47: Codependency & Mental Health: How People-Pleasing, Guilt, and Burnout Are All Connected

Mental health and codependency intersect in profound ways that affect how we treat ourselves, not just our relationships with others. We explore four key patterns that keep us stuck in cycles of burnout, guilt, and emotional exhaustion while providing practical steps toward healing.
We will explore how:

• People-pleasing isn't just politeness but a nervous system survival response developed in childhood
• Self-abandonment occurs when we consistently put others first regardless of the cost to ourselves
• Chronic guilt and shame keep us stuck in patterns of overgiving even when it's harming our wellbeing
• Emotional over-responsibility leads to burnout when we take ownership of others' feelings and problems

Whether you're deep into your healing journey or just beginning to wonder why you're so tired all the time, this episode offers both validation and practical steps forward. Because you don't need to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode is for anyone who's ever been
called the strong one, thereliable one, the one who has it
all together, the one who'sconstantly showing up for others
but struggling to show up forthemselves, because today I'm
going to be talking about thehidden ways that codependency
shows up in our mental health,not just in relationships, but
in how we treat ourselves.

(00:20):
This episode is short and sweetmainly because I've uploaded
too many episodes this month forMental Health Awareness Month
and my Buzzsprout account onlyallows me to upload a certain
amount of podcasts, so initiallyI had something else planned
for today, but I'm going to needto push that into June so that
I can do it some justice, sotoday's episode is gonna be a

(00:40):
little shorter.
So, whether you're already deepinto your healing journey or
just starting to wonder whyyou're so tired all the time,
stick around, because thisepisode is for you.
Welcome to the CodependentDoctor, a weekly podcast
focusing on all thingscodependency.
Are you struggling to loveyourself, feeling burnt out or
having trouble forming lovingand meaningful relationships?

(01:02):
I can help you heal from thepast and move forward with
healthier selves, healthierrelationships and healthier,
more fulfilling lives.
Join me as we reclaim yourauthentic self.
I'm your host, a family doctorand fellow codependent, dr
Angela Downey.
We can do this together.
Here we go.
Hello to all my wonderfulpodcast listeners and welcome to

(01:25):
the 47th episode of theCodependent Doctor.
I'm your host, dr Angela Downey, a family doctor and fellow
codependent who used to thinkthat burnout was just part of my
personality and boundaries werejust something that other
people got to have.
Today's episode, we're going tobe talking about something that
sits right at the intersectionof mental health and
codependency.

(01:46):
Things like people-pleasing,self-abandonment, chronic guilt,
emotional over-responsibilitynot as a quirky personality
trait, but as signs that yourmental health might need some
attention.
So I'm going to take a look atthese four key ways that mental
health and codependencyintersect, the first one being
people-.
People pleasing isn't justpoliteness, it's emotional

(02:06):
survival.
This topic is a classic forcodependence.
We often think that peoplepleasing is just being nice, but
it runs much deeper than that.
For many of us, it begins inour childhoods.
Maybe home didn't feelemotionally safe, maybe there
was a parent who wasunpredictable, or you never knew

(02:27):
what mood you'd be walking intowhen you came home.
So your nervous system adaptedand you became this helpful,
agreeable, low-maintenanceperson, not because that's who
you were, but because that's howyou learned to stay safe.
Now as an adult, that survivalpattern, learn to stay safe.

(02:48):
Now as an adult, that survivalpattern.
It lingers and you say yes whenyou want to be saying no.
You might apologize for thingsthat weren't your fault.
You avoid disappointing others,even if it means disappointing
yourself.
From the outside this can oftenlook like kindness, but
underneath it all it's fear.
It's a fear of rejection, ofconflict or being seen as being

(03:09):
too much.
And here's the truth Peoplepleasing isn't a personality
trait, it's a nervous systemresponse.
And healing doesn't meanbecoming selfish or cold.
It means finally includingyourself in that equation.
So healing can look likepausing before saying yes and
checking in with what you want,or choosing honesty over harmony

(03:33):
, even if it's a littleuncomfortable, or maybe letting
that guilt rise and not lettingit make your decisions for you.
Eventually you realize that youdon't have to be easy to be
loved.
You don't have to earn yourplace, because you matter even
when you're not performing.
And that's when your yes itbecomes honest.

(03:54):
Your care becomes a gift, not asurvival tactic, and you stop
abandoning yourself just to keepthe peace, because you finally
made peace with who you are.
So that's going to bring me tothe second thing I want to
discuss, and that'sself-abandonment.
It's what happens when youalways put other people first,
no matter the cost to yourself.

(04:14):
You ignore your needs, you pushpast your limits.
You smile when you're hurtingand you tell yourself that
you're fine as long as everyoneelse is doing okay.
But that's not selflessness,it's disconnection.
It's disconnection from yourown feelings, your boundaries
and your truth, and over timeit's going to chip away at your

(04:35):
mental health.
You're going to become anxiousand resentful and numb.
You stop trusting yourselfbecause you've spent so long
overriding your instincts andmost of us learn this pattern in
childhood.
Maybe your feelings weren'twelcomed, maybe you felt like
love was conditional.
So you learn to stay quiet, youare agreeable and helpful and

(04:57):
you learn to be the easy child.
But now it's costing you yourpeace.
Healing is going to start whenyou begin showing up for
yourself with the same care thatyou offer everyone else.
So here are a couple of simpleways to begin Pause before
saying yes, don't respond rightaway, just give yourself a

(05:17):
minute.
Don't respond to that textmessage.
You don't have to answer thephone, you can let it go to
voicemail and this way it givesyou the time to think about do I
really want to do this?
Do I have the energy for this?
Am I saying yes just becauseI'm feeling guilty?
Even just saying let me thinkabout it can give you some space
to choose instead of reacting.

(05:39):
So the second step is to gethonest about your needs.
So every day, you should beasking yourself what do I need
right now?
Where have I stayed silent whenI need to speak up, and what
boundaries should I beaddressing?
This is not something that wedo instinctively.
Like I said, we've learned tooverride some of those instincts

(06:00):
that we had just to stay safe.
So choosing yourself doesn'tmean that you stop caring about
everyone else.
It means that you stopdisappearing to keep them
comfortable.
You don't need to set yourselfon fire to keep everyone else
warm, and that real healing isgoing to begin when you learn to
put yourself first and realizethat it's not selfishness.

(06:21):
The third thing I wanted todiscuss was chronic guilt and
shame and how they can keep youstuck.
These are two emotions thatkeep people pleasing and
self-abandonment alive.
For many of us, guilt it'sgoing to show up the moment that
we try to care for ourselves.
If you say no, you mightinstantly wonder if you've done
something wrong.
If you rest, maybe you thinkthat you're being lazy.

(06:44):
If you set a boundary, youstart questioning if you're
being selfish.
But guilt doesn't mean thatyou've done something bad.
It just usually means thatyou're doing something different
.
So that's when shame steps inand whispers that you're the
problem.
So we go back to overgiving andoverperforming, not because

(07:04):
it's right, but because it feelssafer for us.
Overgiving is where we're usedto be and it's where we're
comfortable.
You've likely been taughtinvisible rules like always be
kind or keep everyone else happy, Don't take up too much space.
But guilt it's not a moralcompass, it's a conditioned
response, and just because youfeel it doesn't mean that you're

(07:27):
wrong.
You can feel guilty and stilltake care of yourself.
You're allowed to rest eventhough you feel uncomfortable
about it, and you can say noeven though it makes you feel
uneasy.
You can set a boundary andstill hear those inner alarms
and you still can follow through.
These are things that are goingto get easier with time, and

(07:47):
you're not always going to feelguilty or shame for doing them.
So here's a couple of thingsthat might help.
Firstly, just call it out.
Tell yourself this is guilt,it's not a sign that I'm doing
something wrong.
Secondly, check in with yourvalues.
Is this aligned with who I wantto be?
And if the answer is yes, evenif it's hard, then you need to
keep going.
Three you can practice tinyacts of self loyalty.

(08:11):
Say no without explaining, takea break before you reach
burnout and choose what's rightfor you.
Four, remind yourself thatyou're not bad.
You're healing, and sometimesthat can look a little messy.
Just give yourself a littlecompassion.

(08:32):
Guilt just means that you'rebreaking old patterns and
building new ones that includeyou.
So next time that guilt showsup, take a breath and remind
yourself this is just an oldalarm.
I don't have to obey it, Idon't need to feel guilty and
then do the thing anyway,because sometimes you just need
to do what you need to do to bementally healthy.
The fourth way that mentalhealth and codependency

(08:52):
intersect is emotionalover-responsibility, and that
can lead to burnout.
So let's talk about emotionalover-responsibility for a minute
.
Lead to burnout.
So let's talk about emotionalover-responsibility for a minute
.
This is a pattern that shows upwhen you feel like it's your
job to keep everyone elseemotionally okay.
It's not just empathy.
It's absorbing other people'semotions and making them your

(09:13):
responsibility, and this mightlook like you sense tension and
so your nervous system.
It kicks into fixer mode.
If someone seems off, your firstthought might be did I do
something wrong and maybe youapologize to keep the peace.
Even when you didn't cause theconflict, you're the one
smoothing things over at work orcovering for other people or

(09:34):
explaining someone else'sbehavior.
You're not the manager, but youfeel like the emotional manager
of everyone's life, and thecost of that is burnout, because
when you're constantly trackingeveryone else's emotional state
, you lose track of your own,you miss your own exhaustion,
you miss your frustration oryour own needs because you're

(09:55):
too busy trying to holdeverything else together for
everyone else.
It puts your nervous system onthis high alert.
It's always scanning, alwaysanticipating, always absorbing
what's around you, and that'sjust not sustainable.
So a couple of things thatmight help with this are to name
that pattern, catch yourself inthe moment.
You might see something likeoops, I'm taking responsibility

(10:17):
for something that isn't mine,and that pause.
Second thing you can try isthink of like a fence metaphor
and you can picture a whitepicket fence.
On the inside of the fence isyour thoughts, your needs,
emotions, and on the outside ofthe fence is everyone else's.
So you can ask yourself whoseside of the fence am I on?

(10:38):
Is it theirs?
And if that's the case, thenit's not yours to fix.
You can practice settingemotional boundaries and saying
things to people like thatsounds really hard how are you
feeling about it?
Or I care about you, but Ican't fix this for you.
Is there something that youneed from me?
So instead of guessing whateveryone else needs and working

(11:00):
hard to try and fix it for them,you put it on the other person
to tell you what they need andthen you can think about am I
really able to help this person?
Do I have the energy or thecapability to help them?
And you can say no, becausecaring is kind, but caring too
much, that's going to break youover time.
So you're allowed to carewithout carrying everyone else's

(11:22):
emotional weight.
So these are different ways thatmental health and codependency
are deeply connected and theyshow up in so many ways that we
don't always recognize.
But the more we talk about them, the more that we learn to
catch the signs earlier and tosupport ourselves, better we can
start healing in a way thatfeels real, not just

(11:43):
performative.
So, as always, I want to thankyou for being here, thank you
for listening and thank you fordoing the inner work.
And if no one's told you today,you're allowed to take up space
, you're allowed to rest and youare enough just as you are.
So that's it for today, myfriends.
I'm going to be back here nextMonday with a regular episode of
the Codependent Doctor.

(12:03):
Until then, take care ofyourself.
You've got this.
Thank you for joining me and Ihope today's podcast resonated
with you.
Click, like and subscribe soyou don't miss any future
episodes and to help others whomight benefit.
This podcast is not meant toprovide medical advice and
should not replace seeing yourdoctor for mental health
concerns.
If you're having a mentalhealth crisis, please present to

(12:25):
a hospital, call 911 or yourlocal crisis helpline.
I'll talk to you next week foranother episode of the
Codependent Doctor.
We can do this together.