Talking About Codependency And Breakups With Julia Kristina

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Julia Kristina, a registered clinical counselor based out of Vancouver.

We talked about all kinds of interesting things related to breakups and codependency.

• What is codependency? 0:03
• Avoidant vs. codependent attachment styles. 5:43
• The yearning for connection and codependent relationships. 11:10
• Setting boundaries in a codependent relationship. 16:25
• How long does it take your brain to reset? 23:43
• Setting clear boundaries about not contacting your ex. 28:19
• How to set boundaries. 33:34
• Setting clear boundaries. 38:33
• Codependency and codependency in relationships. 41:45
• Masterclasses and resources. 47:10

Important Links Mentioned In The Episode

• Work With Julia Kristina
• Join The “Shift” Society
• Contact Julia

Interview Transcript

Chris Seiter 00:03
All right, today we’re gonna be talking to Julia Kristina who holds a master’s degree in counseling in psychology. She’s also helped hundreds of men and women break through their biggest struggles with anxiety, worry, low self esteem, self doubt, I got this, this list just keeps going on through. But today, we’re gonna basically be talking to her about codependency how to improve your communication skills, or basically the boundary setting abilities that maybe you feel like you’re lacking in relationships, but I just wanted to say, thank you so much for coming on and doing this. It’s such a pleasure.

Julia 00:35
It is my pleasure, Chris to be here and having this conversation. Thanks for having me.

Chris Seiter 00:41
Okay, so the first thing I typically do when I have interview kind of coming up, I always like to do a little bit of homework, you know, a couple of hours before I come on, so I’m going through your YouTube channel and you have like 300,000 subscribers so it’s, it’s not like one of those small YouTube channels, you’ve got a pretty large audience, but the one video that stuck out to me was basically your so like, Do you ever do that thing on YouTube where you go to someone’s YouTube channel and you always just like, sort it by the most popular videos. Were totally sponsored other videos is about codependency and I immediately clicked with this one because I think it’s a perfect topic to talk about. So why don’t we talk a little bit about how to identify if you are in a or if you are basically in a codependent relationship or you are codependent yourself?

Julia 01:32
Oh, gosh, I mean, it can look a lot of different ways. So to talk about what codependency is, I think first we need to talk about that more what codependency isn’t and what it looks like to not be in a codependent relationship. So the opposite of codependence isn’t independence. The opposite of codependence is interdependence. So when we are in an interdependent relationship, it means that both people are there for each other. And both people have a secure sense of self within the relationship. So both people do need each other has to be a certain element of needing the person in your life or else what’s the point? You’re just living parallel lives, as opposed to interdependent lives? And so yeah, just really think about that. What does it mean to be interdependent? It means that I need this person in certain aspects. So I just got to throw a frog in my throat.

Chris Seiter 02:37
You know, it’s a good, it’s a good, it’s alive, we are alive.

Julia 02:42
We are not we are not this is not AI.

Chris Seiter 02:45
Unfortunately, or fortunately, rather, it’s not it’s not AI. Yeah.

Julia 02:52
And so really just looking at how do I be dependent on this person, but also be dependent on myself kind of in that same mix. And so what codependence is, is it’s really becoming overly dependent on someone else, for our sense of self. For our identity, we think that somebody else is going to sorry, Jerry Maguire, but you were wrong, complete us. And so we go, and someone’s gonna solve the right thing, right, and we think someone’s going to someone is going to solve our problems and make everything better. Interestingly enough, research shows that people who are in a relationship are only Contrary to popular belief, slightly happier, overall, in general, than people who are single. So that’s just a stat which basically tells us that just sort of, in general, people who are in relationships in like a committed relationship are, in general, are happier, but not as much happier as we thought because no matter where we go, that’s where we are. We bring ourselves into any circumstance or situation. And so you’re gonna bring yourself into a relationship, there’s certain things about being in a relationship, they’re going to make your life better, you’ve got a built in friend to do things where if you’ve got someone to plan with, you’ve got someone to, you know, go through life with the person to talk about the mundane mundane things about your everyday life with. But then you also have someone to navigate and negotiate and problem solving someone else’s schedule and someone else’s preferences and someone else’s ways of doing things and like all of the other stuff that comes with it. So you kind of get you know, you get the pros and the cons. Same with being single, you get the pros and the cons. So they can really just look at that. When people think about being codependent. They’re convinced that they need this person in their life in order to be okay. And that’s just not true. And I think

Chris Seiter 04:59
That is where most of our audience is, you know, I I like to run polls with the audience. So one of the big things that we’re we look at is the attachment styles of individuals. So we asked our audiences like, hey, what what is your attachment style and overwhelmingly the attachment style they had was anxious, preoccupied, but I also asked them hey, what do you think your exes attachment style is? Because most of the people here are going through breakups. And they said overwhelmingly, like 70% said, their ex is a dismissive avoidant. So you have that anxious pairing and that dismissive, avoidant pairing, which I would assume is kind of a breeding ground for these type of codependent relationships. Do you think you could talk a little bit about that?

Julia 05:43
Yeah, so it’s like it’s almost like this thrill of the chase, the more unavailable something is, the more you want it, and the other side of codependent so there’s a one side of codependence where you kind of rely on someone in need them. But then the other side of the codependence is if you’re someone who needs to be needed. Right. So So one person is the needy one, right. So that would be the anxious and then one person is the needs to be needed, which would tend to more be the avoidant where they want to be needed, but then end up feeling suffocated and then push that person away, which causes them to feel rejected, which cause brings out more neediness. And so the dance kind of goes on where there’s a lot of push pull, where you might want to be you know, you need to be needed, you need to feel important, you need to feel essential in someone’s life, like you are the strings that are holding that person together. But as soon as it gets to be too much, you push them away, and the more you push them away, the more their neediness flares up, and it becomes this sort of this sort of dance of a push and pull. And so that’s that’s often how that can show up with anxious and avoidant attachment styles. And also understanding that avoidant attachment is also an anxious attachment. Right? It’s a different iteration of anxious attachment attachment. It’s more the anxiety of letting someone get too close. Because, you know, there’s a whole bunch of experiences and ideas and stories about what that means if we let someone get too close to us. So all of us desire closeness, but then there can be fear that shows up and prevents that from happening in a healthy way.

Chris Seiter 07:23
Well, you know, what’s really interesting about that is your like the third psychologist that I have a I have interviewed that has said that the avoidant sort of attachment style stems from anxiety, and it doesn’t make so much sense because you know, that whatever avoidant mechanism that comes into play usually is coming during some sort of trigger point where their independence is feeling threatened and they grow anxious, and their avoidance is just basically a symptom of that anxiousness.

Julia 07:54
Right. It sounds good.

Chris Seiter 07:55
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I find so interesting about it is to me, so I’ve interviewed a lot of people. And that’s like a common theme that keeps popping up. But it seems like the literature that is online when you read like a Psychology Today article never really mentions the fact that there’s this really intricate connection between dismissive avoidance and the anxiety. They just talk about dismissive avoidance and black and white terms.

Julia 08:27
Yeah, I mean, dismissive, avoidant, all just really understanding that when it comes to human behavior, all of it is purposeful. Right? All behavior is purposeful, there’s always a reason why someone is doing, what they’re doing acting, how they’re acting, interacting, how they’re interacting. And so what the research shows that people who have more the avoidant personality or sorry, avoidant attachment style, is that they were, there was a lot of emoti