codependency & coffee

I’m not one to wait to share my experiences, perhaps to a fault. I write through my thoughts and feelings and then I write through them again. As I evolve in my understanding and perspective my words reflect back to me in a messy and unmethodical way, something I am learning to embrace rather than reject.

Waiting for the perfection that never comes, for the wisdom of retrospect, I’ve come to recognize is only doing myself a disservice. And yet it’s difficult to resist the urge to wrap things up in a neat little bow, to step back without concluding and instead with the intention to revisit and pick up where I left off when the next nugget of wisdom introduces itself.

Our perspectives can and should change, as we grow they grow, so why does it feel so scary to grant ourselves the permission to not know?

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Codependency is a loaded word, another very real phenomenon that has solidified itself as a buzzword in the health and wellness landscape of instagram infographics, podcast episodes, and tik tok get ready with me while I tell you my most recent revelation videos.

When I googled codependency for a ‘scientific’ definition, the first thing that came up was the suicide and crisis hotline, seamlessly setting the tone that this is not something to take lightly.

Yet I couldn’t count how many times I’ve heard this term thrown around on social media this week alone.

It’s a fine line we’re all walking.

On the one hand, we’re living in an age where we have access to so much information and support and community at our finger tips. We’re raising awareness, we’re spreading the message that you are not alone in feeling the way you’re feeling.

Across that line is the danger of self-diagnosing and identifying with each and every buzzword we see on our feeds.

I bring this up never to drag social media through the mud or discredit the very real and at times life threatening struggles of codependency or any other experience. I bring it up in acknowledging the inherent duality of our social feeds and the gravity they pose.

I’ve been feeling the pull more than ever lately as if a growing awareness to it has only made it stronger.

I’m wondering if we have a term for this ‘social media self diagnosing’ phenomenon.

Sort of like medical student syndrome, where it’s easy for medical students who are learning so much at a rapid rate to begin identifying with the symptoms of the diseases they’re studying.

In a way we’re students of our own online school, our algorithm curating a content heavy lesson plan of endless information and rabbit holes to fall down. Our human brains are just not programmed to be able to process and integrate all the information we have limitless access to.

I write about this not from a place of seeing right through it, but of falling into the pattern myself. I’ve been working on being more conscious of the media I’m consuming and being more intentional with my attention. On days I feel my attention has been ‘hijacked’ I find it harder to focus, to be present, to ground into myself and go about my day from a centered place. Yet it’s so incredibly easy to get caught off guard.

Just this week I listened to two podcast episodes discussing codependency, conversations between two people I follow and admire and look up to in career and self-evolution.

I walked away from these conversations having gone from zero identification with codependency to a full blown self-diagnosis with a hunger for learning more.

If it wasn’t for my therapist talking me through what codependency looks like in her professional experience, knocking me out of my self-identification spiral, I’d probably be sitting here researching codependency instead of writing this.

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Codependency is just one term, one example in a vast ocean of infinite possibility.

We’re often grasping for a life raft or rather an explanation, of any shape or size to cling onto. Especially when we zoom out and see how small we are in the relation to the rise and fall of the waves we have no control over.

We crave the known, that’s why we like labels and identities and stories that feel safe and familiar.

Whether they serve us or not, get us closer or further from where we say we want to go, the knowing feels safer than the truth that nothing is ever truly certain, only our minds make it so.

But in the seed of this uncertainty is also our autonomy, our ability to choose to let go of gripping on to each thing that floats past us and trust the waves to carry us.

If nothing is certain, if nothing is set in stone, then anything can be.

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So much of truth is subjective, what is true for you might not be true for me or your best friend or the person sitting next to you.

The question becomes what are you letting into your space and identity? Do you question a new belief, new piece of information, new perspective and if it is true for you right now?

Or just take it with a grain of salt because someone with charisma or a following or a degree or your respect says so?

Equally, what have you been holding onto without question? What is taking up space in your identity, in your beliefs about what is ‘normal’ and what is you without much of a second thought?

The concept of codependency is something I let in and grasped onto this week in attempt to explain away aspects of myself or discomforts I’ve been experiencing.

I can also reflect upon what I’ve been unconsciously gripping onto for a long time, what I can question and maybe even let go of…

Coffee.

After months (if not years) with my iced coffee being one of the highlights of my day, something I looked forward to every morning, I woke up a few weeks ago and felt like having a matcha instead.

After obliging— though skeptically and only on the presumption that I could make an iced coffee after if I still wanted one —I noticed how good I felt that afternoon absent of my typical 4 pm crash.

I played around with this over the next few weeks, some days I still had coffee and some days I didn’t but I noticed how much better my energy and my sleep and my mood were faring when coffee wasn’t in the equation.

It’s funny now how my brain resisted this… we ALWAYS drink coffee it said, what are you going to look forward to if it isn’t that iced coffee pour? and mostly, we probably should drink coffee.

Yet my body continued to tell a different story. Through a few weeks of collecting data, sometimes following the train of my thoughts and sometimes grounding into the guidance of the body I’ve noticed a significant decrease in even wanting the coffee in the first place, and a lessening of any stories that this is bad or wrong or forever.

I might wake up wanting iced coffee tomorrow and that would be okay and I would have it.

I don’t need an always or never conclusion, I can let my mind rest in the not knowing, even if it protests more adamantly some days than others.

I’m not here to tell you not to drink coffee, obviously.

I’m here to ask, what is true for you? What are you letting in?

Have you re-evaluated recently what you’ve been holding onto as a given in your day to day life?

Beyond my experience with something as small and inconsequential as drinking coffee daily, think of how this manifests with the stories we tell ourselves. Narratives that have been running the show for so long that we don’t even consider pausing to question them.

Maybe they were our version of truth at one point,

but your autonomy in this human life,

the beautiful terrifying truth of uncertainty,

is that you have the power in this moment and any moment

to reflect and renegotiate what is true for you.