If Love Feels Like Eggshells, Your Feet Are Tired

When love feels like walking on eggshells, your body is telling the truth your mind keeps negotiating with. I sit down to unpack codependency as a nervous system strategy—how self-abandonment becomes the price of connection, why calm feels suspicious after chaos, and the subtle ways we confuse intensity with intimacy. Drawing from my own story and years of somatic work, I trace the developmental roots of codependency in inconsistent caregiving, emotional immaturity, and the “be tough, don’t feel” messages many of us, especially men, were taught.

We get practical and compassionate. Through a polyvagal lens, I explain why hypervigilance and shutdown narrow access to safety and presence, and how that state pairs so neatly with narcissistic partners who bring certainty and intensity. You’ll hear how intermittent reinforcement, love bombing, withholding, blame shifting, and gaslighting create drama bonds that hook the nervous system—not the heart. Then we pivot to healing: grounding with feet on the floor, longer exhales, hands over heart and belly, and tracking the real-time sensations that signal when you’re bracing. We talk about naming needs without apologizing, practicing receiving without earning it, and using boundaries as information that reveals who can meet you where you are.

If you’ve ever asked, “Why do I lose myself to keep the peace?” this conversation offers language, tools, and relief. You don’t heal by caring less; you heal by including yourself in the care. Subscribe for more trauma-informed, somatic insights, share this with someone who’s been mistaking intensity for love, and leave a review with the boundary you’re committing to this week.

Transcript

Mental Well-Being Club Announcement

Today’s Focus: Codependency

Grounding Into The Body

Defining Codependency Clearly

Inconsistent Love And Attachment

Men, Emotion, And Early Conditioning

Intensity Versus Intimacy

Somatic Costs And Polyvagal Lens

Why Codependents Attract Narcissists

Withholding, Blame, And Gaslighting

Survival Is Not Love

Healing: From Pathology To Response

Rebuilding Safety And Tracking Sensations

Boundaries, Grief, And Self-Repair

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Trauma Talks with Russ Tellip. My name is Russ Telep. Um I am a somatic, trauma-informed coach, hypnotherapist, and brain spotting practitioner. Uh, I've lived a life filled with trauma. Um, and I only about three years ago finally realized what trauma was, how it was affecting me, and started pursuing healing. Um, and this is a podcast where we talk about that healing, we talk about trauma in general, what trauma is, what it feels like, why we feel the way we feel, so that we can leverage that to heal and to live the best possible lives and be the best possible versions of ourselves. Um for those of you who just joined us, excuse me. We stream live our podcast. Uh so if you were joining us previously, um just a few minutes ago, we had some technical issues, had to restart the stream. Excuse me. Uh so I apologize. Uh, we're back at it now, though. So I uh I trust you guys saw the graphic just a few seconds ago uh for the mental well-being company. I'm sorry, the mental well-being club. The mental well-being club is an international organization created by Caroline Strawson and uh the positive school, this trauma-informed school of positive psychology. Uh, the idea is to create community groups around the world to help uplift the that community, right? So I am in charge of the Colorado Springs chapter of the mental well-being club. And our first meeting is gonna be March 7th. Excuse me, one second. I'm just gonna go over and jump on the feed so I can see any comments. I saw that somebody just joined. Uh, if you just join, drop your name in the comments. I'd and we'd love to call holler at you and see if you have any questions. So um, mental well-being club first meeting is March 7th at 10 a.m. down at the Mount Carmel Veterans Service Center. Uh, this first theme will be men's mental health. That does not mean that if you are not a man, you cannot attend. You can absolutely attend, and you'll get a lot from it. Understanding men, understanding men's trauma, um, and then even helping them find what they may need for healing. So um today I thought we would chat about codependency. So we talk a lot about narcissism and how narcissism affects us, right, as a people, but we very rarely discuss codependency, what that is, um, and and how to start healing some of that stuff. Codependency is gonna be the other side of the narcissistic coin. So if you're in a narcissistic relationship, you are most likely codependent and codependent with that narcissist person. So um, we're just gonna chat about what codependency is, um, and that way you can maybe see some similarities to yourself and then how to start reframing some of that stuff. So today's episode is hi, my name is Russ, and I'm a codependent. Sounds a lot like an AA meeting, but that's what it's like, guys. Codependency can be very similar to an addiction. Um, I just want to start off today. Today we are talking about codependency. It's not as a flaw. There's nothing wrong with you, not as a diagnosis. I'm not a psychiatrist or a therapist. I'm I'm here to talk to you about it as a nervous system strategy, something that we're gonna talk about why it so often gets tangled up with narcissism, why codependency attracts narcissism and narcissism attracts codependency. Uh, this episode is educational. It's not labeling or shaming. These are patterns, they are not identities. So if you are if you would consider yourself or identify with codependency as something that you're struggling with, that is not who you are, right? Uh most people don't choose this, they adapted through their life experiences and different traumas throughout their life to learn these behaviors and learn these behaviors as a coping strategy. Um, I just invite you guys to sit for a second, kind of realize where you're at. If you're driving, that's fine. Um, but if you're not, if you're sitting at your desk or at home or listening while you're doing something and you have the opportunity, I just ask you to ground your feet on the floor. Feel your feet on the floor, allow your jaw to relax instead of clenching like this. You know, allow your shoulders to drop away from your ears and allow your neck to relax and just be present for this. You know, just be present and hear what's what some of these things are. And if you find yourself drifting or dissociating during this podcast, I just invite you to acknowledge it, allow it to pass, and then come back to what's being said. Feel anything that might be going on in your chest, any tightness or pressure you may feel in your chest or even in your stomach. Notice your breath. How is your breath? Is your breath fast? Is it slow? Is it shallow, deep? Don't do anything to change it, just notice it. And same with your stomach. Notice any sensations you might be feeling in your stomach. If any of this lands heavy with you, it doesn't mean that you're broken. It usually means that something is striking a familiar chord with you. We're going to be talking about some things that I've dealt with personally, and I'm assuming some of you may have as well. So if any of this strikes a chord with you and you need to reach out to me for clarification on anything, feel free. You can do that at Facebook. If you guys are on the live stream currently, I see there's one person that has joined so far. Um, feel free to ask any questions or reach out in the comments. I'll be monitoring the comments, hitting refresh occasionally. Um, if I don't answer right away, just stick with it. Um, I'll definitely try to get in there and answer you guys. Hold on. Um, and then we'll go from there. All right. So, what is codependency? The buzzword, codependency, right? We all know the word, but what is it really? What is it really? And codependency is it's not about being too nice, it's about losing the connection with yourself to maintain the connection with someone else. Uh, it's about giving up your identity to maintain the connection with someone else. Uh, chronic self-abandonment, you know, overfunctionaling, functioning emotionally, attuning to others before attuning inward. Um, if you find yourself managing your partner's emotions more than your own, you know, safety comes from being needed, useful, agreeable, or invisible. It is walking on eggshells, but you're doing it to keep them calm, to keep them in homeostasis, right? From a nervous system perspective, it's learned in environments where love is inconsistent. So if you have a caregiver as a child who is inconsistent with safety or love. For example, my father, right? My father, one moment, could be could come across as the most loving man who's got your best interest at heart and wants nothing but the best for you. And then the next minute he could be bouncing your head off of a concrete wall. It's very inconsistent. Or someone who is cold most of the time or some of the time, and then other times they're very doting, parents like that. Um, this creates an anxious attachment disorder. Uh not disorder, I apologize, an ancient anxious attachment. Emotions weren't necessarily welcomed. A lot of us as men were taught from an early age that that emotion is not welcome, right? Um, and some of us may feel that even going forward. Uh, conflict, conflict is dangerous, right? So if we if we're every time we've dealt with conflict in our lives, it's melt with danger or violence. For example, my father, you couldn't push against my father, right? He would lose it. And the body learned if I manage you well enough, I'll be safe. Right? So your safety comes from managing the other person in the room rather than you managing yourself. Common sides, excuse me, too much coffee today. Common signs might be difficulty identifying needs. Um, you might find that when you sit and think about what your needs are, you have a really hard time nailing those down. And you may find that your needs have more to do with your partner than yourself. Guilt when resting or saying no. Um, it was a really hard lesson for me to learn that no is a complete sentence. And it is. No is absolutely a complete sentence. Having boundaries for yourself isn't selfish. Uh, hyper responsibility for others' emotions. Again, you're trying to manage your partner's emotions to keep them in a space where you feel safe. If you can keep them in this window of your tolerance, you can feel safe instead of you managing your window of tolerance from within. Confusing intensity with intimacy. This is a big one. When I met my ex, she was incredibly doting. I used to tell my brother, man, I don't know. I walk into her house and she basically tries to climb in my mouth. Very, very affectionate, extremely, right? Too much, too much. Um, that is intensity that gets confused with intimacy or love. Intimacy or love does not need to be intense, right? It can be calm, it can be safe. Excuse me. Feeling anxious when things are calm. Oh, I just activated my phone. Uh, feeling anxious when things are calm. That's another one. So when things are actually relaxed and homeostasis, right? You got that that nice, calm, flat line, everything's chill, and then in your nervous system, you're just waiting because oh my god, usually when it's quiet, that means something big is coming, right? So you're just sitting in your nervous system shivering, just waiting for the next shoe to drop. Uh, codependency is not a weakness, it's intelligence shaped by survival. So, where does codependency come from developmentally? So, early environments often include emotional immature caregivers. So, my father, um, if you're raised by a very young mother who doesn't really know what they're doing yet, you know, that that's another example of that. Um, addiction or mental illness, rage, neglect, and unpredictability. This is all things that that can help lead to some of that codependent behavior. Uh, praise for being easy, the helper or the strong one. You know, if you're the one who is always coming to the rescue, right? You're the one that's coming in to bail them out of the financial situation they're in, or you're the one who comes in and tries to raise their kids, help them raise their kids, or you're the one that helps them, you know, uh manage their own emotions, right? This is this is a big part of it. Excuse me. You start identifying your value with how much you can offer them. Value becomes transactional, love becomes transactional. A child might learn that their needs are dangerous. Um, many of you have heard the three-day-old story. For those of you who have not, when I was three days old, uh, my mom and dad brought me home from the hospital. I was born in Wurzburg, Germany, in an army hospital. And at three days old, they brought me home. Uh, I'm assuming they lived in an apartment. I don't remember this personally. Uh, this is something that was passed down from my mother to me. Uh, but three days old sitting on the couch next to my father, just home, freshly home from the hospital. Uh, mom is in the kitchen making dinner or cooking or doing something. Dad's sitting next to me on the couch, watching TV or cleaning his camera or something along those lines. And at some point, I start crying. So I could have been hungry, I could have had a dirty diaper, um, I could have been cold. Uh, I just could have been needing to be reassured that I'm safe, um, be to be held, to be loved, you know, to know that I'm enough. Um, that's not what happened. Uh, what happened was my father picked me up off of the couch, held me upside down by my feet, and swatted me on the butt, and I immediately fell silent. My mother was standing in the doorway at this point. She had come when she heard me start crying and witnessed this. And obviously she was just horrified, right? I mean, who thinks a newborn baby, right? Um, so I learned very, very on that my need or needs are dangerous, that my needs are not met with having them filled, um, but rather met with violence or met with hurt or met with pain or met with um reminders that I don't, I'm not worthy of having needs, right? Um feelings are are inconvenient. How many of you? I'm I'm talking mostly to men right now, how many of you have experienced that when you try to share your what you're feeling, it's met with your feelings, a don't matter, or b are not are inconvenient at the moment, right? So men are met men are expected. I'm rambling, I'm rambling a little bit, and I apologize. I'm trying to get my head around my thought here. Men are expected to to be stoic. You know, we're taught many of us, not everyone, obviously, but many of us are taught from a very young age to hold our emotions back, to proceed with logic, not emotion, uh, to think things through logically rather than emotionally, um, and just to bottle that stuff up, you know, that that is there's no place for it in the world, and it makes us look weak showing emotion. When I was about 15 or 16 years old, my grandfather passed away. And up until that moment, I had not really cried. You know, I'm sure I did, but excuse me. Sneeze. My grandfather passed away and we had his funeral at the funeral home up the street. I didn't get to say goodbye to my grandfather. I felt like I had a really good relationship with my grandfather. Now I have a little bit different view of who he was and the kind of man he was. At the time I worshipped him. Um, so they had his funeral, had his wake, and uh had the coffin open so you could see his his body lying inside. And um, I was fine through all of that. You know, I remember sitting there. I I think there may have been speakers or people giving a eulogy or such at the at the wake or at the viewing, and then we had to move the casket from the from the uh I guess you called a mortuary or uh not a mortuary, uh funeral home to the hearse so that they could take it out to the grave site and then we would follow it out there. So we uh we walked up and we grabbed the handle on the uh coffin, and as we lifted it, I felt the weight of the coffin, and all that emotion hit me all at once. It was emotion about the loss of my grandfather. It was all the emotion that had basically been pent up inside of me for all this time, right? Um I'm just gonna pull up the comments on YouTube. If you guys are on YouTube or Facebook and we are streaming live currently, feel free to put anything questions or anything you have in the comments and we'll get those answered for you. Um, but I remember losing my my composure and crying for the first time in many, many, many, many, many, many years that I can remember anyway. Um, and really crying quite hard, you know. Um, it was it was 15 or 16 years worth of emotion that had been bottled up in my little body all those years, and then finally coming all out at once. Um, I remember when they closed the back door of the hearse and they had the black privacy glass that's reflective. I remember standing there seeing my reflection in that glass. My face is swollen, I'm crying, I got snot coming out of my nose. I'm I'm just a mess, right? And I remember sitting there looking in that glass, trying to get composed and wipe my eyes and clean all this sign of sadness off my face because I didn't want my father to see the emotion. Because my father had made it very, very clear that emotion is not safe. Showing the way you feel is not safe. Shut up, or I'll give you something to cry about. That was the way we lived. Shut up, or I'll give you something to cry about. How many of you guys have heard that? So um my feelings were are inconvenient. You know, my feelings were inconvenient because it was either met with violence or met with chastisation. Is that a word? Chastising, or or met with um being made fun of. You know, these are all things that men are are dealt with, dealt regularly, is having to deal with the repercussions of their emotions. That's one of the reasons for the mental well-being club, by the way, is to help raise the awareness of emotion, help raise the awareness of nervous system health and mental well-being within the community of Colorado Springs and around the world. Obviously, my portion is right here in Colorado. So oh, one sec here. So uh excuse me. Love is earned through performance. This is that transactional piece, right? So I remember with my ex, we would have these weeks long spells where she would barely talk to me, and it would get to the point where I would. Felt so disordered as a result of her uh cold shoulder treatment that I would try to do something as a repair attempt, right? So that repair attempt and repair attempts are good. There's nothing wrong with a repair attempt. You know, if you and your girlfriend or you and your wife, or or vice versa, you and your husband, excuse me, get into an argument and then you crack a joke a few minutes later to uh to try to lighten it or try to repair the damage that was done, or the the you know, you guys are on edge, you're not you're not digging each other at the moment, you know. Um that that's a good thing that's showing that you're trying to make a repair, it's a repair attempt. There's nothing wrong with that. Um, when you're starting to do it as a way to prove that you're worthy of their love, you know, you're trying to constantly repair the relationship because they're constantly causing it to go downhill. That's a lot different. That's a lot different. Uh okay. So excuse me. Attachment requires self-erasure. This is a big one with codependency. Codependence, me, for example, you start losing your sense of um individuality. You start to lose your personality, you start to lose yourself, your sense of self. And your entire being starts to exist to keep them under control emotionally, to keep them regulated. You dysregulate yourself in an attempt to regulate them so that you don't have to deal with the repercussions of whatever abuse is coming down the line. So, what would this maybe do to your body? You know, because we are somatics. We're into somatics, right? So somatic means in the body, chronic sympathetic activation, so constant anxiety, hypervigilance, scanning for danger, your amygdala, just scanning your environment, looking for the next danger, looking for the next shoot or drop, walking on eggshells. Um, or maybe even dorsal shutdown. Dorsal shutdown is more uh identified with like depression, right? Sitting on the couch, you don't have the energy to do anything. You're just done and you're just exhausted. Getting up to walk to the refrigerator feels like walking up Mount Everest. That's your dorsal shutdown, right? That's that backside, that lowest point on the ladder for your polyvagal system right down here. Okay. Um, you might find weak access to the ventral vagal safe, connected state. So as you spend more time in your in your limbic system or in your dorsal vagal system, you begin to spend less time up here in your prefrontal cortex, spending less time here present. The less time you spend present, the harder it is to feel present. The less time you spend in that state, the harder it is to be in that state. So why does a codependent attract a narcissist so much? All right, the unconscious contract. You have codependent brings attunement, flexibility, emotional work, where the narcissist partner brings certainty, direction, intensity, and identity by proxy. So you guys are both filling the needs of the other, right? That narcissist needs its supply and it gets that supply from you working overboard to keep their emotional, sorry, their nervous system regulated. You're attuned to them, you're watching them, you're watching their every move to see what their mood is like so that you can bring them back to a point where you're safe. And they are gonna act exactly the same over and over and over again. So you know that you're gonna feed that addiction for that chaos for yourself. The intensity is there, everything they do is level 10, right? Whether it's affection in the beginning, love bombing in the beginning, or tearing you down and making you feel like a complete worthless piece of garbage. It's done with the same level of intensity. And you get your identity from them. You know, you have basically given up your identity to identify with everyone else to make sure that you're safe. So you start to get your identity from that narcissist by proxy. So it feels like finally someone who knows who I am, someone who finally understands me, someone who needs me. They need me to help them. Uh, familiar role snap into place. I met my ex and I felt a strong need, and I'm not sure where it came from because it was it was fast, man. Um, I met her, and within a week she was saying, I love you. All that type of stuff was happening, just like every other relationship I had been in previously, and I started to lose myself, but I started to notice someone who was in deep pain because of her history, and a little girl who was needed some guidance, and I felt like I was filling that need and filling my own need by fulfilling that need, right? I needed to be needed. So drama bonding starts in a more intermittent reinforcement, the breadcrumbs of love, the highs are really, really high, and the lows are crushingly low. Your nervous system addiction starts, not love, but your nervous system begins to become addicted to the chaos that surrounds that person. It's not con it's not chemistry, it's conditioning. You are being conditioned, just like a dog being conditioned to sit, you're being conditioned to tolerate more and more and more. Because if you're willing to tolerate it, they're worthy of you. Make sense. And this continues. Um, you know, you the codependent will constantly overexplain themselves, they'll blame themselves for the things that are happening, they'll try harder when things get worse. Um, they lose clarity, boundaries, and their identity. I don't know if if you guys are starting to relate or can relate to any of this, but man, you want to talk about boundaries? I had none. There were no boundaries because every time you put up a boundary, it's met with such anger and such um, well, you know what? It was always perceived by my ex as rejection anytime I put up a boundary, which was a huge trigger for her, which would set her off, which would then in turn set me off, and everything goes south. Um, you might notice the narcissist might withhold and they might withhold money, they might withhold sex, they might withhold affection, they might withhold help around the house, they might with there's lots of different ways they can withhold, but they will withhold, they will absolutely shift blame. Um, I was to blame for everything, whether it had anything to do with her or not. She found a way for me to be to blame. The the joke around the house was it's Russ's fault. Um, they'll minimize the harm that they're causing. Um, you know, they might do something hurtful, and then when you explain that it's hurtful, they might come back with be a man. You know, a lot of the same type of reinforcement you may have gotten from the male authority figure in your life as you were growing up. Be a man, stop crying, shut up, or I'll give you something to cry about. Um, and they'll rewrite history, and that's where the blood, that's where the the gaslighting comes in. I there's I can't tell you how many times there were conversations where one thing would happen and then they would explain it completely different, like it was a completely different event. Like I was in a different room experiencing someone else's life. It's it's pretty pretty crazy. And then the only way to get the conflict to end is to agree, to finally take an honest truth. In your body, you might feel a tight chest, you might feel a knotted stomach, or a constant anticipation waiting for the next shoe to drop. Um, you might feel relief when they're okay again, right? Or when they take responsibility for something. If your body is always bracing, it's not love. That is not love. If you're constantly waiting for their next reaction, that isn't love, that's survival. So I gave you guys a whole bunch of really bad love, bad news, right? But here's the good news you can heal it. Codependency can heal. First of all, stop pathologizing yourself. I'm sick and tired of the word disorder, anxiety disorder, depression disorder, um, alcohol use disorder, borderline personality disorder. All of these things are not disorders, they're responses. I rather hear the words borderline personality response than borderline personality disorder because it's not disordered. It's doing exactly what it's meant to do, right? Based on the experience that you had, your nervous system is responding exactly the way it's supposed to. That's not disordered, it's a response. You've adapted brilliantly. Your body and your nervous system have kept you alive. So if some of those things are no longer serving you, think of them as something that at one point did. You're alive today because of them. So allow them to come, thank them, and then just allow them to pass on by because you no longer need them to navigate this stuff. And you start rebuilding your internal safety. Until I was 44 years old, I had no idea what safety even meant, much less what it felt like or how to feel safe. You know, I was in a constant state of fight or flight freeze or pure dissociation, which is an extreme version of freeze. I I very rarely, if ever, got up into the rest and digest state. You know, I would go to I it would take me six hours to digest a meal, right? If I if I ate and then got sick or went to the bathroom several hours later, the food's not digested because my system just isn't working the way it's supposed to work for most of my life. When I started the healing process and started working through some of these things, and my body started working the way it's supposed to, I started feeling better. I started losing weight. I didn't feel so so um inflamed all the time. My gut felt better. I didn't feel sick all the time. I was had more energy, all of these things. Um, you want to rebuild that internal safety. You want we or build it to begin with to be able to feel safe again. Learn to track your sensations, right? So when I feel that now I can feel right now, because I had that pause just a couple of seconds ago and I kind of lost my train of thought for a second. I have this pit in my stomach, and now that I'm talking about it, it's getting worse. But I can feel it, I can feel the response, and I'm responding to something. What am I responding to? I'm responding to something in the back of my head saying, You made a mistake, Russ, and everyone's gonna notice it. And everybody's gonna think you don't know what you're talking about, and they're gonna turn this video off. Why would they listen to somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about? Right? Track it. Track the feeling. Okay, I could feel the pit in my stomach. It's actually already starting to go away because I've already kind of noticed it and recognized it. But notice it, name it. Maybe it's a tightness or a pressure in your chest. Maybe it's just a you know, your teeth are just grinding together. Maybe that's what it is. It's a tightness in your jaw or a tightness in your shoulders, you know, um, numbness or tingling in your fingertips, neuropathy. This is all kinds of uh things that can be that can happen as a result of of not feeling safe. Name the needs, name the needs that you have without acting on guilt. If you need privacy, name it. If you need quiet, name it. If you need peace, name it. Practice receiving without earning it. That's a big one. Love is not transactional. Boundaries. Boundaries are not walls, they are not meant to keep people away from you or keep people out, right? They're information, they're they reveal who can meet you where you are, right? So if there are people who are not meeting you where you are, who are pulling you down to their level, there's nothing wrong with putting up a boundary that says, when you meet me at my level, I will be here for you. Grief. Grief is hard, especially in codependency. I just recently wrote an anthology with a friend of mine called The Empowered Grief Journey. Here it is. Um, my chapter is chapter 16. And originally I was gonna write this chapter about the grief that you feel or may feel after terminating a relationship or ending a relationship with a narcissist. Um I ended up writing about my father, but I did a lot of a lot of research into this and kind of and put my head around it quite a bit. So you grieve the fantasy, right? You grieve the role, you grieve the self that you had to abandon. Healing codependency is learning to stay with yourself even when someone else doesn't. I invite you. We've talked about a lot today, and I'm sure that it's been very triggering for a lot of people, especially if you're experiencing these types of things now. Hopefully, you've got some tools and some ideas and some things to think about to help you move forward. Um, but with it in mind that that you guys might be feeling pretty triggered, I'd love to offer you guys and invite you just to sit down or to rest, just to place your feet flat on the ground so that you can feel your heels and the balls of your feet, even your toes touching the ground. Dig your toes in, really attach yourself. If you're barefoot, it's best. If not, just feel the pressure of the shoe upon your foot and the pressure of your foot pushing against the shoe, which is pushing against the ground. And just place a hand on your chest and one on your stomach like this.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Take a deep, slow inhale through your nose and extend your exhale as long as you can. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Just ask yourself, what do I feel right now?

SPEAKER_00 36:44

I can feel a buzzing in my shoulders across my upper chest.

Guided Regulation And Closing

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Like an energy, like a like an anxiety almost. Ask yourself, what do I need right now? Not what do I need to do? What do I need right now? As I sit here and I think about those things, I realize that I don't need anything right now. I have all of my needs met. I'm warm. I'm safe. I'm fed. I'm safe. I'm safe. You don't heal codependency by becoming less caring. There's nothing wrong with you caring about other people. You heal it by including yourself in the care.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

It's fine to care for others. But care for yourself as well. Self-care is not selfish. That is one of the hardest things for a codependent person to hear. It's been an honor to have you guys on today. I know it was a long one, man. We've been on for 40 minutes. So thanks for sticking with me. If you did, if you didn't, if you just jumped on in the middle or here at the end. Thanks for joining us and and and go back and listen to the whole thing because there's a lot of information in this podcast, man. I put it together. I guess I should have probably split it into two different shows, but it just felt like all the information that was part of this was definitely um uh definitely needed, right? So I just thanks thank everybody for for being on. And um, I hope you can join us next time. If if on the next one you guys have anything to say or anything questions to ask, put them in the comments. If on this one, after it airs, which will be in just a few minutes, um, if you have an uh a question or anything that you want to add, please put it in the comments so that we can hear from you. I'd love to respond and and and I'm I'm here to guide. So show me where you want to go and I'll hope to get there. All right, guys. Thanks again. We'll see you next week. Take care.