How to Stop Caring Too Much (and Leaving Yourself Empty) | Terri Cole

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Episode Transcript:

Terri Cole: [00:00:00] 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 disappointing yourself. If you are constantly prioritizing other people’s wants, needs, and desires over your own.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:26] 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 is the line between caring and caring too much, or 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 overfunctioning 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 realize you’ve kind of 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, yeah, you just turned 60 and using your words. It’s fucking great.

Terri Cole: [00:02:31] 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. Like, I feel like this is a lot of postmenopausal 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. Like we see things from a more macro point of view. And there’s something about going into this phase of being, you know, 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 20 year old ass because my 60 year old ass is just fine.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:49] I love that, and it’s interesting that 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 turned 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 wanted to really center. Because who knows if we have another day or another decade or another 30 or 40 years, God willing. But I just started asking myself, am I okay with 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 place to you saying that, like I’m actually good. You know, we’ve all done dumb things, I’ve all done all the yada yada. And yet, like where I am right now, I’m cool with that. And and I’m really focused forward. I’m like, okay, so how do I step into this next season? Whatever is given to me? Yeah, in a way where I’m really being intentional about the feelings that I want to center in it.

Terri Cole: [00:04:58] Um, 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 had 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?

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:42] Yeah. No. No doubt. So we started on a completely different tangent than where we’re going to land in this conversation. But I just think it’s, I mean, and, you know, like you and I have known each other for years also. So it’s nice to catch up a little bit. Um, you spent the last chunk of time diving into a topic that I would imagine. Well, I know has been something that you’ve experienced personally, but also as a psychotherapist who’s been in practice for, you know, 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.

Terri Cole: [00:06:19] Well, the why of high functioning codependency. Why did I coin and trademark this phrase? How did this book become that? Is that I’ve had a private therapy practice for 27 years and I have 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, Terri. 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 when 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 Beattie codependent no more. Got to 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, because I also would not have ever certainly in my 20s and even my early 30s, I 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 peace.

Terri Cole: [00:07:58] 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 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, I’m 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.

Terri Cole: [00:09:24] I just call it 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 nice 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 loved Betty. She’d give 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 it’s not that. It’s that if my boss would just change, if my husband would just change, if my, 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:47] Yeah. I mean, it’s a really fascinating idea. And also, I don’t want to skip over this, this subtler 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, that’s no, no, no. Like I’m not that person. And that changing the identifier and sort of like 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, it doesn’t, because I think a lot of people hear codependency and what they translate that to also is needy, not capable and 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?

Terri Cole: [00:11:44] 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’s okay. They’re like, she’s always okay. They will never be a time when she is not okay. 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 will 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 it 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, you know, going through my own therapeutic journey. And when 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.

Terri Cole: [00:13:24] I’ll just jump in through the tunnel, pick you up, and then come back to the house. And I would always be like, I can just go to Penn and take the the train. That doesn’t even make it’s so much more efficient. Right. And my mother was like, Tara, 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 Vic 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 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?

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:58] 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 an 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 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 path that it leads people down that takes away from the way that they want to live?

Terri Cole: [00:15:32] Well, one thing is that a lot of burnout people walk into my office, a lot of health problems, from TMJ to Two. Autoimmune disorders. Two. 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 light, because you’re not fully present when we’re endlessly thinking about some of the behaviors of high functioning codependency. Is auto advice giving, right? 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 co-dependently attached to or that we can interact co-dependently with. It can be people in our surroundings.

Terri Cole: [00:16:57] 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 I never saw in my life, 19 year old kid. And immediately my helper radar pinged and was like, hmm, I wonder what this boy. I was probably 22. He was 19. I wondered 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 cancelled. He has a little blanket in his hand. I go, well, 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, hey, 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 bad was going to happen to him. And it was on me to make sure it didn’t.

Terri Cole: [00:17:57] Which of course, in hindsight is fucking 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 it. We could get sucked into causes, and this is not a terrible thing, right? If you’re going to the mat 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 I’m not Mother Teresa. I really just want this person’s dumpster fire of her life to stop ruining my peace.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:06] 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. You’re like, don’t support a friend in need. Correct. Like we’re an animal that you see that you want, but inquire into what’s really happening in there. 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, if this is actually a compulsion that represents the accumulation of nearly the, you know, 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.

Terri Cole: [00:19:58] 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 functioning 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. It’s 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 in hock with our kids and we’re constantly inserting ourselves and our grade A advice into the middle of whatever crisis they’re in. And I’m not saying we’re going to stop giving our kids our thoughts. I am saying it sure 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.

Terri Cole: [00:21:23] 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, you know, we talk about helicopter parenting, but it’s 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, you know, the prophet, the book, the prophet. There’s that beautiful poem he has in there on parenthood, on children. And basically it’s this, this image, this understanding that as parents, we are the bows and the children, they’re the arrows. Right. And our job is to 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:50] Um, 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 codependents. 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. Sure. And I would imagine the line is different for different people and different relationships. And it probably changes over time where caring and loving and generosity crosses into something else. And as you describe 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 the 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.

Terri Cole: [00:24:10] 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 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. It. 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 don’t. They don’t. But back in the day when people would, and even with Vic in the beginning, I knew his 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.

Terri Cole: [00:25:36] 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 Otto advice give, we are making assumptions for our own. Not to mention how much projection happens in there. I don’t know if 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 hdfc’s nightmare. Every day was a five alarm fire for me, being like, how can I get her out of there? Like, what do I need to do to make this happen? Crying to my therapist and my therapist said to me, Teri, what makes you think you know what your sister needs to learn and how she needs to learn it in this lifetime? 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 don’t want to tell her because I’m not God.

Terri Cole: [00:26:54] 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 peace, 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? And it made. 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, you know, 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 then pass 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.

Terri Cole: [00:28:08] So there’s that. Because my therapist said to me, she’s like, Terri, 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, in 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 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 the right to succeed and fail to thrive and to fail to literally not know what they’re doing. Make mistakes. Isn’t that how we learned is just through these spectacular shitstorm mistakes that we made in life? Because that’s how we learn. So we can’t learn for other people?

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:32] Well, maybe other people learn that way, but of course, we don’t learn that.

Terri Cole: [00:29:35] No we don’t.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:37] 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, you know, is my M.O. 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.

Terri Cole: [00:29:56] Overfunctioning. So if you’re doing more than your share auto accommodating, and this could be in a public place where you you’re so dialed in to 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 like, 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 Steph 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. Right. Like auto accommodate. 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 way the easiest way or maybe the fastest way for anybody listening to go, oh, is this me is to do a quick resentment inventory. Mhm. Because this will serve as a GPS to bring you to your relationships where you might be over functioning or over giving or enabling because you know that is part of codependency two. Enabling. Am I overfunctioning enabling this person to under function, whether it’s constantly giving your grown brother money for rent or whatever it is.

Terri Cole: [00:31:29] 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 advice giving. But you can just take the next 48 hours to see how often were you going to insert your $0.02 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 advice giving, we learn to ask expansive questions. It’s just it’s a switch. You’re just going to 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, is why I want to tell you because I want to help you fix your problem, but instead we’re going to 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? If they say, I don’t know, I want you to tell me that, right. In the end, I’ll tell you, but let’s just explore it, 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.

Terri Cole: [00:32:51] 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 therapized and so it’s like, I’ll be like, I have a 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 great 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 there’s 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 and 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?

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:23] So many things in that one. The notion of bubbling resentment being an indicator of this might actually be me. Auto 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, like, 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. I’m good, right? And you’re kind of like, maybe not so fast here, especially if you are an HFC.

Terri Cole: [00:36:09] Indeed. What an insightful question you have. I’m actually sort of renamed the real self Care as self consideration, because I find that when we think of self care, we’re like, get a mani pedi. So yeah, HFCS have that going on. The surface level of 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 I problem solve from this 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 You. So I love to quote that because when you raise to be a good girl, when you’re an overfunctioning, 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 disappointing yourself. If you are constantly prioritizing other people’s wants, needs, and desires over your own. Mel Robbins says 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.

Terri Cole: [00:37:56] 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 to 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 no, you could just not be into it. I give you lots of scripts in here. You 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:11] It’s like literally as you’re sort of like talking through all these different things. I’m like, there’s a thought bubble building in my mind. I’m like, check, check, check, check. Like these. So many of these behaviors are things that either have been a major part of my life or are currently a part of my life. You’re like, huh? You know, you erect this sort of, um, structure around you to feel like you can breathe, moving through each day to feel like, you know, in a world that feels just like everything’s 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. You certainly offered up this notion of surrender and the role that that plays in a process of of recovery here, because as you described, I think so many of us, especially when we were younger, this is a dirty word, you know, it translates in my brain to, oh, surrender means you’re just giving up, right? Yes. So take me deeper into this concept and the way that you’re actually articulating it.

Terri Cole: [00:40:32] Well, think of it as this, as a softening, as a softness, as, um, an allowing. Right. Allowing other people to add value to your life. Not only being not being the only one who’s doing anything, um, 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 Vic and I are 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 in vulnerability 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 a 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 my lens on surrender and allowing and how incredibly important that is to the process of getting into recovery.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:38] 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?

Terri Cole: [00:42:50] 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 hiney 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 board, 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 Hdfcs, we’re so dialed into other people and their outcomes that we’re 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.

Terri Cole: [00:44:09] 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, you know, men and fathers as well. But forever that’s been women’s work and to be the assuage fears. And the Bridgers were like the the line producers of like 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, like. 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 and for what we want, for how we feel, for what we really want in our lives. And as hdfcs, that can be hard to do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:14] Where does not compassion, but where does self compassion enter this conversation?

Terri Cole: [00:45:20] 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? Where 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.

Terri Cole: [00:46:14] 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, the 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:47:20] It’s that resentment bubbling up, right? In addition to self-compassion, one of the things that you reference is, is mindfulness kind of under the umbrella of emotional resilience. And emotional resilience is this thing that when we get, you know, we’ve been talking about more of that, like, 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, 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 like 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, like 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’re 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 this conversation of like, what do you then do once you start to how do you live in that space? Once you’re starting to feel all these things that you’ve kind of kept at bay by maniacally controlling everything and everyone?

Terri Cole: [00:48:45] 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 arm, you can hug them, you can be with them. Right? So it’s also realizing it’s not the stark contrast of the unhealthy helping 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.

Terri Cole: [00:50:03] It takes self consideration to be interested in our reactions and responses, and then we change them. And so meditation and mindfulness, actual like discipline, like a daily action of something. I mean I have a daily meditation practice and I 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 $0.02? 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:18] I completely agree there. And and, you know, 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. Yes. But also like like you described just that hot second or two to notice and then be like, huh? And rather than just, you know, autopilot reacting to something, be like, what’s the intentional response here? How do I want to step into this? And I’m not saying that it 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 2 seconds to 4 seconds for me at least. We’ll see.

Terri Cole: [00:51:56] But 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 in that pathway. Right? In the beginning, it’s like you got to 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 ah, productivity, less, controlling other people more allowing more surrendering. And I promise you it is a more joyful life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:52:57] Which 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?

Terri Cole: [00:53:14] Mm expansion actually is the thing that comes up is living a life. My life I’m always, especially now in the past two years, seeking to have more expansion, meaning more downtime, more playtime with Vic, more, you know, 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 ten years older than me. This is the evening of our lives, and I don’t want to miss it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:01] Mm. Thank you.

Jonathan Fields: [00:54:03] Hey, before you leave, if you loved this episode, Safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Teri about boundaries. You’ll find a link to that episode in the show. Notes. This episode of Good Life Project. was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and Me. Jonathan Fields Editing help By Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. 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..