Special Guest: Rebecca Chapman

Greetings Magnificent Souls to the Attract Health Build Wealth Blog where we have open and honest discussions about ourselves. 

This is a place where we breakdown, breakaway, and breakthrough codependency allowing ourselves to attract health, build wealth, and live a peaceful life.

We are tired of being sick and tired. We are tired, but we are not giving up. We KNOW that there is something magnificent inside of us.

Because we are fighting daily, hourly, and by the minute: fighting ourselves, our kids, our spouses, we have to do things differently. 

We have to break the cycle. We don’t have a million chances. We have to be happy, NOW. We have to find a way. So how do we do that? How is that possible?

If you look around at what society is telling you, they’d tell you that what we’re doing is impossible. 

Yet, it’s happening. 

Every. 

Single. 

Day. 

It’s happening through the practice and love that we call Awakening the Magnificent Soul.

We are all Magnificent Souls, and these are our stories of healing!

Today in Episode 49, I am so happy to have Rebecca Chapman on the show. Rebecca and I really connected in this conversation about childhood emotional neglect, codependency, and lots of bits in between. 

Before we get into the discussion, please let me know your thoughts about this episode, any feedback you have or anything you would like me to cover on future podcasts at epiphanyvault.com Remember, it is a safe place and I would welcome the discussion. 

One thing before we get started with Rebecca.

The Codependency Meditation Audio is still available to you for free if you would like some peace from codependency.

Meditation is a big piece in my Soul Maintenance ToolBox so I thought I’d share a little bit of that love and goodness with you. I hope you enjoy.

Okay, a little bit about Rebecca. She is a calmness and resilience therapist based in Queensland, Australia. Rebecca works with clients all of the worlds to do the deep work that really works. She focuses on childhood emotional neglect and has a pretty inspiring story of her own. 

Here is Rebecca Chapman…

Lilli: Thank you again, Rebecca, for coming on the show today. So I wanted to start off with the standard question that I do with all of my guests, which is, what do you know about co-dependency or how has it touched your life? 

Rebecca: I had had a codependent relationship with my parents, I would say since I was born, but the term didn't come around until probably the early 2000s like 1990s. So up until then I had no word to call what it was. And I still think of it is entwined with a whole lot about other things in peoples lives. Now, it is something that a lot of my clients have. I deal with people who've had childhood emotional neglect, which doesn't mean you haven't been loved, it just means that you haven't been heard as a child. And I find that my clients fall into three categories. They either go into flight which means that they run from their parents, push their parents away until the rest of their lives, push people away or they stay it and fight. So you get people who become very aggressive, assertive angry and the third biggest category is fawn which is actually where you are codependent. And it's almost a disease of assertiveness where you haven't learned to be assertive. So most of all...

Lilli: Sorry I'm gonna interrupt, it broke up a little bit. What was the third term? 

Rebecca: Fawn. You know when you fawn over somebody and you pretend everything is okay. And so that's a disease of assertiveness where you haven't been allowed to be yourself as a child. And so, I find in my work... And probably I've attracted a lot of people like it during my life, is people who haven't learnt who they are and will say or do anything to please the person who they're talking to at the time. So they will... Whatever movie you want to watch or I like... So they'll suddenly like the hobby that somebody else has got, so I end up with these people who don't have any idea what they like, what they dislike, they probably sometimes don't know what job they're good at, 'cause they're doing a job that someone else has suggested that they do. They're in a relationship they thought they should have, they are having children because they thought they should have them, but mostly... Yeah, some of the first questions I ask them are even really simple ones like, "what's your favorite food? If you went to a super market what would be the first thing that you would want to buy, if you didn't have to shop for anyone else?" And the people can't answer this because they've been told that their needs are secondary to someone. And they will be attracted to people who will take advantage of that. So yeah, it's been a huge, huge part of my life and a lot of it's been learning for me.

Rebecca: I had a very type A upbringing, so it was all about succeeding, so that my parents look good, doing really well at school, which I did, going to university, got married, had children. And at 30, I had a stroke. And that what was when I learnt that I wasn't what I did and I wasn't about appeasing other people because I couldn't do anything. I was lying in the bed and they were playing the truth about cats and dogs on repeat on the video because they thought I couldn't even understand that. So I had to learn to be and to learn that I wasn't what I could do for other people, and to allow other people to do things for me. So for me, the universe chucked me a huge lesson because I was just gonna keep careering on, helping people and doing what was right. So I had a nasty lesson. My job, I think, is now to make sure other people don't hit that point.

Lilli: I love that.

Rebecca: Yeah, and to not let them become codependent only, so to learn as a therapist when I work with them that I'm not gonna let them, I'll sit there in silence until they tell me what their favorite color is. And I'll sit there for half an hour if that's needed and to just watch them re-discover parts of themselves they lost as children.

Lilli: I think that you have been following me from all those things that you've said at the beginning was point for point, I can't list off exactly what you said but I was pushed into looking a certain way for other people.

Rebecca: Absolutely, I forgot that one.

Lilli: Yes. Well, that's what I mean, I was pushed, I feel like, in a career that was supposed to be good for me or pay the bills or look good on my resume, I can't remember all the ones you list off that I really feel like that you were following me through my life. So it feels good because the codependency that I have experienced was extremely alienating. So even if you're in a relationship like I was in an eight-year codependent relationship, it's amazing how alone you can feel.

Rebecca: Oh, the thing is that you've lost yourself and that's the greatest loneliness, even if you're in a fantastic relationship. Although a fantastic relationship, they might help you find yourself but it's so lonely and you can see that other people have something else but you're not sure what it is. So you go back to what you were told as a child, was if you look this way, if you speak this way, if you act this way, if you will be nice then you get that elusive something. But when you've been brought up like you have and I have, you feel like you have the special flaw that one day someone is going to find out, so you're desperately trying to cover it up with all this other stuff, it's not a flaw. I think too one of the biggest lessons with my codependent clients and myself has... Oh, it skipped my mind. I'll come back to it in...

Lilli: Okay, well, I wrote down some notes as you were talking and I loved also that you mentioned about family of origin, it's not that you weren't... And again, for me, I just speak on my experience and my reflections and what kind of got me thinking about what you said about that was today is... And also today in my awakening, I like to call it, but I know I was loved but I don't feel like that I was nurtured. And a lot of things suffered because of that, whether that be... I can... All the categories: Physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, intellectual. Intellectual book-wise, I'm on point. But intellectually, like emotional intelligence, that, those things weren't nurtured.

Rebecca: No. And it's a bit of a sign of the times too, so I have to take that into account because that was very much it back then, but it's to be heard and understood and seen. Case in point, I have a daughter who... I'm a tomboy, I liked motorbikes, I liked all sorts of stuff like that, mechanics, engineering. I've got a daughter who loves makeup and fashion. Which actually is normal in my family. And I had to learn with her. When you have a child, you don't have a mini me. You have a person and they're tiny but they're a little personality. And so I actually... I've got sisters who enjoy what my daughter enjoys. So part of my nurturing her was to let her spend time with them.

Rebecca: And I think that's where a sense of community is important too. Just as a parent, you need to recognize your child's different-ness. Not as something wrong, but just as them and teach them to accept the difference and also true that they have personal power. I think when you're brought up with no emotional intelligence, your personal power is taken away. Maybe because you were very intelligent and you asked questions that they didn't wanna answer. No, I find that with a lot of kids, kids who've asked, "why should I do that?" or "why are we doing this?" "Why do we have to be that manner every way?" And it's quite confronting for the parents, it's very, very difficult to raise all of your children with emotional intelligence. Your own emotional intelligence and their emotional intelligence without feeling like you've failed.

Lilli: Oh yeah. I heard... Yeah, in my... And I'm doing a lot of inner work on myself right now, because for so long, I had just gone all the way to the sympathetic, I guess and forgot about it. And can't really recall a lot of memories. And it's not... For me, it's... I don't know, it's just a lot of things that I'm noting right now and writing my book, but I heard a lot of "do as I say, not as I do." I heard a lot of "because I said so." Things like...

Rebecca: "Because I said so."

Lilli: Yeah. And so what you said about mini me, I'm actually just writing about this right now, is that they work so hard to make them not like themselves, that in essence they're disconnecting from themselves. They're not owning who they are, they think that they should be a different way, they're insecure, they have a lot of shame and fear under there, not just manifested in me as well.

Rebecca: Especially if you're on an introvert. Yeah, and the other important thing to remember, 'cause sometimes you want to get together with your siblings and talk about this, but the experience between siblings is vastly different. Vastly different, depending on their personality. And I think... Yeah, I remember now what I was going to say. The thing that I try to get across is it's not something wrong with you and it's not wrong to be different from your parents and you're not going to hurt them or... 'cause as a child, you rely on them for food and shelter and love. So for you to think differently to them is a scary, scary, scary proposition because your lifeline can be cut off and you can carry that intense level of fear through to being an adult.

Rebecca: So you could act as if your life depends on it still and that you love the who you are, or else you're going to hurt someone else or you're going to bring someone else's world down or something else. So it's huge. It's huge and part of the work I do is teaching people how to scale it. So it's not on either a zero or a 10. You can disagree with someone at a two. And it's not going to end the relationship which is what adult women usually worry about. If I disagree with him or if I say what I want, if I say what I need, he's going to leave, I'm going to be abandoned. It's more... Yes, not everything is that [12:16] ____. But it's not a problem, it's not a... People say, "how can I fix myself so this doesn't happen to me?" and I tend more to say, let's find you some people who won't take advantage of that. Let's teach you how to find some healthy friendships, where you can be yourself, you can be kind, you can be all those wonderful things that you were as a child, but still be yourself.

Lilli: You know what you said, what you said about not wrong. So I also... And I think it had a lot to do with my codependency is I operated in black and white, like my whole life, right or wrong, there are no gray area. I couldn't understand, if things were wrong then I would just disassociate from them forever. So, I also just wanted to say, and I don't even know if I need to say this or why it came in my head is that, even though you may have had... And this is just coming from my experience, but even though if you may have had bad experiences in the past, doesn't mean that they were wrong. And talking about my parents in particular, I'm sure it'll be very eye-opening and they probably will... Hopefully they'll be able to accept my point of view, I don't know if that's the case. But it doesn't mean that they were wrong, it doesn't mean that I'm right. This is my perspective.

Lilli: I don't even know kind of why I wanted to say that but I think the first step really is trying to internalize, I guess where you are. Like we talked about before, you talked about self-worth, you talked about a lack of identity, which I think is huge, which is along... Everything parallels. It's along the same lines as identity and what you said before but I don't know. I just wanted to say that not everything is black and white cause I always thought...

Rebecca: It's not black and white.

Lilli: Yeah, I always thought that it was.

Rebecca: A lot of my clients are either okay or angry, okay or depressed or okay. We have to actually find language in the middle. Angry could be frustrated, disappointed, upset and you can be upset at someone and it's not to be or an end all. It's not the end of that relationship. It's not like, "Oh okay, boom! You're gone." Yeah, yeah but I think that's also true from I suppose when your parents... As a small child trying to appease your parents, cause my sister didn't care what they thought. And neither did my other sister actually but I deeply cared what they thought but I didn't know... I was always trying to read what they were saying, to work out what was right, what was wrong, trying to always analyze everything everybody said, to work it out. And I guess I was told that you're intelligent or you weren't, you are beautiful or you weren't. I remember once I asked my dad if I was sexy, but not in those words. He was talking about some woman and he just said no. So it was just, "No, I'm not" and so, "You're fat, she's thin." And my family spoke like that a lot. Very much so you were a good person if you're intelligent and you were a good person if you're beautiful or you went to the right school and I married a lawyer, which is just the biggest disaster in the world, if he's listening.

Rebecca: But it's not black and white and there's all different shades and just re-teaching people to state what they want, now that scares people when I first started. But it's Baby, baby, baby steps, baby steps. It's almost for me my job is re-parenting and being accepting and having people learn that they can tell me anything and I really... It doesn't make... And I was really gonna say but it doesn't make any difference to me. Which is how it should be with your parents.

Lilli: Right, yeah.

Rebecca: You can hold a different opinion to me, you can even tell me that what you think I've said is not true and we'll speak again. We'll speak again and I'm fine. And also learning that in healthy relationships, people want you to state what you need. In a healthy relationship, the other person doesn't want you to always agree, they want to love you. They want to learn about you, they love the differences between you and them and that took me a long time too because in my family I was... It was who were you like in the family and then that was your little nation. I think I also had the, "This is what women do, this is what men do" a little bit too, so...

Rebecca: Yeah, having said earlier that I loved engineering, I loved motorbikes, I was such a tomboy but women didn't do those careers. So I did primary teaching initially. Actually I did that to piss my dad off but that's a whole another thing. And he wanted me to be a lawyer. It's really tiny baby steps and when people... Also when I send my clients to do something for themselves like go to see a movie they want to see, perhaps by themselves. Oh, it's such an effort. So also being gentle with yourself during the process of this and that you're not actually trying to fix yourself, you're coming back to yourself.

Lilli: Can you elaborate more on a little about some tools to do that, what you just said. Anything that you would recommend? I have a couple of podcasts where I talk about my toolkit, which again, I don't think is right or wrong, I think that it's a personal preference and what connects with you, but do you have anything? Go on.

Rebecca: I do. Actually, the very first few sessions, I send out a few practical things, which is a book of emotions. And it's got lots of different words for the key emotions that we learn as a kid. I have a little shape of people that initially hated learning it because initially, it's really difficult to find the emotion that you feel. So I'll say to anybody there, if they get it from me, I don't expect you straight away to be able to do it or else no. In the morning, you write down three emotions you feel or two, lunchtime two, dinner two. Just checking in with yourself about how you feel and also not judging that emotion, like you said, as black or white or good or bad.

Rebecca: And then another list which I have, which has really been on, which is just start thinking about, "What things am I good at? What things am I not good at?" Because as kids, it would be a rare parent where you'd come home and say, "Oh, I was picked last for sports," which I was all the time. And your parent would say, "Well, maybe it's just not for you. That's fine, let's find something that is for you." So to be able to say, "You know what? I'm really, really crap at drawing." Crap! My three-year-old daughter laughed at my drawing of a cat. And she's like "That's okay. It's okay. That's okay." So we talk about, what did you love to do as a child that made the time go? Or all those things. Also, get in to your physicality. Walk.

Lilli: Yes.

Rebecca: Go do something, go outside. Because as a codependent person or anyone who's suffered trauma, you live in your head and you tend to neglect your body.

Lilli: Yes.

Rebecca: You are your thoughts and you're constantly trying to analyze what somebody meant when they sent this text or what do they mean when they said this or were they really trying to say this. It's such a waste of time and so if you can get out and walk, do something you love, I don't care what it is. Five or ten minutes, have that activity. So that you, if you ever find yourself overthinking and trying to work out what other people meant, can just go and do it. So I ask people to list five things. List five things that you can do to break the circuit.

Lilli: Go back to basics.

Rebecca: Go to basics.

Lilli: Yeah. I love that.

Lilli: I kind of call this my toolbox. So I love those suggestions. And I think we are gonna close it at this point, even though I know that we can go on for hours and hours and hours.

Lilli: I really appreciate you coming on the podcast, Rebecca. And I'm sure some of my listeners want to find you, so where would they be able to find you? 

Rebecca: On my website, which is www.alifeinperfectbalance.com. And I actually have a free at the moment, because of the virus, so I have a free 30-minute chat.

Rebecca: So we can have a chat and they can see if we suit, because that's also really important with therapists, is that we gel. But in that 30 minutes, I'm really happy to offer any advice, especially at the moment. And I'm also on Instagram and Twitter but that's really just my silly sense of humor more than any... But my website's the place to go and there's also a contact form. So just shoot me... And you'll get me, you don't get a secretary or anything that like [chuckle] So I'd love to chat because I'm so passionate about helping people with this.

Lilli: Yes. Well, it's been such a pleasure and I did... I think I found you on Instagram and I do like your silly sense of humor. So it's appreciated on this side and if you're out there, listeners, I will link everything up on the show notes so you'll be able to find Rebecca easily. But thank you so much for coming on and we will see you next time.

Rebecca: It's a pleasure.