We Can Do Hard Things
Save Your Life By Letting Go (of Codependency) with Terri Cole
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
403. Save Your Life By Letting Go (of Codependency) with Terri Cole Licensed psychotherapist and relationship expert, Terri Cole, returns to talk more about high-functioning codependency—a term Terri coined to describe those who appear highly capable but feel deeply exhausted, resentful, and overwhelmed in relationships. In part two of our conversation, we will discuss recovery: where to start and what healing looks like. -The biggest cost to being an active HFC and how to stop paying the price -How to stop giving immediate yeses and what to do instead -The two reasons we actually gossip and what it reveals about what we need to work on -Over a dozen actionable tools to release being a High Functioning Codependent Check out part one of our conversation, Are You A High Functioning Codependent? Find Out with Terri, here: Part 1 On Terri: Terri Cole is a licensed psychotherapist and global relationship and empowerment expert and the author of Boundary Boss and Too Much! She has a gift for making complex psychological concepts accessible and actionable so that clients –including parents, celebrities and Fortune 500 CEOs – achieve sustainable change. You can find her through her blog, courses, her podcast, The Terri Cole Show, and at terricole.com. Check out www.terricole.com/hfc for a special offering from Terri. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is high-functioning codependency?
I mean, TM would say 20 and 20 or 30 and 30, but whatever you can do. I have a million on Insight Timer. I've got like a ton of free meditations that people can just do. You can just choose to start adding a little bit of stillness and silence because what you're doing is you'll be expanding that in your internal experience. So when you need it, you will have it.
But if we never slow down, if we're never still, if we're never alone with our own thoughts, which for an HFC, if you've not done any of this work, it's terrifying. And any of you who've started meditating, no, the first time you start, if you have an active mind, you're like, was that meditating or was that thinking? Or you just don't want to do it.
I did guided meditations for years because I was like me alone with my thoughts. It was like terrifying. But the more you do it, the easier it gets. And the more you can just breathe, someone says something, take a beat. We don't have to give people immediate answers, right? It's okay to buy time and you can learn how to do that. Especially anybody who is leans towards the auto. Yes.
If we're like a people pleaser and people ask you when you just feel like, or if you were raised in a religious household where you feel like if somebody needs something, you should be of service. So forget the auto yes. So pod squatters for the next seven days, no immediate yeses to anything. Oh, I like this.
Yes, I'll do this.
No immediate yeses, Abby. We're not doing it. But what are we doing? We're going to learn how to buy time. How do you do it? The person says, hey, I could really use your help on Wednesday with the kids in the afternoon. And you say, why? you know what? I need to actually check my schedule. I'll get back to you tomorrow. You know what? I've made a 24-hour decision-making policy for my sanity.
I'll let you know tomorrow. You know what? I need to check with my partner, my friend, my dog, whoever you need to check with, right? Because what happens is it's so much easier to come back and give a real no, an honest no, if you haven't already given a reactive yes. And we will find a way not to do the shit we don't want to do. You know this.
Yeah.
And then you leave and cannot wait. Who can I call to discuss this with? I cannot wait to, who am I shit talking? Anyway.
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Chapter 2: How can we recognize the signs of codependency?
I mean, part of the recovery, there's so much, I call it self-consideration because I feel like self-care and self-love, we talk about it, we understand it, but it seems very platitudy at this point. And what is more powerful is actual self-consideration before you commit to Do I have the bandwidth to do it without becoming resentful? And do I even effing want to do it? Those two questions.
And again, if that's the only thing you changed from listening to pod number two in this little series, it would change your life because it would change what you commit to doing. It would change the way you interact with other people. It wouldn't just be the automatic, I got it. And I think we really have to question that. Do we have it? And the answer is we don't. We actually don't, right?
That's an illusion too, you know?
This is all so beautiful and has me like my head exploding with things. Can you talk about emotional resistance? Because something that I've been like thinking about a lot since I read your work is like, oh, I am using other people to... emotionally regulate. I am looking outside and saying, okay, is that thing acceptable to me?
That thing in the outside is that person who's on the train across from me and listening to music too loud. Is that acceptable to me? Therefore I'm not emotionally regulated. Is my son's grades acceptable enough for me to emotionally regulate it? Am I whatever? So I'm
Trying to figure out like, how do I get to a place kind of like Abby was saying before, where I can inside of me be in charge of knowing if I'm okay, deciding. If I'm not okay and then having tools to make myself okay, even if the world is fucking burning down outside of me. Yes. And then I can still make a choice like, oh, would I like to bring some water over there? I can still do that.
But the inside of me, I can have tools for that. Yeah. How do we even know that? that we are dependent on others for our emotional regulation. And then what is a way to check in and be able to regulate ourselves regardless of the outer situations?
Okay. Big question, but we got it. So you can tell if other people, situation, circumstances, what's going on, because you are dysregulated. When your regulation is dependent on outside things, You are dysregulated because it's not consistent, right? When we are emotionally self-regulated in a good way, there's a baseline. Something happens, we get upset, and then we go back to the baseline.
So the real question is, how do we create a baseline of stability where we go, okay, I don't love that he got a C. I also don't think he's going to be homeless because he got a C, right? Like we don't have to go to the extreme of what does it mean? So with HFCs, and there's a whole section in the book about emotional self-regulation, but it starts with emotional fluency, right?
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