This episode is about making your own decisions without seeking approval. Today’s caller, Gabby, is in a codependent relationship with her mom. Regardless of your own relationship with your mother, or if you deal with codependency, you will get a lot out of today’s episode. Mother-daughter relationships are one of the toughest relationships to navigate. But, if you can do so with love and success it can be one of the most beautiful relationships.

Parent-child relationships can be tough. Often, we are unaware of the unhealthy dynamics or unaware of how unhealthy they are and how they are impacting our life because we grew up with our parents for our entire life. For example, if you had an accent your entire life you’d be unaware you had an accent because you would be used to speaking in that way. It’s the same in the dynamics with our parents; often in our adult years, we realize aspects of our relationship with them were unhealthy.

Our parents shouldn’t be our best friends. It’s not healthy. They are our parents. It’s a very different dynamic with a best friend. It’s important to put our parents in their rightful place in terms of the dynamic they play in our life. We also want to get them off of the pedestal. The higher someone is on a pedestal the easier it is for them to fall and the more it hurts.

It can be normal and natural to get codependent with one parent if the other parent is missing or emotionally unavailable, or if the dynamic between the two parents includes fighting. The parent may use the child as a surrogate spouse. We want to individuate as we grow up and start to have healthy relationships and get out of the codependent patterns.

Boundary setting can be messy but it is necessary if you want healthy relationships.

To release self-protective behaviors, heal past pain, and reclaim your confidence, peace, power, and purpose attend my Spring Retreat in San Diego, March 6th–8th. Go to ChristineHassler.com/spring-retreat or email Jill@ChristineHassler.com.

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Consider/Ask Yourself:

• Are you being honest about the relationships in your life? Are they healthy or do they require boundaries?
• What is your own relationship with your mother like? Do you see yourself becoming like her and do you like it?
• Do you find it difficult to make decisions and often seek approval and permission from others?
• Do you sacrifice your own desires or silence your truth to make others comfortable or happy?

Gabby’s Question:

Gabby is triggered by her mother’s judgments and would like guidance on how to make her own decisions and stop seeking approval.

Gabby’s Key Insights and Ahas:

• She calls her mother her best friend and put her on a pedestal.
• She feels overwhelmed by her mother’s judgments.
• Her father wasn’t present in her life.
• She is in a codependent relationship with her mother.
• She has difficulty making her own decisions.
• She doesn’t feel OK unless her mother feels OK about something.
• She wants to start setting boundaries and to stop asking her mother’s permission.
• She realizes she has to take care of herself and break the cycle.

How to Get Over It and On With It:

• She needs to move her mother from the best friend to the mom category.
• She needs to set boundaries with her mother.
• She needs to find a way to be self-sufficient.
• She needs to break the generational pattern that loving someone means controlling and judging them.
• She needs to seek out her soul sisters and covet her female friendships.
• She should read books and articles about codependency.

Takeaways:

• You must set boundaries with people in your life. Stop accepting hurt and bad treatment because you don’t want to upset them.
• Make your own decisions.
• Get your parent off a pedestal.
• Start to unravel any unhealthy programming or patterns that got put in place in childhood.

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Resources:

Christine Hassler — Join the Free Over It and On With It Community.

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Terri Cole

Tweetables:

Our parents shouldn’t be our best friends. Click To Tweet Having compassionate understanding for people doesn’t mean we tolerate crappy behavior from them. Click To Tweet Setting boundaries helps us not to feel triggered when we are around controlling behavior. Click To Tweet