Codependency and Referrals in the Counselling Process

Codependency can also be a form of Attraction to Hurt. A codependent person is someone who has let another person’s behaviour affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling them. Whilst focusing on the person they are codependent with, they may look to that person for the answer as to what kind of day it is going to be, how are things now, what do I think of this situation or person. There is infact no “I” in chronic codependency.

This is a form of Resistance to Nourishing Change. It is often that which we are unaware of, that we subconsciously resist, that we need to have feedback on in order to overcome it or to change. It is unknown to us, it is our ‘interface’ our learning edge, the part of ourselves that we cannot see although others can. It is the part of ourselves that can ‘turn people off.’

Through the concept of Referrals we look at past pain. If I am experiencing a referral it means that something I am having strong feelings about, is also triggering a past memory, an event that raised similar emotions. Referrals can be positive and negative. A Referral Chain is when a series of incidents with which we have significant emotional memories attached, are triggered. This can also result in an ‘Overwhelming Referral Moment’ which will cause an extreme pendulum swing. If this is connected to anxiety it could cause a panic attack.

If someone is having a referral chain of happy memories it may be deeply moving or nostalgic. We are constantly living with the referral chains of our past. Negative referrals bring clients to counselling. In order to break patterns of behaviour that are no longer useful or are now bad for us, we need to overcome our referrals, have freedom from our memory triggers of the past. ‘True freedom is freedom from referrals’. (CT)

There are positive Referrals as well as negative ones. The energy that is going into and surrounds a negative referral can be used in the opposite direction, in a positive way. A negative always has the potential to be turned into a positive. A negative has a coating of positive and a positive has an element or layer of negative.

‘Referral’ © Peter Fleming, Pellin Institute 

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