How NOT to Lose Yourself to a Toxic Person #codependency

I recently purchased an outdoor lightbulb that doubles as a bug zapper.

It's light, isn't a regular expansive light. There's literally a cage around it.

Summertime bugs allured by it, flap to its warmth and intrigue, and....

ZZZZZZZZZ.

Fries the shit out of em.

Sounds just...

like a narcissist.

And those still attracted to "that" kind of light are the people I work with every day.

The ones who think the zap of being fried for their own curiosity, is connection.

The ones who think the meeting place where you hit a wall of light that won't let you into it while kneeling outside of its door surrounded by your own dark for acceptance, is a mark of true intimacy.

The ones who think love is the scent of summer nights and their own skin frying, as if they have to bleed to know it rather than just...know it.

I work with a kind of diffuse personality system that seeks to find itself within one specific cohesion, but, it's scattered.

They seek to be contained, having spent years of their lives being a container for everyone else's emotional atmosphere. They subconsciously walk around looking for a container to save them from the last one that didn't but under the guise of..."I will contain you," in hopes they'll earn the return of the favor.

They entrain to other people first rather than entraining to themselves first.

They've mastered being Alone, but not being Alone in the presence of another. And they'd rather be lower case a alone, so they can feel Alone, then be lower case a alone in the presence of other people. That situation is social anxiety in the making.

Relating feels more like self-separation than relation somehow.

So it's a quick easy flight to the climax of a relationship to be a person who struggles to connect to just...dive deep and let the situation fry you so at least you know where you land. That sense of landing, feels necessary to a diffuse person looking for a container.

Problem is, this kind of personality can only be contained by someone who is void in their own container. Just like...they are.

This is the same-same I see in both codependents and narcissists.
An integrated person would ideally recognize they are the container of the thing they're responsible to contain. They wouldn't be so widely separated in their parts.

Codependents seem to be aware that they've exited their own container while narcissists, it seems, merely identify as the container.

Codependents identify with the less formless, uncontainable diffusion of essence. Always feeling too much, they seek for a landing place to put borders around them for a sense of safety, but they tend to pick unsafe people to land in with this method. Plus, they haven't yet learned they've GOT a container with their name on it that they've been systematically taught to separate from; all they've gotta do is get back in it.

Landing in anyone else this way, will never feel like home. It'll always be the bug zapper killing you quickly in soul while you mentally linger around half dead in a psychic cage until it either kills you all together, or you're recovered enough, and sane enough...to fly away.

Getting THEM back in their container, isn't possible when you've sunk in and taken their place. For which, they'll always resent you.

Getting them back in their container with you, so you can live happily ever after, won't happen either. There's not enough room for both of you in there. You'll always be trapped in a hallow materialization, alone, and resented for taking up space there.

Getting YOU back in your container is where healing happens. It's where true relating happens. To self, and other.

You can relate as the light rather than to it.

You can see curiosity for what it is, and not compulsively kill yourself in the name of it.

You can stay in your own container.

When you do...you're not flying into other peoples light to your death. From there, yielding the discipline and power of true self containment, would have you more akin to being the insect staring at the moon, and shining back at it.

A relationship looks more like two flowers growing side by side than it does an art piece of a flower super-imposed on itself. When it's real, and rooted, enmeshment feels more like a slow death than a connected life.

But hey, I get it. We've been taught enmeshment is connection. But really...the seat of your own connection is to be seated in your own container, shining bright, not looking for another lamp that’s not within your own heart, to light up within.

Are YOU in YOU? Are YOU in your container? Or are you headed straight to the…

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ…..

If you’re ZZZZZ or on the slippery slope to it, check out my 7 week self directed e-course Soul Centering After Toxic Shame intended to get you right…into position. Yours!