What if people-pleasing isn’t kindness but a quiet signal that you’re losing yourself? We dive into the real shape of codependency and map a way out using healthy boundaries, reparenting, and the power of 12-step recovery, with a grounded blend of practical tools and faith.
Barb Nangle shares how a “helping” moment exposed old patterns and led her to Al‑Anon, CODA, and ACA, where she discovered trauma recovery and the gift of reparenting. She later recognized compulsive overeating and found freedom in OA, shedding more than weight—she shed the mental loops that kept her stuck. Together we explore why boundaries are not walls but bridges built from truth; how I‑language defuses conflict; and why letting go of expectations while meeting your own needs can transform love, work, and daily peace.
If you’ve ever felt trapped by saying yes when you mean no, if you reread tough messages or rehearse worst-case scenarios, this conversation offers both language and leverage to change.
Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs stronger boundaries, and leave a review to tell us: what expectation will you let go of today?
If you want to connect and work with Barb Nangle, connect with her on Instagram at: @higherpowercoaching, tune into her podcast show Fragmented to Whole: Life Lessons from 12-Step Recovery.
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry, and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release Out Reveal Purpose. And today is Barb Nangle. And she is going to be talking to us about codependency and recovery, something that is so needed in today’s world because we have all gone through some level of trauma in our lives. And truth be told, all of us could use a little recovery and therapy of our own. So I know personally I am seeing a therapist and going through EMDR because from childhood I had some bullying issues and it started to inform my parenting with my 10-year-old, who Barb got to meet prior to the interview. And I just didn’t want that anymore. And I made a really strong choice to just say it ends with me. I don’t want uh this generational trauma. I don’t want anything from my past to carry on. And so I made the decision to put myself in therapy and it’s gone really, really well. It’s helped me be a better human being. And I know Bob is going to guide us through that amazing story of transformation. So without further ado, Bob, thank you so much for joining us today on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Thank you so much for having me, Sylvia. I’m really excited about this conversation and I love your mission and I think it’s fantastic. Um, what I’d like to do is start in 2015 when I was 52, and I hit a codependent bottom, which just in case people don’t know what codependence is, welcome to the club. I didn’t either. And that was after having been in therapy since I was 15, reading a gajillion self-help books, doing the seminars and the workshops and the retreats and the spiritual groups and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, so codependence is essentially when you are completely focused on that which is outside yourself. So other people, places, and things, what are they doing? What is she doing? What does the situation need? What is the organization need? What does the cause need? And you really tend to neglect yourself. So I was in um therapy, and at the time I was volunteering for a project at my church that served homeless people. And right around that time, this homeless guy named Dan started coming as a parishioner to my church, and he and I became very friendly. And I sort of felt like it was like, oh, oh, oh, God was bringing me this homeless person to befriend me so that when I serve homeless people, they can be personified for me, not like the homeless, but people. And it was actually true. He really helped me a lot. Well, one day during a really bad snowstorm here in New Haven, Connecticut, I invited Dan to stay at my home. I now know that is not normal behavior. And he did, and then he stayed another time and another time, and within a few weeks, he was practically living with me, and I felt trapped in my home. So I’m in a therapy session, I’m talking about Dan and mid-sentence, Sylvia. I go, Oh my God, do you think I need to go to Al Anon? And my therapist says yes. So, in case people don’t know what Al-Anon is, it’s a 12-step recovery for the loved ones of alcoholics. If you’ve never heard of 12-step recovery, you’ve probably heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was the very first 12-step recovery program. It was the first time in human history where droves of people became and stayed sober. And the second 12-step recovery program ever to be developed was called Al-Anon Family Groups. So this is for the loved ones of alcoholics. And the reason that they need a program of recovery is that alcoholism is actually a family disease. It’s not the drinking of the person that’s the problem. That’s a major symptom of the problem. But what happens with the loved ones of alcoholics is the behaviors that we start to engage in that we think are going to help them and get them to get sober, get into rehab, get detoxed, go to meetings, are actually often counterproductive. And what we end up doing is focusing entirely on them and trying to control and manipulate them into doing what we want, which means they get resentful of us and then they start blaming us for their drinking, and then we dig in harder and all that stuff. So I had heard about Al Anon. Whatever I put into Google Sylvia, the word codependent came up, and I was like, What? How is this possible that this word came up? I’ve been doing this work, I’m super introspective, I’ve never heard of it. So I started going to Codependence Anonymous and almost immediately felt a sense of relief. And I think partly it was there’s a name for this thing that I didn’t even know was going on about me. Partly it was because I’m not the only one, I’m not alone, and there’s a program of recovery, and I started seeing some, I didn’t know I was in a tunnel, I thought I was in a cave, and I started seeing some light. And very quickly, I remember saying to somebody, I think I need to be reparented. But I didn’t know reparenting was a thing. I thought I made that up. And six weeks into going to Coda, which is the abbreviation for Codependence Anonymous, I went up to Cape Cod, Massachusetts to visit my friends Tim and Heidi. And Heidi had been in Alcoholics Anonymous for many, many years and had always raved about how utterly transformed her life was. And I was like, you’re gonna love this, Heidi. I’m going to Codependence Anonymous. And she said, Oh, this is great. Let’s see if we can find a CODA meeting and we’ll go together. Well, she couldn’t, but she found an ACA meeting, which I had heard of as ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. I now know it’s called Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. And she said, Let’s go. Now I didn’t think I qualified, so I was like, I’ll go for you. And I walk in, and in the opening readings, they say we reparent ourselves. And I was like, What? And then they read the list of the 14 traits of an adult child, and I was like, oh my god. Now Heidi tells me I sobbed the whole meeting. I don’t remember that. But I bought the literature, I came home to New Haven, Connecticut, started going to ACA meetings, and I learned it’s a trauma recovery program where you reparent yourself and you use the 12 steps to recover. I didn’t know that I had trauma. I didn’t know about intergenerational family dysfunction. I didn’t know how dysfunctional I was or my family was. And I stayed in both of those programs for a year. In CODA, I just went to meetings. In ACA, I dug in. I started actually working the 12 steps, going to more meetings, doing more stuff. And then about a year into that, I decided to let go of CODA because it was maybe a 75% fit, whereas ACA was 100% fit. And that turned to be a higher powered moment because I didn’t know that I was a compulsive overeater. I didn’t even know that was a thing. And one of the women that I was doing the 12 steps with in ACA had started talking about her relationship with food, her thinking and behavior. And I was like, oh my God. And it wasn’t, oh my God, what she was doing is that she was talking about it. So she started sort of gently trying to get me to go to OA with her. And I went to a meeting and I was like, oh my God, I’m a compulsive overeater. So I’ve been in OA. So I’ve been in ACA for 10 years in OA for nine years. I’m down over 100 pounds from my top weight. You know, I went from being a lifelong people-pleasing, rescuer, fixer, savior, enabler to now I’m a boundaries coach and I coach people like former me. So I worked, I’m a professional woman. I have a master’s in sociology. I worked for 19 years at Yale University. I was still there when I got into recovery. And I, so for me, Sylvia, I think of codependence as my core wound. I have many of them, or I had many, many have been healed. But I think of codependence as my core wound. And boundaries is essentially the antidote to codependence. So of all the many, many, many things I learned in 12-step recovery, learning how to build healthy boundaries was such a game changer for me that when I got laid off at Yale and found my way into the world of startups and entrepreneurships and entrepreneurship and innovation and decided to start my own business, it just made sense for me to be a boundaries coach because they changed everything. And when I was working at Yale, I saw the ripple effect on my team and my project of just me building healthy boundaries. So we can’t control other people, but we can influence other people. And a lot of people think that boundaries are about putting up walls with people. Okay, if you’re being abused, you need a wall. That’s like 99.9% of boundaries are not that. Boundaries are about actually coming closer to people because you’re telling them the truth about what’s okay and what’s not okay with you. And so I have really made it my mission to help professional women who say yes when they really want to say no and who neglect themselves because they’re so focused on others, because that was former me. And I think one more thing I’ll say before I pause and let you hop in, seeing as it’s your podcast, is that one thing that people really love to hear is I never had a healthy romantic relationship until now. So I’ve been with my sweetheart for um October will be seven years that he and I have been together. I was 55 and he was 60 when we met. One of the things that attracted me the most about him was that he had healthy boundaries. And what this means, I would say primarily, it’s many things, but primarily what it means in our relationship is that when something bothers us, we bring it up immediately. And we take responsibility for our own actions, our own boundaries, meeting our own needs, and we bring things up with each other as soon as we’re able, as soon as we know and are able to do so, and we don’t blame each other for things. So um, you know, I know that I’ve said a lot, so I will pause there because I’m sure you want to leap in on something I’ve said.
I do because I’m really curious about some things. Um meet our needs. When you said that, it really kind of clicked for me because I know that in relationship dynamics, men are very single-focused. Women tend to be distracted by their environment, if you will. We’re very intuitively personalized things at times. And um, this blend game that occurs when there’s conflict is really common. So, can you kind of guide us a little bit on the vocabulary that we need to use when in conflict, when feelings are super high, and our subconscious mind is wanting to just like blame game. What are the traps that people can look out for? And how can you guide us out of there?
Okay, so I want to share something first that’s gonna help you avoid the trap. And that is I heard this on the recovery podcast. I wish I knew who said it. And it’s this quote let go of your expectations of others and meet your own needs. I was like, what? By the time I had heard that, I was starting to get the idea that I had all kinds of wildly unrealistic expectations of myself, other people, and the world, and I was starting to learn how to let go of them. But this notion of meeting my own needs, I was like, what does that even mean? This was so important to me, Sylvia, that what I did was I would go to my journal, flip ahead like 10 pages, and write that quote across the top so that in the days in the future, when that page came up, there was no missing it. And I would say to myself, was there a time today when I could have let go of my own needs? Excuse me, let go of my expectations of others and met my own needs. And for the longest time, the answer was yes. I still write that, but I flip more like 30 pages ahead, and the answer is almost always no, because I trained myself out of so often we let go of our expectations of others. In other words, we stop expecting people to read our minds, we stop expecting people should know things, even if we’ve told them 750 times, if they should know it, then they would know it. So apparently they don’t. And here’s the thing: people think differently, people retain different kinds of information. We act like our partner is purposely ignoring us and forgetting things and doing it against us. That’s victim mentality, which was by far the most important paradigm shift of my recovery. So we let go of our expectations of others and meet our own. So I’m gonna give a rather mundane example, okay? So my sweetheart and I, we sleep sleep over each other’s houses, and he has at his house all of these like wool, scratchy blankets, or he has these down comforters that are really noisy, and I like quiet blankets that are soft. Now, in my life before recovery, I would have had the expectation that he should have soft, quiet blankets. He should know that I want them, and then every time I went to use a blanket, I probably wouldn’t have said anything, but I would have run resentful and I would have held him accountable and I would have held on to that and held up all that stuff. But now I learned to let go of my expectations of others. Why would he know that and meet my own needs? So I bought a nice, soft, quiet blanket to bring to his house. And I said, This is my blanket. When I’m here, it’s mine. When when I’m not here, use it all you want, but when I’m here, it’s mine. So I let go of my expectation of him and I met my own needs. Now, most of the time I’m meeting my own needs by setting boundaries with people, so I or by affirming myself. Like I want people to like and affirm me, but I don’t need it the way that I used to. I affirm myself, and God has affirmed you too.
Like only that’s the part for me that was very eye-opening. Yeah. When I started to identify with Christ in me. Like, what was it just following him? What did that look like? And and then I stopped looking for that in my spouse. Like I didn’t need his significance. I already had God’s significance. And I gave that significance to myself because this is the part that I think most people miss in relationships is that they put so much on the other person. I’ve they’re there to make me happy. No, they’re not. No, you’re there. You are there to make you happy.
Yes, and God and them. So, yeah, and I think um, you know, you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. But you know, I heard somebody say last year, and again, I wish I knew who said this, it’s fine to seek other people’s approval, but only when you have your own approval first. So if you’re gonna do something to get someone’s approval and you feel really good about it, go ahead and do it. But if you’re gonna feel like shit about it because you’re compromising yourself or you’re compromising your tech integrity, or you know, you’re saying yes again to one more thing that you just don’t have time for, do it. So we, you know, and and there are people who say you shouldn’t seek outside validation. Okay, you shouldn’t solely seek outside validation. You can’t not want validation from humans. We are community creatures, right? We’re pack animals. We need each other to feel fully human. You’re never gonna not want or need validation from others, but if you only seek validation from others and never from yourself, then you’re gonna have a really sad life. So it is okay to seek validation of others, but not above theirs is not more important than your own. Your own is more important. So now I would say like one of the traps is that that you asked me to talk about is has to do with our feelings. So we think other people make us feel things, and they actually don’t. Yeah. So um what so look so most people have had this experience, Sylvia, where someone that you don’t particularly care for says something to you and you’re like and you dismiss it. And then someone that you love that you like and respect and honor and admire says either the same exact thing or something very similar, and you’re like, huh, maybe there’s something to that. Like, I’m sure we’ve all had that. That is a perfect example that illustrates it’s not what was said, it’s our perspective on it, it’s the meaning that we give it. So we decide that person’s a jerk and I’m gonna dismiss anything, and we decide this person is admirable and I’m gonna listen to it. So it’s our perspective, it’s the meaning that we put on that that determines how we feel about things. So if you’re in a situation with your partner and you’re angry, the best thing to say is, I’m really angry. And maybe even I need to take a break and collect myself and come back when I’m calm. I’ll be back. So they know you’re not abandoning them. You’re you intend to come back and process this conversation, not have conflict about well, you’re going to have conflict. It’s okay. Conflict is neutral, but it’s the way that you engage in the conflict. And another thing that people often do is they use you language as opposed to I language. You know, let’s say that you’re riding in the car with your spouse and you don’t like the way they’re driving. If you say something like, you’re driving like a maniac, they are so much more likely to go on the defensive because you’ve talked about them, you’ve said you, and then when you use words like maniac, they’re even more likely to go on the defensive, which means conflict is going to ensue. Yes. Whereas if you use I language and you say something like, I’m feeling unsafe, it’s really hard for them to dispute whether or not you do or do not feel unsafe. And that is the actual issue. I feel unsafe. I’d like you to slow down. Now, if you have the kind of partner who dismisses that and starts driving more erratically, that’s not the partner for you. That is not a safe person that cares about you. But someone that really cares about you and cares about your safety will be like, oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. Let me let me slow down. I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing. I thought I was on my motorcycle or whatever it is, you know, whatever they’re I think, you know, it’s that blaming other people for what’s going on inside of you and thinking that if they change their behavior, you’ll be okay. And so this leads me to like one of my mantras with my clients keep the focus on yourself, keep the focus on yourself, keep the focus on yourself. And that doesn’t mean be selfish. Which by the way, selfish is not an apathet. It is not the worst thing in the world. Um, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about focusing internally. So I’ll give you some examples of ways in which I’ve learned to keep the focus on myself. So I asked myself, what do I want or need in this situation? I never asked that. It was always about what does he need? What does she need? What do they need? What does the situation need? Is this my business? I was notorious for giving unsolicited advice to people. And it’s fine to be helpful to people, but please get their consent. If you feel like you have advice for someone, please get their consent. I have some thoughts that might be helpful. Would you like to hear them? Or better yet, wait until they ask. Ask yourself, like, what might I be doing to contribute to the situation? What might I do differently? If you were involved in the same kind of dynamic over and over again, especially in multiple relationships, you’re the common denominator. And this is not this is info, not ammo. This is information for you to learn, integrate, and grow from. It is not ammunition to beat you up. So what could you do differently? Um, whose feelings are these? Are these their feelings or are they my feelings? I was constantly trying to manage other people’s feelings because I needed you to be okay so I could be okay. Especially needed you to be okay with me so that I could be okay. Well, instead of going out there to make them okay so that I can be okay, I can start right here and be okay with me. And then the last, I think for me, this is one of the best and most important ways for me to keep the focus on myself, is to take really good care of myself. So to me, self-care means what fuels me, what energizes me. Now, for me, it’s things like prayer, meditation, journaling, walking in nature. But what fuels you might be different. And this is not something we wait until Saturday or Sunday to do. This is something that we have to do on a continual basis. I have a very drawn-out morning routine because I know if I want to have a good day, I have to start it well by taking care of myself. I also have prayer time in the middle of the day. I take a break for lunch every day. I didn’t used to do that. I used to journal before bed. In fact, actually, Sylvia, this month is my 25th anniversary of keeping a gratitude journal. I now do that in the morning. And now I read for pleasure at night so that I’m calm. I’m not on my phone. I’m doing something pleasurable so that when I go to sleep at night, I’m going to sleep with good things on my mind. So keeping the focus on yourself is just an absolute game changer, especially if you’re a codependent.
Lots to uh unpack here. But the one thing that kept being prompted by the Holy Spirit was talk to us more about the difference between being, and I’m asking this very specifically, self-centeredness and self-love. Because in lots of cultures, including mine, my birth culture is Mexican, self-love was completely misunderstood. It was looked at to be selfish and arrogant almost. So can you speak more into the distinction between the two, please?
Yeah, absolutely. So self-centeredness is I matter way more than everybody else, and I am always going to put myself first, and I’m not gonna think about other people and my impact on other people. It doesn’t matter. Self-love is I matter equally to everybody else. And if I don’t fill my cup first, then it’s not going to be filled. So I learned this concept from Ashley Kirkwood. She wrote the book Speak Your Way to Cash. And she says, don’t pour from the cup, pour from the overflow. Most of us, especially women, are trying to pour from an empty cup because we don’t fill our cup first. So I love this notion of you’re not even pouring from the cup, you’re pouring from the overflow. Well, the only way to have overflow is if you fill your cup first. And who would you rather receive from, Sylvia? Someone who is trying to squeeze the last drop out of an empty cup, or someone who is pouring from the overflow. Of course, we’d rather receive from someone who’s pouring from the overflow. So it’s actually selfless to take care of yourself first because you have so much more to give. And here’s the thing, Sylvia. I was a volunteerholic before I got into recovery. I have to this day, I’ve now volunteered for 16 different nonprofit organizations. Now, in terms of hours per week, I give more service than I ever did before, but I do it strategically rather than at the drop of a hat. I do it by choice, not by some compulsion or some sense of obligation. Like, if not me, then who? If not now, then when? I have so much more than other people. This is all true, but I need to make sure that I’m not draining my cup. And I do it after filling my cup first, so that I give from the overflow. A big indicator that you are overgiving is resentment. If you start to feel resentful of all that you’re giving, then it’s time for some boundaries.
Totally agree. Totally agree. And thank you for making that distinction for those that are coming from different cultures that don’t truly understand that for me. Self-love is something I discovered when I wrote the first edition of my latest book, In Faith I Thrive, and that was published, self-published in 2021, Obedience to Christ. And in it, he showed me self-love from my perspective, is loving yourself the way that love that God loves you, seeing yourself the way he sees you.
You are a beloved child of God, act like it.
Yes. Step into that light with confidence and courage, which you already have inside of you because the Holy Spirit is inside of you, and he lights you up and he guides you if you allow him into your life, if you invite him. And I know Bob and I discussed this prior to the interview. You talked a lot about your self-care routine and gratitude journaling just recently. And I have a very similar routine. I wake up at five o’clock every morning and I have coffee chats with God. My first cup of coffee, my only cup of coffee, is with God in the mornings, and it’s in prayer, in deep prayer with him, in deep conversation with him. We converse like I’m conversing with Barb right now. I joke with him, sometimes I’m angry with him. But what I found to be true about that self-care routine is that I’m intentionally starting my day from in the present moment. I’m not in my past, I’m not in my future, I’m in the present moment with Christ, and I’m asking very specific questions to line up my day. Questions like, how can I honor you today? What gifts do you need me to share with others? I’m very service-oriented, like you, Barb. And I’ve it’s interesting that that you talked about service because I have a quote in my office that says, Service is love made visible and it’s anonymous. It was something that was gifted to me and at the university at Austin College because in my first year of college, I was missing my home so much that I poured my whole extra time into service. And I had so many community service hours that they had it blew the service station away. It was like an organization I had joined and they presented me with an award at the end of the year. And I was just blown away because I didn’t expect that. You know, when you serve others, you’re right, you’re serving from the overflow that you’re receiving, in my case from God. When I receive from Him, I just turn around and tithe it back. And it’s it’s not just tithing money. That concept of tithing is also tithing your gifts.
Agreed.
And tithing your special skills, which all of us have, that sometimes we acquire through our tough journeys, our tough circumstances. I always tell people there’s no failure here. Failure is when you fail to see the lesson you learned and not apply it.
Yeah.
That’s failure. True failure. True waste of time right there. But I know that just to kind of unpack it for the listeners of release outreal purpose. One of the steps I’ve always coached my clients on as a spiritual transformative coach is to take an inventory of your habits. This is the awareness piece, is step one. And this this piece, I think, is it’s critical that you recruit your intuition and God into that step because only He can uncover and reveal to you those habits and patterns of behavior that are deep within your subconscious programming that are blind spots to you. You really don’t know why you do what you do. You just you have a feeling, and the mind is so powerful when it’s programming because you’ve been programming it since you were a little kid. And you’re doing it subconsciously, meaning you you you’re not really aware of it. And you’re acting into these, you’re acting or reacting from a feeling that gets promoted by the thoughts and the belief systems that you’re carrying around inside of you. So it’s it’s to take an inventory of these habits to really become aware and then start to incorporate what Barb has talked to you guys about, about setting up those boundaries. But you first need to be aware of what these tendencies are within you. You won’t you can’t put a plan in place until you understand the depth of the problem.
Yeah.
Is it beliefs, is it your belief systems that need to be shifted over? And this doesn’t take years, guys, when you recruit God into the mix. It doesn’t. It takes years when you do it your way. You know, and that and then in your timing, you know, and wanting to push things through when when in reality it’s it’s a lot easier when you and when you recruit the intuition into it. Because the the answers are within you, they’re not anywhere outside of you. I that one I lived through so hard. It was such a hard lesson for me to learn because I really I sought for the answers outside of me. And the more I fought for that, the less I got. And then when I finally started to turn inward and to learn to do that, this is where you really get to know yourself quite well, and where the concept of self-love really starts to get firm within you because of your of your relationship with your higher source of power. Once you start to solidify that and really find your identity in that, does self-love come very naturally to you? And in part, now you can really set up healthy boundaries because boundaries I think most people think have to come from a harsh space, like where you have to be really bold about it. And I’ve seen people do that, and those are, I think they’re in the infancy stages of boundary work when you do that because you really don’t know what you’re doing. But once you start to really understand and become aware of the role you have played in programming your mind and the ownership you need to take for that piece and not anybody else’s piece, you know, because I I you know we’ve had conflict, my husband and I. You will have conflict. Yeah, and you’re right, you’re right. Like he threw it the other day on me. Well, I’m turning away from religion because you know, you are um, you know, you say these things, and then you turn around and you do the opposite. And I said, you know, I’m also a flawed human being, I’m not perfect. I am Christ, and I and that’s between Christ and I. And that’s where spiritual warfare, I think, really steps in and plays a nice little role in in playing with our thoughts and our belief systems because like there’s a good, you know, goodness, power above us, there’s also evil, and it can seep into relationships very quickly because there’s strongholds, there’s there’s patterns of behavior, there’s tendencies, there’s um habits that we have formed, and it makes it easy for for the enemy to step in and start saying, Oh, you know, you if when you do this, then I’ll do this. I’m like, that’s not that’s not the love that God talks about when you’re in a marriage. The love that he talks about is oneness, the woman being the helper, the man being the lead, you know, the spiritual home. It’s a very different ballgame. And I’m now in in the process of submitting to my marriage, and that’s a whole different ballgame. It’s very, very different. And like I explained to you, Beb, the submission piece because I come from the Mexican culture and the conflict I observed as a little kid, and my mind having not really understanding the dynamic truly between my dad and my mom because they did it behind closed doors. And I find that that’s very common for women my age that grew up with parents of that era that they didn’t want the kids to see. So they kind of took their conflict behind closed doors, and the women were of a different um generation, a different way of of handling conflict. And in this day and age, we don’t really know how to do that. That’s why there’s so many divorces out there, because they they they cannot communicate except from a space of harshness and aggressiveness, because that’s what they see in culture. Would you, I mean, can you speak a little bit more into that? Um, like culturally, what’s going on?
Yeah, I mean, I’m I really I’m not sure what to say about that, but I feel like I have something that would be helpful about the habits and the self-love that would kind of ties a lot of what you were just saying together. Is it okay if I share that? So there are two habits in particular that I had that I didn’t even know that I had that changed so much for me. Um, and remember, like I’ve always been a very introspective person on the journey of growth for as long as I can remember. And one is that I didn’t know that I had all kinds of negative thoughts. I ruminated a ton about the past and I catastrophized about the future. So I didn’t even wasn’t even aware that I was doing that. So I had to become aware that I was doing it, like you said, but then I needed to change what I was thinking about. So I call these boundaries of self-containment. Boundaries of self-containment are things we either need to contain or stop doing altogether. So as soon as I saw that I was ruminating or catastrophizing, then I think of it as changing the channel. And I heard this really great metaphor the other day. If you sat down and the TV was on and there was a show on that you didn’t want to watch, and you sat there and somebody said to you, Why are you watching this show? You might say, like, well, because it’s on. Well, why don’t you change the channel? Because that’s what’s on. I’m watching that because that’s what’s on. That’s what happens when we go with whatever’s going through our heads. And so now, as soon as I realize something is going through my head, I turn, I change the channel. So I act like I’m a beloved child of God and I say loving things to myself. I don’t really feel like I ruminate about the past anymore. I would say 97% of my catastrophizing about the future has gone away, but it’s still the biggest challenge in life for me. So things that I was doing in my mind. The other thing that I would do, Sylvia, is I would reread messages. So I would take hours to construct an email and then I would send it and then I would read it again. And then if it was a difficult exchange with someone, I would reread it again as if if I keep reading it, it’ll turn out differently. And what I now know is both of those things, the catastrophizing and ruminating thoughts and the rereading messages were activating my nervous system and sending me out of the present moment. I don’t like the do you read um oh goodness, Sarah Young’s daily devotional, Jesus Calling. I don’t know.
No, I the devotionals I follow are from the Bible app. Okay. And so, but I read devotionals every morning.
One of the readings in there says negative things were meant to happen to you one time. You were not meant to relive them. Okay. Right when I relive the negative thing from the past, or when I catastrophize over and over again about something that’s never happened, when I reread difficult messages, I’m reliving things that happened one time. So only I can change those things. No one else can step into my mind and change my thoughts. I can ask God, I often do. When I first got in recovery, I thought of myself as a spiritual person, but I didn’t use God the way I do now. And what I mean is I didn’t turn my will in my life over. I didn’t hand things over to God, I didn’t ask for guidance. And when I started handing things over, the main things I handed over were feelings and thoughts. I was like, God, please help me change the channel here. And I can do it now on my own because I’ve been doing it for so long. But these are like I had to inventory, like you said, what are my habits? And then what am I going to do to change them? So I have to, I can’t just know that I have these bad habits. I need help with changing them, and nobody else can do it for me. I can God can’t come into my brain and change my thoughts unless I ask. I have to ask.
You have to invite him. So this is the part that most people miss. They think that belief in him is enough, and it’s not. It is you must invite him. He will never impose himself on you. He gives you a free will. He’s giving you free will, and in that free will, it’s you now need to invite him to come in.
Yeah.
But I think one of the biggest things that I wanted to add, because it’s in in conjunction, in alignment with what you’re saying, is that the biggest clue that your mind will give you is the feeling. The feeling is what attaches the pattern of behavior attaches to that feeling. The habit gets attached, or you form a habit around the pattern of behavior, and the belief is is attaches itself to that feeling. So anytime that feeling shows up, whether it be doubt or any kind of like anger, your mind gives you tons of clues. Now you have to kind of work backwards and say, okay, what thoughts promoted that feeling in me? What were those thoughts? Like what was I thinking? And then reframe it, like Bart is saying. Reframe that thought and just kind of Remind yourself with the truth. If you’re a woman of faith like we are, and we have God at our center, we’re gonna use his truth, which is his word. How does the word like start to remind us who we are in him? And that gives us the strength and the courage to then step into these changes because change can be scary. Some people, when I was interviewing people for my book in Faith I Thrive, men and women both, what was the biggest challenge they faced when they were at a crossroads? And they said, fear of failure is my biggest fear. Fear of the unknown. Of course, we’re all afraid of the unknown. If we were to see what God sees, we wouldn’t step in there. And then most of us would be like, nope, I don’t want to go there. Because we know that that journey is going to be tough. But we do it to ourselves, anyways, with the choices that we make. We keep like you were on your growth journey for what 25 years, right? Until you hit like you actually understood codependency and and not realizing what you had missed all along, right? Our journeys are nonlinear. We go through so many, I call them like waves. It’s like good, bad, good, bad. And just recently, in one of my many puffy chats with God, I had this expectation since you approached the subject of expectation that success had to look a certain way for me. I had seen all these entrepreneurs like really starting to make money in their businesses. And I thought, well, I must be a failure then if I’m not making that amount of money, or I’m not able, like, what is it that I’m truly afraid of? And what God showed me was, honey, I’ve provided for you. Don’t you get mum every day for me? You know, it’s not it your journey is gonna look so different than other people’s journeys, and and we fall into that comparison trap so many times. I know I have, I’ve been so guilty of that because I came from the corporate world and from from modeling from my parents and the expectations that they had on me. And in my first act, I landed in corporate America. That makes sense, you know, because I I was raised by a high achiever perfectionist in my father, and I love my father very much. He passed away. I I now say he graduated into heaven last year in 2024.
And um, but good for him.
Yeah, I I always call it a graduation.
Yeah, yeah.
Because we the journey of life kind of we learn so much, and it prepares us for the kingdom of heaven, but it’s it’s all the life hard lessons that we learn and we apply. And by the end of our life, you know, it’s like God is preparing us for heaven. Like this is what I’ve prepared for you. You will have eternal life next to me, and and you’ve you’re there, you know, you’ve you’ve learned what you needed to learn. That’s why some of these lessons keep coming back, because I know for me, I’ve been a southern child of God and I’ve had to learn the hard way because for whatever reason, I just that lesson just keeps coming back. And he’s like, Well, it’s because you haven’t learned it. I don’t need you to learn this because with coming down your path, you’re gonna need to apply that lesson here because it will make I’ll make it easier for you. But you gotta invite and you gotta be there for me. Be invite me in and allow me to do the transformation in you. So thank goodness, we’ve we’ve talked so much about codependency habits, inventories. Um, any last words of empowerment that you want to share with the listeners to release now? And and if people wanted to reach you, Barb, um because they want to work with you, yeah.
Sure. So I think because you talked about God inviting in, I just want to briefly say about addiction. Like, here’s the thing God is only more powerful than addiction when God is invited in. So if you if you have an addiction, you can’t just expect that because you’re a person of faith, that God is going to take it away. You have to invite God to take it away. So, what many people don’t know about 12-step recovery, Sylvia, is that they’re spiritual programs. Step 12 is having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. We try to carry this message of recovery to those who still suffer and practice these principles in all our affairs. And even if you’re not a spiritual person, 12-step recovery can still be for you because essentially what it means is you are changed. You are able to be, see, think, do, have, and believe that which you could not be, see, think, do, have, and believe before. So that’s my plug for asking and inviting. And I choose to call my power God just as you do. Not everybody does. And then in terms of people finding me, since they’re already listening to your podcast, maybe they might want to hop over on over to my podcast, which is called Fragmented to Whole Life Lessons from 12-step recovery. I started it because all those decades of self-help before kind of scratched the surface of the iceberg of my life and recovery, a 12-step recovery specifically, melted the iceberg of my life. And I wanted all the wisdom I was learning there to get out into the world. And then my ideal clients, as I mentioned before, are professional women who say yes when they really want to say no and who neglect themselves because they’re so focused on others. I have my signature program, it is called Unshakable You, the Fragmented to Whole Method. It’s a 12-week private coaching program for women. And you can find everything about me on my high on my website, which is called higherpowercc.com. And my favorite place to hang on social media is Instagram, and I’m at HigherPowerCoaching there, and you can find links to all my free stuff and my paid stuff there. I have tons of free resources.
Amazing, Bob. I loved having you on release on my real purpose. I I loved everything you said, is in total alignment to many things that I’m actually myself encountering in my own marriage. And you just affirm to me through I find God has a really interesting sense of humor and how he pairs people together and the timing of this is really interesting. Uh, and I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your wisdom and sharing how we can reach you because I’m definitely going to connect with you. I’m very interested in following your work simply because as women, I think we need to empower each other. There’s no competition. Like when I see women competing with each other, I just find that so time wasting. I don’t know about you, but I find that when we are working together and in collaboration with one another, we really are unstoppable as a human race. So and thank you for being here, for joining us, and for the listeners of release out reveal purpose. Remember, Matthew 5.14. Be the light. Have a wonderful week. Stay safe. Love y’all. Bye now.
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