Are You Relating from a Codependent Relationship Position?
Anne Dranitsaris
Helping people become who they are meant to be in their personal life, relationships, and their careers.
You probably aren’t aware of this, but within the mechanics of your mind, you have a RELATIONSHIP APPARATUS.
It’s located in the right emotional quadrant of the brain. With lots of neural connections to our nervous system, it makes our heart skip a beat and our bellies tense up with fear. We use this brain to bond and to form attachments. It is experiential, and seeks to feel valued, safe, secure, admired and needed in the relationship.
How your Relationship Apparatus Develops
A critical event occurs during the first few years that impacts how the child will have relationships during their life. The event is the transition from the Dependant Stage to the Codependent Stage of development. If this transition is not successful, it has a significant negative impact on our development and the way we form relationships as adults. Instead of growing and thriving because we have a secure base and forming relationships from our AUTHENTIC SELF, we relate from one of the 4 Codependent Relationship Positions. This means our Relationship Apparatus is broken and it is set to form relationships from the same Codependent Relationship Position it got stuck in to survive.
Believe it or not, we’re codependent because of something that happened when we were infants and during our formative years.
This is when our Relationship Apparatus got broken and stuck in a Codependent Relationship Position. It stopped the development of the AUTHENTIC SELF. If our Relationship Apparatus broke during that critical time in our infant child development, it needs to be fixed to have fulfilling relationships. The adaptive behaviors we used to get our needs met during our childhood are the behaviors we are still using now. We’re stuck in survival, adapting, doing work-arounds and patch-jobs to make sure our relationship works. That’s what makes us so unhappy!
Most people are stuck in the codependent stage of development. We aren’t just talking about being codependent with your love interest. You can have codependent relationships with children, coworkers and friends. BUT CODEPENDENT PEOPLE DON’T ALL LOOK THE SAME!
There are 4 Codependent Positions – Submissive, Avoidant, Adaptive or Dominant.
That’s right! We’ve determined there are four types of Codependent behavior patterns or Codependent Positions we relate to others from. The four Codependent Relationship Positions are patterns of self-protective behavior. These behaviors were adopted to help cope with childhood trauma, neglect and other forms of parental misatunement to a child’s needs. When we’re stuck relating from any of the 4 Positions, we aren’t developing or relating from our Authentic Self.
We are able to shift to any of the Codependent Positions, but we have one that works best for us based on the way our brain is organized. We usually have relationships with someone who is in the opposite codependent position to us. What holds the relationship together is mutual need. That’s right: the submissive codependent needs someone to serve and take care of, and the dominant needs someone to sere them. A perfect dysfunctional whole!
Whatever Codependent Relationship Position you bond from, your Relationship Apparatus, the part of the brain you form relationships from, NEEDS TO BE FIXED. Your Relationship Apparatus can be fixed through the NOW Fix Your Relationship Program we’ve developed. It teaches you how to relate from your AUTHENTIC SELF and frees you from your dysfunctional patterns of behavior that cause you unhappiness.