Welcome to the Stuck Stops Here,
A podcast devoted to cycle breakers.
We want to celebrate and empower those who have woken up and decided that toxic,
Generational dysfunction can end with you.
My name is Tammy Atman and I hit rock bottom in 2014.
And during those moments of despair,
I decided change was my only option.
Emotional abuse,
Both covert and overt,
Is contagious and leaves invisible scars.
The next generation deserves better than what we got.
Join me and my amazing co-host and producer,
LW,
As we have raw and real conversations infused with bad words and humor,
Designed to inspire awareness,
Acceptance and strength.
We are not therapists and have no clinical training.
You are not alone.
Healing does not happen in isolation.
Together,
All of us can break the familial chains of shame,
Guilt,
Fear and blame.
Our Stuck can stop here.
Sometimes the more I read about countable tendency,
The more I grieve.
I don't have good childhood memories.
I remember being alone too much to the point of isolation.
I remember being ignored,
Under socialized and awkward.
I remember asking myself why I didn't matter.
Silence that was loud,
Arguments that never ended,
Disapproving glares,
Hot rage and cold hearts.
And then I get angry for being forced to build giant,
Impenetrable walls between myself and my soul.
It is hard to forgive myself for all those years I blamed everyone and everything else for my misery.
And then I am repeatedly shocked that I raised my daughter so differently than I was raised and still chose to remain in denial.
Chose not to re-parent myself and perpetuated my own suffering.
I played so many roles,
I existed instead of living and hit rock bottom too many times.
Codependency originally described the spouse of an alcoholic or a drug addict.
That definition has now evolved and it is considered a dangerous denial of the self.
A fancier term would be arrested identity development,
Meaning stuck in pre-adolescent phase.
Wounded children wearing adult masks,
Petrified that someone would find out that we are wounded children.
Ross Rosenberg relabeled codependency to self-love deficit disorder.
I have a link to his work in the show notes.
Symptoms of codependency.
Caretaking,
Overly responsible,
Inability to self-care,
Unable to label or name feelings,
Unpredictable volatile shifts from too nice to uncontrollable anger,
Compulsive and impulsive behaviors,
Stress disorders,
Identity development issues,
Capable and strong on the outside but lost,
Lonely and confused on the inside.
Roots of codependency are guilt and shame.
Guilt for having our own needs and for not being able to meet our parents' needs.
Guilt that forces us to protect the abusive family system instead of protecting ourselves.
Shame,
Never feeling good about who we are.
We don't make mistakes,
We are mistakes.
We cannot separate or become independent or ever enjoy being alone.
Fear of abandonment is at the very core of who we are.
This fear of abandonment can be traced back to toxic parents dismissing us,
Ignoring us,
Criticizing us,
Exploiting us and rejecting us over and over from the time we were born until our trust was annihilated.
We often label people as having trust issues,
Blaming them for the issues instead of the family patterns that eroded the trust in the first place.
This warped perspective is shifting blame to the victims and not the perpetrators.
Not helpful for codependents trying to heal.
Codependency or self-love deficit disorder is an inherited dysfunctional pattern of living passed down from our parents and their parents that blocks authentic identity development.
These toxic behavior patterns cause us to overreact to things outside of us and underreact to things inside of us.
Its foundation is fortified by self-sabotaging coping strategies,
All-consuming fear of abandonment,
Intense rage and guilt that is both inaccurate and overwhelming.
Codependents feel trapped and don't believe they have a choice.
I overreacted to things outside of me by being a people pleaser,
Hypervigilant to my surroundings,
Frenetic,
Super responsible,
Ultra busy,
Control freak and a know-it-all.
And by being all of those things,
I achieved one goal,
Avoiding pain.
The underreaction to things inside of us,
Avoiding feelings.
I always hated that word.
It sounds so weak,
But that is poor conditioning and a poor upbringing making me feel that way about the word feelings.
If you are as old as me,
You know that song and you are laughing along with me.
But seriously,
The pain,
The joy,
The dreams that we suppress are who we are.
So we slowly dig graves for our soul and spirit instead of dealing with the pain and the feelings.
Now that is weak.
I grew up thinking stress,
Suffering,
Manipulation,
Fighting,
Walking on eggshells and disrespect were normal.
So it is understandable why we incorporate these toxic behaviors in our adult life.
And they fuel our personal and professional decisions.
And then we go on to produce new families that go on to repeat these generational patterns.
The ugly truth is that we are told to honor thy mother and father regardless of how they treat you,
Which totally ignores the reality that toxic parents are not nurturing,
They are not protective and do not see their children as gifts,
But as objects.
Even though it takes years to heal,
If we all summon the courage to reach deep inside to connect to that wounded child and heal from the inside out,
It is worth the work.
Your soul as well as the next generation will thank you.
I've put a link to a codependency questionnaire in the show notes from the Positive Psychology website.
I also put a link to a book that I found enormously helpful called,
Adult Children,
The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families,
Which explained codependency in a way that really resonated with me.
The good times I never had I woke up and felt it Breathing in all your bad I'm the furthest I've ever been Far from your atomic rage The more I feel the more I know Time for me to turn the page Knock me over with a feather Crush me like a tidal wave We're deceived,
Nothing's real This one goes out to the broken and brave I ask the ghost in the mirror Show me a little mercy now I've crawled through lies and chaos Get up,
Give out,
Do it now Found myself on the other side Surprised by what I could not see It's a soul fight I will win Yesterday lied to me Knock me over with a feather Crush me like a tidal wave Don't wanna fight anymore This one goes out to the broken and brave Knock me over with a feather Crush me like a tidal wave We're deceived,
Nothing's real This one goes out to the broken and brave Knock me over with a feather Broken and brave Crush me like a tidal wave Broken and brave You have been listening to The Stuck Stops Here.
This is LW No Lie.
Join us again next time where we continue to dig deep and dive in so we can stop the stuck.
