When you're raised to be a good girl, when you're an overfunctioner, when you're a perfectionist, it's like you do not want to disappoint other people.
It really feels bad.
And yet, what I really invite you to do in this book is dial into all the ways that you disappoint in yourself if you are constantly prioritizing other people's wants, needs, and desires over your own.
So, have you ever felt like you're just constantly putting out fires for other people in your life?
Like you're so focused on managing their feelings and situations and outcomes, making them happy, helping them out, and making sure nothing goes wrong, that you've lost touch with your own internal peace and well -being?
So where's the line between caring and caring too much?
We're tipping into what today's guest calls high -functioning codependency.
So my guest, Terri Cole, is a licensed psychotherapist, relationship expert, and author of the new book Too Much, a guide to breaking the cycle of high -functioning codependency.
And for over two decades, she's helped clients from all walks of life—international pop stars, athletes, CEOs, and more—learn how to establish healthy boundaries and overcome dysfunctional relationships.
And in our conversation, you'll learn the telltale signs that you might actually be a high -functioning codependent, and how to break free from patterns like over -functioning and endless self -sacrificing.
And Terri shares the huge costs of codependency, from burnout to bitter resentment, and how it can limit your potential in all areas of life.
And you'll also discover some powerful mindset shifts and practical tools for developing greater emotional resilience, self -compassion, and the ability to finally honor your own wants and needs.
And you'll hear Terri's wisdom on what she calls true self -care, surrendering control, and living with more expansion and joy in this season of life.
So if you've ever felt overly invested in other people's outcomes and burned out from chronic self -sacrificing, or just realized you've lost touch with your own wants and needs, this conversation will be really eye -opening and take a different look at how to break that cycle.
So excited to share it with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
We were just catching up and you were saying like, you just turned 60, and using your words, it's fucking great.
It's fucking great.
And I felt like I had like five years prior to where I was like deciding like, how am I going to do this aging thing?
Because really, I don't even feel like I noticed that I was aging for decades before that.
When other people felt like they were, I really didn't feel like I was.
And then I just made a decision.
I was like, I'm not going to chase youth because I have wisdom and I don't need to.
And I'm not ashamed of the way that I look or anything that I've done or who I am.
And I'm not going to let society tell me that I'm less valuable because I'm 60.
I know I'm not. I know what I'm bringing to the party and to my life and to my relationships and to my books and all the shit that I do.
I feel like a lot of post -menopausal women, it's like you really, I mean, there's a physiological change.
Like your brain actually changes.
So the part of you that really needs people pleasing starts shifting and changing to the part that is more seeing.
We see things from a more macro point of view.
And there's something about going into this phase of being, this is the last third of my life, let's say, if I live another 30 or 35 years.
And it's like this is amazing.
I don't want to chase my 28 -year -old ass because my 60 -year -old ass is just fine.
I love that. It's interesting.
You and I are similar ages.
I'm like a little bit behind you.
So I'm pushing up against that number myself shortly.
And I've actually shared recently on the pod that I'm sort of in the middle of this two -year window that I call my two by 20 when I turn 58.
I started asking myself, what would I learn, do, or build the next two years to set up the next 20 years?
Around simplicity, significance, and joy.
Like those were the three things that I want to really center because who knows if we have another day or another decade or another 30, 40 years, God willing.
But I just started asking myself, like, am I okay with where I am, what I'm doing, who I'm doing it with, and the state of my mind and body now?
What parts of it am I and what parts of it would I like to see different for the next season that I'm about to step into?
And I'm coming to a similar pace to you saying that I'm actually good.
We've all done dumb things, I've all done all the yada yada, and yet where I am right now, I'm cool with that.
And I'm really focused forward.
I'm like, okay, so how do I step into this next season, whatever is given to me in a way where I'm really being intentional about the feelings that I want to center in it.
So with you, I also think that you get to this point in life and we have a lot of evidence of the way that we've lived in having in our relationships, in our physicality, in our, you know, and I think that for years and years and years, you put in work, you have a long term relationship Vic and I just
celebrated 25 years, we've been together 27 years.
And those things are intentional, as is my health to the best of my ability, right, I also got cancer in my 30s and I don't think I gave that to myself.
So it's not to say that we can control everything we can't.
But I do think that your choices and your privilege and your lot in life, all of those things are evidenced in what did you do for the past 30 years?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, no, no doubt.
So we started completely different hand to them or we're going to land in this conversation.
But I just think it's, I mean, and you know, you and I have known each other for years also, so tonight's the catch up a little bit.
You spent the last chunk of time diving into a topic that I would imagine, well, I know has been something that you experienced personally, but also as a psychotherapist who's been in practice for a substantial amount of time.
I know you've also seen in so many different situations with clients and it's this notion of what you call high functioning codependency.
Take me into this. Well, the why of high functioning codependency, why did I coin and trademark this phrase?
How did this book become that?
The fact is that I've had a private therapy practice for 27 years and I have, they're highly capable women is like the bulk of my practice.
And I would point out and say, Hey, what you're describing, this is a codependent pattern.
And immediately they would reject the notion.
Immediately they would be like, uh, no way, man.
I'm not dependent on squat.
Terry, you know that everyone's dependent on me.
I'm making all the money.
I'm making all the decisions.
I'm managing all the people.
I'm getting the shit done.
I am not dependent on crap.
And what I realized is that my clients didn't know what a codependency actually is and that they were being influenced by the so many misconceptions, but it was the melody baity codependent no more gotta be enabling an alcoholic to be a codependent is what they were going on.
So I knew I needed to educate them, but then I started looking and saying, Hmm, what are the similarities between all of these clients that I have?
Like there's a through line.
This is a new breed of codependency.
And it was eerily familiar to me because it was my own personal flavor of codependency in my life.
Cause I also would not have ever certainly in my twenties and even my early thirties identified as codependent because I was so forward motion.
So what is it? I'll give you my definition.
It's when we are overly invested in the feeling States, the outcomes, the situation, the circumstances, the finances, the careers of the people in our lives to the detriment of our own internal piece.
Because as women and as lovers, obviously as anybody, as decent humans, obviously we're invested in our people being happy.
This is what we want.
But when you are in HFC as we call it, you're overly invested to the point of feeling responsible for if we look at the foundation of coat any kind of codependency.
It's an overt or covert bid to control other people's outcomes.
And I think that that part of codependency is not talked about much.
The irony with high functioning codependency is that the more capable you are, the less codependency looks like codependency, but it still is codependency.
So we still suffer.
So as soon as I sort of renamed it and re identified it from this very high functioning place, all of my clients without shame were able to say me on the problem.
It's me, right? Not to quote Taylor, but I will.
And without shame being like, yes, I am doing all the things for all the people.
I am doing the emotional labor in my relationships.
I am exhausted. I am kind of bitter because here's the thing.
We can only do the over giving and over functioning and even over feeling for so long.
So why in your 20s, you don't even really notice it.
It's just the way you are.
It's the way you think relationships are.
Right. We all have a blueprint, right?
A relational blueprint.
I just call your HFC blueprint, but really it is a relational blueprint, meaning we learn in our families of origin, culture, country, society, how we are supposed to be in relationship to other people and for women.
So much of the time we learned.
Be compliant. Be pleasant.
Smile. Where's my happy girl?
Turn that frown around.
If you don't have anything else to say, don't say anything at all.
So we learn all of these things in childhood that this is what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a good woman.
And it's just built on the back of self -sacrificing.
You hear people say, Oh, you love Betty.
She gave anybody the shirt off her back.
I want to be like, keep your effing shirt on Betty.
Like, why are we giving anybody our shirt?
Where's the discernment?
And why is this celebrated in our society?
So that inspired me to do a whole bunch of research with my clients, basically.
And I actually was like, we need a book.
People are suffering because how can I help my clients if they don't see themselves in the problem?
Right? They kept thinking, no, it's not that it's that if my boss would just change, if my husband was just changed, if my friend, you know, and I'm like, no, so we can get into what are the traits?
What are the behaviors?
What's the cost? What are the what are the fixes?
Whichever, however you want to look at it.
I mean, it's a really fascinating idea.
And also, I don't want to skip over this, this settler idea that when you were first broaching this with clients, that they would sort of summarily reject it because there is this sort of shame often rides shotgun with the label of codependency.
Yes. You know, it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, like, I'm not that person.
And that changing the identifier and sort of naming this as high -functioning codependency, has this really interesting shift in the way that I would imagine it lands with people.
And saying, no, no, it doesn't because I think a lot of people here codependency and what they translate that to also is needy, not capable.
Yes, competent. Right.
Correct. And you're saying, no, no, no.
Like, you're actually like extraordinary.
You're performing at the highest levels.
And that's, in fact, probably veiling the codependency.
That's underneath it, but it's not eliminating the impact of it.
Did I get that right?
Exactly right. Jonathan, you got the most important stuff, which is that we are still suffering.
And trust me when I tell you, nobody is checking in on an HFC.
In my life, people weren't like, I wonder if Terri is OK.
They're like, she's always OK.
There will never be a time when she is not OK.
And so what happens is that there's a hyper independence that comes along with being an HFC where one of our mottos is I got it.
Another is it has to be me, which also there's a self aggrandizing piece to this clearly, because obviously I got abducted by aliens tomorrow.
All the shit I'm doing, someone else would do.
It actually doesn't have to be me.
But there's this lack of trust that other people will step up or that if they do step up, they'll do it in the way that we want it done or they'll do it in the timely fashion that we want it done in.
And so I feel like HFCs there can be a perfectionism angle as well.
But we've just learned in life that it's easier if I do myself, which of course is not true.
That is a lie. It's easier in the short run because you may not have to have a hard conversation or you may not have to be vulnerable because what it's really all about if we're looking at it, is this this desire.
There's a fear of being vulnerable that I certainly had myself when I was realizing my own codependent ways and just going through my own therapeutic journey.
I mean, Dick and I met because he's such a capable person.
I would be constantly blocking him from doing things for me.
You know, he lived in Jersey.
I was living on the Upper West Side and he'd be like, let me come scoop you up 20 minutes.
I'll just jump in through the tunnel, pick you up and then come back to the house.
And I would always be like, let me just go to Penn and take the train.
It doesn't even make you so much more efficient.
Right. And my mother was like, terror, why are you blocking this guy from doing nice things for you?
He's trying to make your life easier.
He clearly wants to come and pick you up.
And she's like, it's not about efficiency.
Right. And she said, you know, and if you keep blocking the gifts, the generosity, the offers, they start drying up because nobody likes to be continually rejected.
His offer of kindness and me rejecting it.
And I remember talking about this in therapy and my therapist was like, why don't you want?
Why is it hard for you to allow that to do things for you?
And I just spontaneously said, because he already has the power to annihilate me.
So weird. She was like, annihilate that that's an interesting choice of words.
And it was like I'd already let my guard down.
I was already in love.
I already felt like, wow, this guy turns out to not be who I think he is.
I've literally think I'll die.
Now, of course, I wouldn't if he hadn't been who I thought he was.
But it felt that scary.
It felt that life and death.
And I think I had never made myself vulnerable in that way.
And I think that's very HFC.
We don't want to be a burden, but really, we don't want to be vulnerable.
So if I'm in control of everything, even if it's the illusion of control, I had the illusion that I'm protected from being hurt.
Again, an illusion.
Yeah. I mean, so powerful when you start to strip it away that way.
When you are in the space of being an HFC in a dysfunctional set of patterns and relationships for extended period of time.
Talk to me about what the costs are of this that you have seen unfold.
I mean, you've described a little bit in your life, you know, this could have led to the demise of a relationship that now has become this gorgeous 25 year relationship.
But what are you seeing consistently across people?
Like what does this what is the past that it leads people down that takes away from the way that they want to live?
Well, one thing is that a lot of burnout people walk into my office about health problems from TMJ to autoimmune disorders to insomnia.
Like there's a lot of ways that being this hyper -vigilant about other people, it's exhausting to your nervous system.
And eventually we become resentful.
Eventually, we blame the other people, even if we've initiated these behaviors, even if we are saying, I got it, there's a part of you that feels underappreciated in your relationships.
Even if you're doing it, you are not fully self -expressed, right?
Because what we really want doing is managing everything sort of around us.
And it constitutes what I call living life light, like L -I -T -E, because you're not fully present.
When we're endlessly thinking about some of the behaviors of high -function codependencies, auto -advice -giving, we just can't stop having ideas for you.
And you may not have even asked me for an idea, but I still have the right person that you should go to, or I want to tell you about the right vacation you should take or whatever.
We also have auto -accommodating where we're in a situation, because one of the distinguishing factors is that for HFCs, it's not just the people in our lives that we can become codependently attached to, or that we can interact codependently with.
It can be people in our surroundings.
I opened the book with a story of me on a train platform in Long Island, taking a train back to New York City at 1030 at night on a Tuesday, seeing this stranger and never saw him in my life, a 19 -year -old kid, and immediately my helper, Radar Ping, then was like, hmm, I wonder what this boy, I was probably
22. He was 19. I wonder what this boy is doing out so late?
Where is he going? I started chatting him up, found out he was supposed to drive a car back to Indiana.
The gig got canceled.
He has a little blanket in his hand.
I go, oh, where are you going?
He's like, where are you going to stay?
He's like, I'm just going to stay in Penn Station.
I was like, no, you're not.
Have you been to Penn Station, pal?
This was the late 80s where, you know, the city was rougher than it is now.
And he was like, well, I don't know anyone in New York.
And I was like, yeah, you do.
You know me. You're coming home with me.
And that's how a perfect stranger came to stay in my studio apartment with my female roommate.
I didn't even call her.
I just came home with this kid, feeling so responsible that something were bad was going to happen to him.
And it was on me to make sure it didn't, which, of course, in hindsight, is ridiculous.
But at the time, it was so real.
I didn't even feel like I had a choice.
I was like, that's what it is.
And I see this over and over again in my practice where we get, we could get sucked into causes.
Listen, this is not a terrible thing, right?
If you're going to the map for a cause, great.
But it's, what are we doing it for?
What is activating our behavior?
Because people will say to me, all the HFCs on the internet want to tell me that they're just being nice and that this is just the way they are.
And they're a very helpful person.
And all I can say is, if you can't not do it, it's not you being nice.
It's a compulsive behavior, just like any other compulsive behavior.
And you're doing it for you, because the other person being in danger or being in pain or having a situation is making you so uncomfortable, you feel compelled to fix it.
So your own discomfort will stop.
Which, you know, is a tough pill to swallow, at least when I first wrapped my skull around it.
I was like, oh, so not Mother Teresa.
I really just want this person's dumpster fire for life to stop ruining my peace.
Yeah, and I mean, it seems like a big part of this also is what you described earlier when you defined it, which is the last part of the definition, which is to the detriment of yourself in some meaningful way.
It's like, okay, you're not saying don't give, you're not saying don't be loving, don't support a friend in need or feel like we're an animal that you see that you want.
But inquire into what's really happening in the era.
And is it serving the other or is it serving you?
Is it serving both?
And is it doing so in a way where in some way it's actually causing harm to you?
Maybe not immediately with one action, but as you're describing, this is actually a compulsion that represents the accumulation of nearly all the actions, the way that you step into your life over time.
Is the weight of that causing harm to you?
You know, because at that point, there's something that you need to talk about.
And what is it doing to your relationships?
You know, the over and under functioning dynamic is a big part of this.
And I would say, I say it kidding, but it's the truth in my 20s, I could take a perfectly capable boyfriend and turn him into an under functioner in two weeks or less.
Because I was so like, I got it.
I made the plan. No problem.
You know, there's something about the over and under functioning that happens.
It's not just detrimental to the person over functioning.
It's detrimental to the person under functioning, too, because they feel bad about themselves, especially is dehumanizing.
When you are centering every situation on you and your great ideas and what you're doing and your capabilities, it's like you're the person doing all the things, making all the choices.
And even though it can be exhausting, the other person is sort of out of the mix.
And in the process, we're also self abandoning to get it done, whatever the it is.
So I feel like there's the costs go on and on.
But when we think about children, if we are an age of C with our kids and we're constantly inserting ourselves and our grade A advice into the middle of whatever crisis they're in, I'm not saying we're going to stop giving our kids our thoughts.
I am saying it sure as should not be the first stop on the bus.
So the first stop on the bus with any age kid, when they go, I have this problem, the first stop is, all right, babe, what do you think you should do?
It doesn't mean we're going to let a seven -year -old decide, but we do need to teach them critical thinking and deductive reasoning and that there's consequences for actions.
We're teaching them to think that's part of our job as parents.
And I feel like a lot of what you see today with, we talk about helicopter parenting, but the parent can't stop parenting, can't stop making their child's life about them.
And I feel like it's a disservice.
If we think about the book The Prophet, there's that beautiful poem he has in there on parenthood, on children.
And basically it's this image, this understanding that as parents, we are the bows and the children, they're the arrows, right?
And our job is to set them up to go far, whatever that means for them, but to not expect them to organize everything that they do in their life around us when they're 50 and we're 80, is to allow them to have their own family and let that be the center of their life.
And then we are the family of origin and it doesn't mean we don't spend time and we love them, but it's like, there's a lot of expecting this like hardcore loyalty to family of origin, which makes kids, it can make it difficult for people to prioritize the family that they're creating with their partner.
And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
Part of what you're teasing out here also is this notion of like, how do you differentiate between caring and high functioning co -dependence?
Yes. Because there's a line there, you know?
It's not that stop helping your kids, it's not that stop offering advice, like stop running out and like getting some chicken soup for a friend when they're sick.
And I would imagine the line is different for different people in different relationships and it probably changes over time where caring and loving and generosity crosses into something else.
And as you described also, and I think maybe it's not apparent at first, but when you do it, you're not just taking something from yourself, you're unwittingly taking something from the other person as well, like whether it's their ability to be kind and generous and experience that gorgeous giver's
glow on the other side of it or their ability to make decisions, be wrong and then figure out how to actually be right again and fix it and then have the glow of resilience and competence and confidence.
You know, it's we take that from them because we want them to avoid the pain of having to go through that.
But at the same time, what you're saying is we want to avoid the pain of us seeing them having to go through that.
That's the deeper reason here.
It is and it's painful to realize that, but think about how much more loving it is to be willing to be in the foxhole with your friend who has a broken heart and not be hyper positive and not say you'll find someone else and not any of the platitude bullshit, not tell them anything other than I'm here.
Ask them, how can I best support you right now?
If you want to talk, we can talk.
If you don't want to, we can just sit here.
Like, that's love. I'll be with you when it sucks for me to be with you without compulsively trying to fix you because nobody likes to be.
People as projects doesn't work in long -term relationships.
It really doesn't. People don't like to feel, do you ever have that?
You talk to a friend and they immediately give you advice and you're like, I don't fucking need that.
I get so mad. My friends know they don't.
But back in the day when people would and even with Vic in the beginning, I knew his desire to help me problem solve was from love.
But I needed to teach him that it didn't make me feel loved and that if I wanted to brainstorm, I would tell him.
But what I really needed was compassionate witnessing.
And for him to just ask me, Babe, how can I best support you right now?
That he says it to this day and it always warms my heart because I can then say, let's make out.
Or I can say, would you make me a cup of tea?
Or I can say, I want to talk this out.
Do you have time to do it now?
But he's respecting my autonomy to know what I need instead of making assumptions about what I need.
And I feel like when we auto -advice give, we are making assumptions for our own, not to mention how much projection happens in there.
I don't know when the last time I was on, we were talking about that situation that happened with one of my sisters because this was the beginning of this book because I had one chapter in Boundary Boss, my last book on high functioning codependency because there was so many people wanted me to write
about it. And in there, I tell a story about one of my sisters.
She was in an abusive relationship, living in the woods.
She was an active alcoholic.
He was doing crack.
They had no running water, no electricity, and he was abusive.
So that's like an HFC's nightmare.
Every day was a fire alarm, fire for me.
Being like, how can I get her out of there?
What do I need to do to make this happen?
Crying to my therapist, and my therapist said to me, Terry, what makes you think you know what your sister needs to learn and how she needs to learn it in this lifetime?
And I was like, okay, maybe.
But I think we can probably agree she doesn't need to do it with a crackhead in the woods.
Like, can we agree on that at least, Bev?
And she was like, no.
You know why, Tara?
Because I'm not God.
I don't know what your sister needs to learn and how she needs to learn it.
But do you know what's going on for you?
And I was like, obviously not.
So fill me in. And she said you've worked really hard to create a pretty harmonious life.
And your sister's dumpster fire of a life is really fucking with your piece.
And you want your pain to end.
And I was like, you are not lying.
That is true. And I had to really come to terms with the fact that what I thought was solely, my motivation was only sisterly love, loyalty, and devotion was tinged with codependency.
And then she said, how about some boundaries?
And I was like, wow.
Keep in mind I was in my 20s.
This was decades ago.
And I was like, boundaries?
What the hell is that?
So I had this conversation with my sister saying, hey, I cannot talk to you about this abusive guy.
But if you ever want to get out of that situation, I can.
So I'm going to step back, which was so hard to do.
And she said, I understand.
And then we talked a few times in the nine months that went by.
She called me and said, are you still my person?
If I want to get out?
And I was like, yes, I am.
Got in my car, picked her up.
And the T .S. on that story and why that story even matters is that me forcing her to leave when I think she should leave and do the thing I think that she should do wouldn't have stuck anyway.
So there's that. Because my therapist said to me, she's like, Terry, I'm not saying you shouldn't save your sister.
I'm saying you can't.
I'm saying it's a literal impossibility.
So why bash your skull against the brick wall?
But in the end of the end, my sister got to be the hero of her own story.
Not her youngest sister being the hero of her story.
She got sober. She went back to school.
She built the life.
She decided she was worth getting sober for.
Not for me, for her.
And that's also what we rob people for when we center their situations on us.
And yes, if my sister, if I thought she was going to die, I would have done an intervention or whatever.
I'm not saying we should never intervene because you'll have people who will say, so do you just let someone die?
No. If I thought she was going to die, I wouldn't have.
But I also, my therapist wouldn't agree with that either.
So there comes a point where so much of the time where we are inserting ourselves, it's not a life or death situation.
And we are robbing people of their autonomy and of their right to, as you said, people have a right to succeed and fail, to thrive and to flail, to literally not know what they're doing.
Make mistakes. Isn't that how we learned?
Is just through these spectacular shit storm mistakes that we made in life?
Because that's how we learn.
So we can't learn for other people.
Well, maybe other people learn that way.
But of course we don't learn that.
No, we don't. So what's buzzing in my head right now is, how do we know?
How do we know if this is our situation?
How do we know if this is actually what's going on?
One of the things that you identified is like, is my MO auto advice giving?
What are the other things that we can look for to start to say, huh, maybe there's something else happening here?
Overfunctioning. So if you're doing more than you share, auto accommodating.
And this could be in a public place where you're so dialed into your atmosphere.
These people want to sit together.
You're like, oh, I'll move.
You see someone who needs something.
You're just, instead of being in your body, it's almost like you're hypervigilant about what's around you.
And auto accommodating in other situations, too.
Let's say that you and Sephora both had to go to work and you had two cars, and you walk out the door and there's a flat tire in the car you normally use.
And it would be her being like, just take the other car.
I'll Uber. Go, no worries.
Like auto accommodating.
We want the situation to be handled right now.
Anticipatory planning is another one where you know you're going to be with someone who maybe they're difficult.
So you plan all the ways to avoid the pitfalls of them exploding about something.
So it's kind of like walking on, you know, getting your masters and walking on eggshells.
Being overly self -sacrificing is another way.
So those are sort of the behaviors, but the easiest way and maybe the fastest way for anybody listening to go, oh, is this me, is to do a quick resentment inventory.
Because this will serve as a GPS to bring you to relationships where you might be over -functioning or over -giving or enabling.
Because, you know, that is part of codependency too.
Enabling, am I over -functioning, enabling this person to under -function.
Whether it's constantly giving your grown brother money for rent or whatever it is.
So when you do the resentment inventory, that'll at least be a place to start to look at the relationships.
But I think the one that people can work on the easiest and the fastest is the auto -advised giving.
That you can just take the next 48 hours to see how often were you going to insert your two cents into someone else's situation.
Whether they asked you or whether they didn't.
Because both are opportunities for you to do something different, which would feel different and also will change your relationships.
So instead of auto -advised giving, we learned to ask expansive questions.
It's just a switch.
You're just gonna flip the script.
And instead of immediately going into your grade A good advice, and I'm sure you do have grade A good advice, people listening, so do I.
You know, it's why I wanna tell you.
Because I wanna help you fix your problem.
But instead, we're gonna be devoted to being interested in the people that we're talking to.
So the first thing is you ask them, what do you think you should do?
And they say, I don't know, I want you to tell me.
You say, all right, in the end, I'll tell you.
But let's just explore because nobody really knows better than you what you should do in this situation.
You know the players, you know the circumstances.
So what does your gut say?
Let's just kick it around.
So we can learn to be with someone in there not knowing and be a part of the solution in a way that's like healthy and appropriate, helping them get to it.
And even if they're making the wrong choice, quote unquote, according to us, it's their choice to make and realizing it is not your side of the street to convince someone, a grown adult, it'll be more complicated with children even when they're grown, right?
Because that's a hard position for us to shift as parents, right?
I do want to still give you my advice.
It's funny, my kids are all their biased.
And so it's like, I'll be like, I haven't thought about that.
Do you want to hear it?
I mean, mostly they do want to hear it.
And sometimes they're like, I'm good.
I'm like, great, okay.
Or they are not interested in my grade A advice and I have to respect their right to basically say, hey, I'm not looking for input right now on this.
And we can learn ourselves to get the interaction we need to by saying, hey, right now what I would love is compassionate listening.
That's all I need. You knowing that I'm in pain helps so much.
Just you knowing, just you caring that I'm struggling.
So it's not just a way for us to be more present and loving in our relationships.
It's also a way for us to get our needs met.
And I feel like with HFCs, we really in our own way, even if from the outside it looks good, because we really do have it together.
So the exterior really looks good, but we're probably not taking the greatest care of ourselves.
Because in a way, we're last on our own list.
It's like they're always someone else needs something.
We're very comfortable giving up what we wanted to do for what someone else wants to do.
Because again, we are conflict avoidant in our own ways.
And part of this process of getting into recovery is really learning ourselves, figuring out who we are, what are my preferences, my desires, my limits, my deal breakers.
What am I doing in this life?
Like, is this what I want to be doing?
Because the glass ceiling, what ends up happening is that when we're bleeding all this bandwidth, having this external focus on others, there's this glass ceiling of our own making that happens in our careers and in our relationships.
Because you can't do both.
You can't endlessly be pouring yourself into other people and still have the career that you want to have, or still have the deep intimacy in the relationships that you want to have.
You really can't. So I think it's valuable to really look at what are the limitations that we put on ourselves if we stay in this high -functioning, codependent behavior.
So many things in that.
One, the notion of bubbling resentment being an indicator of, this might actually be me.
Although advice giving and the notion of, before you ever open your mouth to say, this is what I think you should, start with something which is more akin to a question of, how can I best support you right now in this moment?
But that last thing I want to dive deeper into also, this notion of, I don't know if you actually use the phrase self -care, but there's, and this is one of the things that you write about in the book, quote, real self -care.
So break this down a little bit for me.
Because I think so many of us are like, oh, I do the self -care thing.
I got to cover it. I'm good.
Right? And you're kind of like, maybe not so fast here, especially if you are an HFC.
Indeed, but an insightful question you have.
I've actually sort of renamed the real self -care as self -consideration.
Because I find that the, when we think of self -care, we're like, get a mani -pedi, woo.
So yeah, HFCs have that going on.
That surface level self -care probably is happening.
But I'm talking about deeper consideration, which is having better boundaries, which is surrendering to what is.
That's the last chapter in the book.
It's about surrender, which when I was young, that would have been a dirty word.
I would have been like, never surrender, you know, but this is surrender to what is.
How can our problem solve from the sort of hyper positive silver lining detective place, we have to deal with what is happening and surrender to what is my side of the street, meaning my responsibility, and what is someone else's.
Two other really important aspects of getting into recovery for HFC is getting really comfortable with disappointing other people.
Cheryl Richardson has a book called, Let Me Disappoint Him.
So I love to quote that because when you're raised to be a good girl, when you're an over -functioner, when you're a perfectionist, it's like you do not want to disappoint other people.
It really feels bad.
And yet what I really invite you to do in this book is dial into all the ways that you disappoint in yourself if you are constantly prioritizing other people's wants, needs, and desires over your own.
Mel Robbins has this funny thing that she says that when someone's about to do something, let's say your sister's doing something that you don't think she should be doing.
That in your mind, before you say anything to your sister, you just say, let them, just let her, let her, right?
It does something to your sort of central nervous system.
I think it's funny because of course, again, it's an illusion, right?
I'm not letting my sister do something or you're not letting your brother do something.
But there's something about relaxing into what that really says to me, the let them little technique that she has is it's really saying, that is not my side of the street.
That is her right to discover this on her own.
Again, what we're doing when we are having more self -consideration is that we are, before we auto -yes anything, literally checking in and saying, do I have the bandwidth to do this?
Or more importantly, do I want to do this?
Because not wanting to do something is a perfectly good reason not to do it and you don't need to write a dissertation on your note.
You could just not be into it.
I give you lots of scripts in here.
It could just be like, hi, not my thing.
I hope you guys have an amazing time at that outside concert or whatever the thing is.
The person who invited you to the outside concert didn't invent outside concert.
Like we don't have to worry about offending them.
But I think the saying no, it taps into the desire to not disappoint people.
It's literally as you're just sort of like talking through all these different things.
There's a thought bubble building in my mind.
Check, check, check, check.
Some of these behaviors are things that either have been a major part of my life or are currently a part of my life.
And it comes. You erect this sort of structure around you to feel like you can breathe moving through each day.
To feel like in a world that feels just like everything spinning out of control and we have so little control over so much of what's happening in the world right now.
And that is true. That is the reality.
I feel like we tend to look at the things closest to us and that oftentimes those things are the people, the relationships.
And say, can I exert control here without realizing that's actually what we're doing.
Because everything else, I can't figure out how to control enough so I can breathe easier.
But maybe this, I can.
And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.
I don't want to just skip over.
You certainly offered up this notion of surrender and the role that that plays in a process of recovery here.
Because as you described, I think somebody else, especially when you're younger, this is a dirty word.
You know, it translates in my brain to surrender means you're just giving up, right?
Yes. So take me deeper into this concept in the way that you're actually articulating it.
Well, think of it as this, as a softening, as a softness, as an allowing, right?
Allowing other people to add value to your life.
Not only be, not being the only one who's doing anything.
I'm giving yourself permission to what is for you.
If you used to be willing to do all the holidays at your house, but you really don't want to anymore, surrendering to the truth of the shift in your desire and let your family know, you know, I'm going to do Thanksgiving, but it's going to be potluck this year.
And actually, Christmas is up for grabs because I don't want to do it and actually begin our going away or whatever, like surrendering to the truth of how we feel surrendering to the truth of what is having faith that our relationships are more durable than we think, that we are not that fragile, that our
relationships are not that fragile.
And I think the allowing, because the big thing that, for HFCs, is hard to allow other people to help us.
Not just do nice things for us or give us gifts or give us compliments, really to help us.
With HFCs, when you're really in recovery, you can actually reach out to people and be vulnerable enough to say, I need help.
Can you help me? Will you help me?
Which is like the ultimate invulnerability when you're a doer and when you're a high functioning person, that's the hardest thing to do.
So that's the way that I look at surrender.
It's not a giving up.
It's recognizing the truth of what is.
It's really getting out of denial.
When we surrender to the truth of what is, right, I needed to surrender.
When I was feverishly trying to get my sister out of that situation, I needed to surrender to the truth that it was her choice and she needed to reach her bottom that she hadn't reached yet.
That was so painful.
That was so hard, but that's what I needed to do.
And it is what I did.
And I was able to step back because I did it.
So that's sort of my lens on surrender and allowing and how incredibly important that is to the process of getting into recovery.
When you talk about surrender, I'm also wondering in this context, is part of this, the notion of surrendering the need to have a certain outcome happen?
Yes, great point. Yes, it is.
But that's again, when you back up to your own side of the street and how you know you need to do that is when you think, oh, I don't want them to think or you say in your mind, I don't want them to feel, you need to just back your high knee up to your own side of the street because what other people
think and what other people feel is their side of the street.
And when you get into recovery from being an HFC, you start to become an actual expert on what you think and what you feel, probably for the first time in your life because my clients, I would say, what do you want?
And you know what? Across the boards, people want peace.
They want harmony. They want everyone to be happy.
And that's just can't be your goal in life.
You can build a harmonious life.
I have. You certainly can.
But it's like, what do you want for yourself?
And I feel like a lot of times with HFCs were so dialed into other people and their outcomes that we were not even positive.
So it really is an exploration of self -love, of figuring out who you are and what you want and being honest about it.
Because if you're just checking boxes, right?
If we go through life, especially women, because we do so many things.
Not that men don't, they do.
But there's an expectation of children and aging parents and friends and PTA and all this other stuff.
I feel like it's starting to even up with men and fathers as well.
But forever, that's been women's work.
And to be the assuagers and the bridgers were like the line producers of life.
In that, you can literally never know who you are, which means that the people in your life don't know who you are.
And I've had women coming into my practice in their sixth and seventh decade of life being like, hey, I've done all the things.
We're successful. We've got money.
I'm on these boards.
I go to SoulCycle three times a week.
My kids all went to Ivy League schools.
Hello. Is this how I'm supposed to feel?
I'm like, well, how do you feel?
They're like empty.
and I'm like, yeah, because nobody knows you because you built your whole life on checking boxes that somebody else erected and never always being willing to take one for the team.
There's got to be a point when we stand up for ourselves for what we want, for how we feel, for what we really want in our lives.
And as HFCs, that can be hard to do.
Where does, not compassion, but where is self compassion enter this conversation?
I talk about it a lot in the book because HFCs have a tendency to be perfectionists and to be hard on themselves.
And once you realize, once you really start doing the work, because I give you all exercises within the book, as you're going through the book, you're sort of doing the exercises.
It's all about the reader, right?
Because nobody wants to read a theoretical book on anything.
I don't blame you, neither do I.
It's like we're bringing it back to you and what it is that you want.
It's not judging, right?
It's so easy when you realize, like I realized with my sister, I was like, Oh my God, I thought it was mother Teresa, but it was really about me.
Oh my God, like I was humiliated at first.
And then you have to go, Hello, would you, your friend should be humiliated if she was in the exact same situation?
And the answer is no.
And so I remind you throughout the book often to this is all gentle.
It's just slow, slow, slow.
We're doing it one baby step at a time.
You don't have to change anything.
Even if you have realizations about things, right?
You always have the choice of what is your next right action.
And I think that treating yourself the way you do a child that you love with the same voice, same internal voice, so much of the time we have this caustic, inner mean committee.
We want to be really aware of them and you really want to become your own beloved because you have to be the relationship you have with yourself sets the bar for every other relationship that you have in your life.
And so if you treat yourself like crap, you never rest.
You're exhausted. You insomnia, TMJ autoimmune disorders, because you're so burnt out from over giving and over functioning, you would never want your daughter to be doing that or your son.
You would never want that.
We want that self consideration bar to be high because then we can bring that person into our relationships instead of the frazzled, fried, kind of bitter person who we become if we don't change these behaviors.
It's that resentment bubbling up, right?
In addition to self compassion, one of the things that you reference is mindfulness kind of under the umbrella of emotional resilience.
And emotional resilience is this thing that, when we get, we've been talking about more that, well, what are we going to do about this part of things?
And emotional resilience is one of these things where it's like we need to actually develop this ourselves.
And I guess part of that, from what I understand is if we're going to do this thing of sort of like backing away from controlling everyone and everything so that we feel like we can breathe, as you described, like everyone tells you in your practice, I want peace.
You know, if we think that gives us peace and then we're like, okay, I'm going to let go of that.
I'm going to surrender.
Even if you take baby steps, that means that, at least for the near term, if not a while or just for life, the peace of having everything as controlled as it can be, everyone as controlled as they can be is going to go away.
Correct. Which means we are going to have a lot more things coming at us and into us that may well rattle us and trigger us and make us feel things that we haven't felt in a long time.
Which brings us to sort of this conversation of like, what do you then do once you start to, how do you live in that space when you're starting to feel all these things that you've kind of kept at bay by monotically controlling everything and everyone?
Well, part of it is we take that control element and we sort of bring it into more of a emotional self -regulation for ourselves.
So we take some of that bandwidth that we've been bleeding and we pour it into us understanding our own triggers, our own activation points.
Why is it so stressful for me to let my friend suffer without thinking I can fix it?
You can still comfort your friend.
You can put your art, you can hug them, you can be with them, right?
So it's also realizing it's not the stark contrast of the unhealthy hoping and then the good luck.
I don't care what happens to you, right?
It's obviously there's gradations but we need to become experts and there's a whole, basically a chapter in the book about our own emotions, about deeply understanding ourselves and why we react.
We become radically curious about, why am I reacting this way to this situation?
Let me give you all kinds of tools and strategies for you to sort of decode.
What am I having a transference?
Does this remind me of an earlier situation that was similar?
Huh, that's interesting.
Oh my gosh, look, I'm reacting to my boss like he was my mean father because he reminds me of him because he golfs like him or he sounds like him but he's not him, right?
So all of that takes time.
It takes self -consideration to be interested in our reactions and responses and then we change them.
And so meditation and mindfulness, actual discipline, like a daily action of something.
I mean, I have a daily meditation practice and have for many, many years, I think you do as well.
And it's like that, for me, created about two seconds of response time so I could make a different choice rather than just the knee -jerk reaction, the compulsive fixing.
I was able to breathe and say, how can I best support you, babe?
Instead of giving my two cents or instead of judging him for not doing what I thought I should have done in the beginning or whatever, there's a whole myriad of things that we do when we feel like things are getting out of control that we don't like.
And it's tolerating that.
It's learning to tolerate, being uncomfortable.
And once you start to realize that the Earth does not stop spinning on its axis and nobody spontaneously bursts into flames, when we do that, it becomes so much easier to do because it's a child's fear, Jonathan.
It's the child within us that's like, if I don't do this, something really bad is going to happen.
It's not necessarily true.
And I completely agree there.
And my mindfulness practice has brought me not only just greater awareness of what I feel is closer to what actually is happening within me and around me, but also like you described just a hot second or two to notice and then be like, and rather than just autopilot reacting to something, you're like,
what's the intentional response here?
How do I want to step into this?
And not saying that I always still can at that point, but at least it gives me the window to be slightly more intentional about it.
And maybe in another 15 years, that window will expand from two seconds to four seconds for me at least.
But when you start changing, though, Jonathan, what ends up happening is that we're creating new neural pathways with new behaviors.
And the more you repeat the new behavior, the smoother it is than that pathway, right?
In the beginning, it's like you've got a sickle and you're like chopping it out.
But the more you do it, that becomes the new sort of set point is the new behavior.
So part of it is just staying really awake while we're doing the new behaviors.
But honestly, we are so resilient and we're so adaptive as human beings that before you know it, because you're also on the other side, you're getting all of this stuff that's creating dopamine and feel -good hormones that you're not getting when you're in this controlling state.
So on the other side, when you're in recovery, there's so much more expansion, more joy, less rushing, less productivity, less controlling other people, more allowing, more surrendering.
And I promise you, it is a more joyful life.
It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well.
So I have asked you this question a number of times now over the years, but time passes, we grow.
So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
Expansion actually is a thing that comes up is living a life, my life.
I'm always, especially now on the past two years, seeking to have more expansion, meaning more downtime, more playtime with Vic, more trying to plan, doing something, even if it's just a staycation every 90 days, even if it's just three days of literally no work, no matter what, for either one of us,
because we're both recovering workaholics for sure.
So that's what it means to me.
It's being balanced physically, emotionally, but it's enjoying.
It's realizing this is for me and Vic too, because he's 10 years older than me.
This is the evening of our lives and I don't want to miss it.
Thank you. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app, and if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did since you're still listening here.
Would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, and share it?
Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person.
Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy.
Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered, because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together.
Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
