· Codependents often find themselves experiencing cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the sense of confusion and uncertainty we experience when we try to believe two contradictory things at the same time. For codependents, this happens when we are in a harmful or toxic relationship with someone who tells us that they love us or whom we tell ourselves loves us. The root of this confusion lies in a belief that if we admit the reality of the bad relationship we will not find a better option. This field gives us a sense that life can and will provide better friends or family or intimate partners and that we do not need to hold on to something that is harming us. It will also prod us to see when we are not being honest with ourselves about the nature and helpfulness or harmfulness of a relationship we are in. “Release and Heal Gaslighting” does something similar but here we are focusing on helping people to also not gaslight themselves.
· Codependents can experience a lack of self-directedness where they feel they need someone to give them a command or permission in order for them to take initiative and better themselves. They can find it difficult to do something that is truly helpful for themselves without it also being done for someone else. This field will help the user to see and feel the benefit of doing things purely for their own benefit. This does not mean doing things at the expense of others, rather it means having a healthy self-initiative which is necessary to live a fulfilling life. This sense of the beneficence and desirability of self-benefiting actions will build up stronger and stronger over time until the user is living in a completely healthy and functional way rather than depending on the goodwill of an outward person to give them some incentive to help themselves.
· They may also tend to exist in a state of over-receptivity where they are putting very little out into their world and instead of taking in an over-abundance of outer input into themselves. This could show up as binging or overindulgence in many different activities such as watching television or movies, gaming, listening to public speakers, listening to music, or reading books. These are not necessarily bad activities but the codependents tend to partake in these receptive pastimes to a harmful extent because they are unwilling to create into their own life. They are instead maintaining a state of being created upon or into themselves by outer persons and forces. Overcoming Codependency will inspire the user to be aware of their internal unique spark of life, that which they are the only ones capable of being and of contributing, and of the life only they are capable of living. It will also bring a person into a balanced state of healthy receptivity and creativeness. The user will find over time they become more and more a person who creates into their own life rather than merely waiting to be created into by others.
· This field will help the user to become clear in themselves on what kind of love they are giving to those they are in any kind of relationship with. If the love we show someone is done on some level in order to get them to treat us in a certain way, even if it’s so that we would feel loved, the field will help us to see that so we may break free and choose to do good to those we love only because we want them to be prospered or happy. It will also help us find the courage and tact to express to our loved ones what it is we wish they would do for us in order to help us feel loved by them so that we will not fall into these subversive forms of communication that get passed off as “love”. This more true form of love will provide the user with strong protection from the motives that tend to entrap one within a codependent relationship with an abusive person. As long as we do not clearly express our desires to a friend or partner, they can always maintain that they have not neglected or despised these desires or even needs.
· For the codependent to move forward into a new healthier way of living, their perceptions of many things will need to change. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is a technique and field of study that focuses on the internal process we go through in forming or re-experiencing a perception. Here we will focus on 3 components of NLP: Modalities, Meanings, and Order. Modalities are the inner sensory perceptions we use to form a perception. It can be a visualization or an inner dialogue or just a feeling. We use these modalities to attach specific meanings to different memories or to ideas about our present or future. Order comes into play when we have a more complex perception about a part of our life that is formed of several perceptions each with its own modality and meaning. This field will nudge us to change all 3 of these in order to find perceptions that help us live our best lives instead of remaining in the same cycles of our past. It does this while safeguarding us from forming any untrue perceptions. There are many possible perceptions of any memory or thought which may be true, with some of these perceptions being more helpful to us than others.
Overcoming Codependency will encourage us to shift into a different modality when thinking until we find the one that is most beneficial to us for that given memory or perception. Then it will help us to stick with this new and more useful way of processing. It will help us to find more useful meanings to attach to memories or ideas that will propel us forward in life. And it will even change the order of these thoughts when it comes to complex perceptions. It will do this with a focus on these key areas of our lives:
· Memories of the past. Especially anything traumatic or that holds us back or seems to give us a reason to not actively move forward.
· Our perceptions of our current situation in life.
· Our perceptions of what future is possible for us, and about the best ways to move towards the desired future.
· Ideas about when the best time to take action is.
· Our perceptions of who we really are.
Finally, this field will put a safeguard up in the user’s mind so that people or events will not be able to shift them back into less helpful perceptions, modalities, or meanings. And it will remove any fear they might experience that anyone could be capable of doing so. This way the codependent will lose a major incentive for avoiding life and people.
