Special Guest: Angela Wetzel

Lilli: What do you know about codependency or how has it affected your life?

Angela: I guess the question is like, "What don't I know about it?

I've been obsessed with learning about codependent, and codependency ever since I first really learned when it was and learned that that was kind of at the root of I would say almost all my problems in the relationship in following my life purpose. And actually I was reading a book by broad Barbara Gain and I liked her definition of codependence.

So "codependent is a psychological condition in which you ignore your own needs, and desires, to concentrate on control or care, take others.” 

And the crazy thing about codependence is like, it can be so much in the background and be running your life, and you will have no idea what it was or what it is. You’re just like, What is it, what is this thing in my blind spot?

And that's kind of what I went through. Kind of seeing it in relationships. I got married really young, I was in the military and it was kind of the thing to do in the army and I hadn’t met his family.

So, we eloped in Vegas. And my parents didn't really say much, I think they knew we were getting married, but I didn't have a lot of advice from my parents are a lot of interaction that way.

And after Vegas, I met his family and so I started seeing some stuff with his family. It starts with little things. You can start to see some unhealthy relationship dynamics like it can be something as simple as having a parent that chain-smokes and has bourbon in the middle of the afternoon. And as innocuous as that sounds, it doesn't seem like a big deal. 

It's like for me, it's always been the little things, that I've picked up on, first, it shows up in financial ways. His family was very much financially dependent on us and any time I tried to step in and have boundaries, he would freak out and say “We're so much more fortunate than they are like they can't do this for themselves.” And I would get a lot of push back. 

And then he would say you're greedy, your selfish and all these things. I didn't know what boundaries were, to be honest, I wasn't feeling my feelings, I didn't know that, and so it just became a nightmare. 

And I say this because I wanna share my story because it's embarrassing for me but I know I just didn't know any better.

We ended up having his sister and her husband and their two kids move in with us, he thought it was for an undetermined amount of time. I thought it was just so they got on their feet, so that was another thing. 

I worked for the government for six years, it was only supposed to be like a year and I put all of my dreams and aspirations, and everything on the back burner to essentially be like this helper to him and his family and to kind of just being there to help support them.

And I wish I could say that I was the one that was like... I'm divorcing you, I'm done with this crap. But he was the one that ended up divorcing me because eventually, at the end of all this, the story is too long, too long to tell the whole thing, it's super crazy. 

But at one point, we had five vehicles. They weren't really pitching in, we were supporting his mother and one of his brothers and it just got completely out of hand. 

There were no financial boundaries.

I wasn't talking about my needs or my wants, or if I did bring it up, I would have this big, kind of emotional meltdown. I would have these emotional meltdowns because I wasn't able to express my feelings. 

I wasn't feeling them I was very much in-meshed, and I always experienced other people's feelings outside of my own so much more strongly as projections, so just even feeling my feelings. 

It wasn't something I was familiar with for almost another four or five years after I got divorced, but essentially we lost the house we were living in, so his family did move out, but then after our divorce, we didn't have any lawyers. 

I just felt like I went along with a lot of things. The confrontation was uncomfortable for me, that was a huge part of it I wouldn't fight for myself, I would fight for other people, I would be this huge bleeding heart advocate. I'd wanna pick up all the lost puppy dogs and kittens in the neighborhood. 

I wanted to just take care of everybody, but I wasn't taking care of myself but I didn't see that, because I never viewed myself like as a victim until I realized later on that I was actually taught to be a victim, so there were all these ways that I had adopted a way of being.

Lilli: Can you go back for just a moment……so when was that epiphany moment, did you have an aha moment where you're like, "Whoa this is not the way it's supposed to be”?

Angela: Well, I wish I could say had that sooner, but it was more like me paying attention to a lot of all these little details, like seeing the financial enabling seeing the enabling, but not understanding how I fit into it, so that was really confusing for me.

Another thing that was on my radar, was this pattern cycle of betrayal and cheating, which I feel like goes very well with codependents because there are people that aren't communicating with intimacy or authenticity they're not telling the truth, and they're not turning towards each other to confront each other about what their feelings are, what their needs are and even talking about their complaints. 

Not being brave enough to confront the truth, which is that as part of what I do and what I teach.

My "Aha moment" actually came when I was in acting school, even though I'd seen all this stuff. 

I think there's this cultural sense of like, "Oh everyone has a messed up life, or no one's normal: Everyone has their own crazy uncle that kind of thing. 

But it was when I was actually in acting school and I had to do this one scene for Chekov.

Anyone that knows Chekov knows that it’s really dark and depressing. 

So, I think it's a little boring. It's not really my taste, but I did the scene where there was a fire in the neighborhood, a lot of people lost their homes.

They had this triage set up in their home and they had all burn victims and people that had lost their homes and everything. So it was a really serious scene, and according to my acting teacher and she was like, “What I don't understand is how you can be one of the most compassionate and empathic actors that I know and have trouble with this scene.”

It was just a walk in the park another day, and I started looking at... And I thought That's not normal. And how did I miss what happened in my brain to just gloss over some of those details that would have informed me of this bigger tragedy?

That was one thing that really caught my eye just for me personally, because while I could always see everything outside of me. I could see the betrayal; I could see the enabling, I could see the patterns, but it was always outside of me.

I didn't know what my part was it was when I was an acting school that I started to start to see the way that I was operating, the way that I would see things, or not see things that really started to illuminate what was going on underneath. 

And the biggest piece of the puzzle was when I had a voice class and I was supposed to be doing at the scene from Julius Caesar and I was playing the daughter. I was supposed to get angry at my father, in the scene, and I couldn't feel my anger at all. I just was like, "I can't access my anger, I feel nothing I feel numb.”

I told my acting teacher, Kate, “I’m like, I don't know what's going on, I just can't feel anything.”

She goes, “Can I ask you some personal questions?” and I'm really open, so I was like, "Sure I fire away.”

And she was like, “Are either of your parents alcoholics?” and I was like “No”

She was like, “Alcoholics, gambling, violence, workaholics?”

She went through this list and finally she said, she was like, “Rage?”

That sounds like my dad.

And so she recommended that I read this book called "The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller, and that kind of started my whole digging process. 

I really started to dig really deep into the psychology and that led me.

I’ve been reading books on psychology, and stuff like this, for the past eight years, so I probably been studying relationships, for over a decade now and codependence for about eight years maybe.

So I remember I started checking out all these books from the library, I was going to the library in New York, and I was holding this book by Dr. Susan Forward called “Men Who Hate Men and the Women Who Love Them.”

And I just was like holding this, but going "Oh my God, this is my parents' relationship.”

This is crazy to see it on these pages. And also, I think it was in that book, where she says as the core emotion of codependence.

My mind sort of exploded but it's funny because the whole reason this was sort of on my radar is much more of like a woo reason, 'cause it was all these separate pieces, right?

Yeah, after that, so I ended up in LA doing this spiritual retreat. It was a seminar and this woman there was like look around. You're a spiritual teacher and I was like, "Okay whatever, 'cause clearly you don't have the right person.” I just happened to be there. 

And she had taught something called scientific hand analysis, and if you know anything about it, it’s kind of infused with some poetry, but what it is, it's a repeatable scientific process by which they have different rating systems for the prints in your palm and your fingerprints. It’s just so fascinating. The guy that developed it developed its name as Richard Ungers’ book is called “Life Prints.”

But essentially, it gives you your life purpose, your life schools, all your life lessons, and then your blind spot. And the reason why I was so fascinated is that my life purpose seemed so in line with everything I wanted, so I was like, “Yeah, that's awesome.” And then when I was looking at my life, my blind spot, my life lesson, the thing that would keep me from my purpose, it said, and this was the list, it was like shame victimization loss of passion, staying in dead situations and relationships too, long.

There's probably another few like a loss of power, a and I was just like, “Okay, so it's my blind spot I guess I just don't identify with it, I don't get it, I don't get what it is.”

And when I was holding that book and it said Shame, I was like, "Oh my God, this is my blind spot.” I was like, "I see my blind spot.” Then I was like, well, what now kind of... So that was, I think, part of the reason why I was able to make that part of it click.

And the other thing that really helped was the awareness and acting school leading up to that and reading all the books on psychology, and just starting to dive deeper. And after going to that seminar.

I met somebody on the plane on the way home, during this blood moon, lunar eclipse and it was just this crazy day, wild synchronicity and I'm actually writing a book about it, 'cause I was just so insane, and when I met him, everything was amazing and clicked, and he was very handsome, and we ended up talking the whole plane ride and then we hung out and he walked me to my train and then we talked on the phone a little bit, we were supposed to go on a date, so I don't hear from him for a few days, maybe four days, five days, and I'm starting to obsess about him and I'm like, “Okay, why am I obsessing about this? Dude, I just met him. I've spent three hours with him. Why is he in my brain, why is he running laps on my brain and why, why am I so obsessed thinking about these obsessive thoughts?”

And then all of a sudden that Robert Palmer song just pops in my head, "Addicted to Love.” And it was just like you gotta have the faith or Addicted to Love, and I was like, "Oh my God, I'm a love addict!” But I didn't like to know what that meant.

So I get on my computer and I put in “love addicts” and all of Pia Mellody’s work were came up on Amazon. I bought her three-part series on codependence, love addiction, and intimacy and that was kind of like the beginning of this crazy journey of just studying the hell out of love addiction and codependent. 

Because they go together, like peas and carrots. 

And then I started going to therapy probably a little bit before in between some of that started happening so maybe in 2014. So, I started having all these realizations like, "Oh my God, I was technically abused.”

I know abuse is this really big hot word with most people because of the way that our brains are set up or the autonomic nervous system. We have all these protective mechanisms of suppression repression and denial. I had studied psychology in college. I already knew that the brain and the ego or whatever would throw all these smoke screens over a lot of the stuff that happened because it's essential that we survive our childhood. 

And I just started to realize that the way that I was raised, had been really abusive and it was very codependent and I had a very enmeshed relationship with my mother. So like I just started learning about all this stuff and then when I started taking on clients, I could learn even more because I started seeing the repercussions of emotional abuse and people that weren't hit (physically) because I wasn't hit.

I was walking on eggshells and modifying my behavior so I wouldn't enrage my father. And so that was the way that I learned. Like you don't confront somebody when they're angry, you just go and hide. So I was taught to hide behind furniture or leave or whatever.

I wasn't protected by my mother. 

I call it our blind inheritance because it's like when you start learning more about generational trauma and you think about your own personal genealogy, you realize that you come from this long line of survivors. Right?

So our nervous systems already being shaped while we're inside of our grandmother inside of our mother.

Lilli: Yeah, it is that the mind-blown emoji for sure.

Angela: Yeah, all of these behaviors and protective mechanisms that they were learning and their nervous systems were being informed by their environment and the hormones were being created and everything that is also affecting us

But also, as we're raised, it's like all the non-verbal communication. Like all of the shadow emotions that are pushed down. So, in my family, anger, was like a... No, no, no, no. 

And I've started to find that when you do anger you disown your own power. You can start to implode and a lot of people get stuck in the victimization because instead of feeling their own power because they saw only abusive power, or abuse of authority or whatever, no boundary 

Lilli: Yeah, no boundaries. 

Angela: They make the decision. Like I don't wanna be like that and I will never be like that. And so, we unconsciously either choose to replicate the abuser, or to deny that behavior because we usually think there are only two options, right?

Lilli: I wanna go back a little bit to the play stuff because of my little tidbit about Pia Mellody and her work. Yes, I have the series and I have it almost committed to memory, but the Facing Codependence book was the absolute eye-opener for me.

Talking about abuse. I’ve never been hit that I know of. I did not have egregious sexual or physical trauma, but that book completely changed my view of the kind of trauma that I was dealing with. unknowingly.

Like the book that I'm writing is really just all of those revelations brought out, because I think that's important because in a way people do judge trauma. But what's not talked about, is the little things, the spiritual, emotional, financial, sexual, all those little boundaries that have been crossed and the sustained crossing of those boundaries is what the trauma leads to, which is insane.

I wanted to kind of close the discussion here; we can talk about this for hours. So yeah, hopefully, all you readers out there, you've connected to Angela. I'm so glad that I was able to have her on the blog because I like the different perspectives and I know that some things that she said resonated with you. 

So Angela where can our readers find you if they want to hear all about your story and more of what you're doing now?

Angela: Yeah, thank you. I actually have a lot of stuff out there, I blog on Elephant Journal, so I have a lot of stuff about love addiction from a love addicts perspective, and part of that healing journey. So I have quite a few blogs on there. 

You can find me on Instagram and Facebook. 

Or you can go to my website, which is www.epicinitiator.com, and I have all different kinds of ways to work with me. 

I do one-on-one coaching and a lot of it is based on codependence, but I don't always lead with that 'cause people don't always know what that is.

I have a few things on YouTube, not that much.

Oh, I also have an eight-week deeper dating course coming up, starting April 29, for eight weeks.

So that's gonna be a workshop and group coaching, and we are gonna cover a lot of stuff similar to this feeling our own emotions, learning our own value and worth and authentic voice and uncovering our wounds, and how we can translate that into what we really need and how to communicate that in a relationship. So it's gonna be some good healing stuff. I'm really excited about it.

Lilli: That’s awesome to hear. Thank you so much for doing this!