy. You can set a boundary and still hear those inner alarms and you still can follow through. These are things that are going to get easier with time, and you're not always going to feel guilty or shame for doing them.
Speaker 1:So here's a couple of things that might help. Firstly, just call it out. Tell yourself this is guilt, it's not a sign that I'm doing something wrong. Secondly, check in with your values. Is this aligned with who I want to be? And if the answer is yes, even if it's hard, then you need to keep going. Three you can practice tiny acts of self loyalty. Say no without explaining, take a break before you reach burnout and choose what's right for you. Four, remind yourself that you're not bad. You're healing, and sometimes that can look a little messy. Just give yourself a little compassion. Guilt just means that you're breaking old patterns and building new ones that include you. So next time that guilt shows up, take a breath and remind yourself this is just an old alarm. I don't have to obey it, I don't need to feel guilty and then do the thing anyway, because sometimes you just need to do what you need to do to be mentally healthy.
Speaker 1:The fourth way that mental health and codependency intersect is emotional over-responsibility, and that can lead to burnout. So let's talk about emotional over-responsibility for a minute. Lead to burnout. So let's talk about emotional over-responsibility for a minute. This is a pattern that shows up when you feel like it's your job to keep everyone else emotionally okay. It's not just empathy. It's absorbing other people's emotions and making them your responsibility, and this might look like you sense tension and so your nervous system. It kicks into fixer mode.
Speaker 1:If someone seems off, your first thought might be did I do something wrong and maybe you apologize to keep the peace. Even when you didn't cause the conflict, you're the one smoothing things over at work or covering for other people or explaining someone else's behavior. You're not the manager, but you feel like the emotional manager of everyone's life, and the cost of that is burnout, because when you're constantly tracking everyone else's emotional state, you lose track of your own, you miss your own exhaustion, you miss your frustration or your own needs because you're too busy trying to hold everything else together for everyone else. It puts your nervous system on this high alert. It's always scanning, always anticipating, always absorbing what's around you, and that's just not sustainable. So a couple of things that might help with this are to name that pattern, catch yourself in the moment. You might see something like oops, I'm taking responsibility for something that isn't mine, and that pause.
Speaker 1:Second thing you can try is think of like a fence metaphor and you can picture a white picket fence. On the inside of the fence is your thoughts, your needs, emotions, and on the outside of the fence is everyone else's. So you can ask yourself whose side of the fence am I on? Is it theirs? And if that's the case, then it's not yours to fix.
Speaker 1:You can practice setting emotional boundaries and saying things to people like that sounds really hard how are you feeling about it? Or I care about you, but I can't fix this for you. Is there something that you need from me? So instead of guessing what everyone else needs and working hard to try and fix it for them, you put it on the other person to tell you what they need and then you can think about am I really able to help this person? Do I have the energy or the capability to help them? And you can say no, because caring is kind, but caring too much, that's going to break you over time. So you're allowed to care without carrying everyone else's emotional weight.
Speaker 1:So these are different ways that mental health and codependency are deeply connected and they show up in so many ways that we don't always recognize. But the more we talk about them, the more that we learn to catch the signs earlier and to support ourselves, better we can start healing in a way that feels real, not just performative. So, as always, I want to thank you for being here, thank you for listening and thank you for doing the inner work. And if no one's told you today, you're allowed to take up space, you're allowed to rest and you are enough just as you are. So that's it for today, my friends.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be back here next Monday with a regular episode of the Codependent Doctor. Until then, take care of yourself. You've got this. Thank you for joining me and I hope today's podcast resonated with you. Click, like and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes and to help others who might benefit. This podcast is not meant to provide medical advice and should not replace seeing your doctor for mental health concerns. If you're having a mental health crisis, please present to a hospital, call 911 or your local crisis helpline. I'll talk to you next week for another episode of the Codependent Doctor. We can do this together.