Alyssa Zander

We’re engaged now, but 6 years ago we broke up.

At the time, I was convinced that the reason our relationship felt so empty and dark was because of what he was doing (or not doing).

I didn’t see how much my criticism and judgment had been impacting him, and therefore driving a huge wedge between us.

I had to sit with the harsh reality that my fixating on him was really just a way to avoid meeting something within myself.

Pointing the finger at him was easier than looking at myself and where I was over giving, self sacrificing, and lacking any kind of boundaries.

It was easier to make him wrong than take responsibility for my own role in our dysfunction.

Now we’re engaged and our relationship is like night and day. We play more, laugh more, and have experienced more success personally and professionally than ever before.

Our life is actually fun, peaceful, and calm… which was something I thought I’d lost all hope for.

The other day I asked him why he thinks our relationship is so much better than before and he said “because you just started to focus on yourself.”

And honestly, he’s right. Me applying pressure on him kept me from expanding myself. And the less pressure I put on him, the more he started to bloom himself.

I think most of us don’t believe we have codependency, but it’s patterns like these that are ruining our most important relationships.

If you want to see if codependency is negatively impacting your relationship just type “QUIZ” in the comments and I’ll send you my free codependency quiz.

Follow if you want to learn how you can start building safe and secure relationship.

I used to think that if my partner was grumpy it was my responsibility to fix it (even though he *never* asked me to) 🙃

Shadow work questions really helped me get to the root of some of my patterns and this is the question that helped me see why I was making his mood my responsibility:

“If my partner is in a mood, then…” (what am I afraid will happen?)

I realized that my partners mood = me not being safe, and that belief came from times in my life where things *weren’t* safe if someone was in a bad mood.

The problem is that I was bringing a past experience to a present moment, and it was negatively impacting my relationship.

I had an attachment to my safety being tied to my partner and his moods.

That’s why his mood/discomfort equaled my discomfort.

I selfishly wanted him to feel better so that I could feel better, and I’ve learned that this codependent dynamic only leads to more resentment and not feeling good enough *for both partners*

He feels like his feelings are too much, and I feel like my efforts to make him feel better aren’t good enough.

We both feel inadequate and the cycle continues.

We’ve spent the last six years rebuilding our relationship and learning how to hold ourselves through our own discomfort, rather than making the other person responsible for fixing it, and it’s completely saved our relationship.

Using shadow work and inner child healing to learn how to source my safety from within, rather than seeking my partner to provide it for me, has completely changed my life and how I show up and experience the world and I want everyone to know about it.

If you want the exact practice I use every time I’m triggered or feel like I need to *fix* their mood, just type “GUIDE” in the comments and I’ll send you my free shadow work + inner child guide.

You can also follow for more tools and practices to help you feel safe and secure in your relationship 🫂✨

❤️‍🩹

We dated for 4 years before we broke up. We got back together 6 years ago and have so much more peace, love, and playfulness than we ever had before.

Here are 8 lessons I learned in the breakup that changed everything:

1. When I fixate on my partner and what they are doing or not doing it’s because I’ve avoiding meeting something within myself.

2. My partner isn’t responsible for meeting needs that I’m not even meeting for myself.

3. Them asking for space does not equal rejection. Take that time to not self-reject and do something kind for the part of you that feels rejected.

4. Just because your relationship triggers you doesn’t mean that this isn’t your person. Your relationship is a mirror, if you don’t like what you see get curious about your role in it.

5. Boundaries have nothing to do with controlling what the other person does and has everything to do with you and what you need to do to enforce the boundary.

6. It’s ok to apologize for the impact I had on my partner, even if it wasn’t my intention. Apologizing in a conflict doesn’t mean their experience is THE truth.

7. Trying to convince them it wasn’t my intention only invalidates their experience. This will only create a more hostile and defensive environment where both people feel unheard.

8. You can hold two truths at the same time and you don’t have to make either person wrong or bad. This is how we grow and honor vulnerability in a relationship.

My journey has led me to a place of deep peace and freedom that I had no idea existed, but it required me to take full responsibility for myself and put down all the places I was still holding myself as victim.

If you want to get there in your relationship too, I created a free shadow work and inner child guide to help you turn triggers into moments of connection.

✨Just type “GUIDE” in the comments and I’ll send it to you!✨

Follow to learn how to start feeling safe and secure in your relationships again.

For all my anxiously attached girlies out there 🫂✨

We broke up 6 years ago and I had no idea if we were ever going to find our way back to each other.

What I did know was that I was 31 and all my relationships kept ending the same way.

If I wanted a different outcome, I needed to take responsibility for my part, and that meant I had to face the parts of myself I’d spent years avoiding.

Here are 5 hard truths I had to look at:

1. I wasn’t just heartbroken, I was addicted to the emotional highs and lows.

2. That push-pull pattern felt like chemistry, but it was actually just that my nervous system had normalized chaos and then would mistaken it for love.

3. I thought I was being caring and kind but really I was abandoning myself to make others comfortable and then feeling resentful when they wouldn’t do the same for me.

4. My boundaries were blurry and all over the place because I thought love meant sacrificing myself.

5. I thought if I just said it the right way, I could convince them to stay but over-explaining isn’t connection. It’s a trauma response.

I needed constant reassurance because I didn’t know how to give it to myself. The anxiety wasn’t about them. It was about parts of me that still felt unloved and unsafe.

I believed that if they came back, everything would be okay but the real healing began when I stopped waiting for them and started coming home to myself.

✨If you’re in that tender in-between… I see you.
And if you’re wondering whether codependency is quietly shaping your relationships type “QUIZ” in the comments and I’ll send you my free codependency quiz to help you get clarity.✨

This work changed my life, so I’m sharing it with you in case it helps you too 🙏🏾

Follow if you want to learn more tools on how to feel safe and secure in your relationships.

Is “winning” that argument actually giving you what you think it is?

Do you leave the conversation feeling connected, or defeated despite “winning”?

This pattern is one of many that people with codependency struggle with because it plays on some of our core wounds and fears like rejection and abandonment.

Maybe we’re afraid to be wrong because then they might have reason to leave us.

Maybe we have to be right to show we are “good” or “worthy”…

But the unfortunate truth is that when we don’t take the time to understand the core patterns that motivate us we end up perpetuating the things we fear the most…

Because chances are you feel rejected and alone at the end of every argument or fight, and I know it feels like it’s because your partner doesn’t understand you, but what if I told you it might be that there is likely also a part of you that doesn’t feel understood or seen by *you*.

Our relationships reflect how we feel about ourselves, and when I actually started getting curious about this part of me that needed to win, or that kept finding myself in the same argument for the zillionth time, I had to ask myself… why?

That’s why I created a shadow work + inner child guide to actually get to the root of sneaky patterns that were negatively impacting my relationship so that we could finally start loving and playing again.

And now our relationship is like night and day because our arguments aren’t battlefields anymore, rather points of connection, and I’ve never felt more deeply met… even when we don’t agree!

The deeper we meet ourselves, the more deeply we can meet others, and in that we find the most sacred kind of love… unconditional.

✨If you’re desiring an unconditional kind of love it starts with you. Just type “GUIDE” in the comments and I’ll send you my free shadow work + inner child guide.✨

Follow if you want to learn more about healing codependency through shadow work + inner child healing.

I hope this finds whoever needs to hear this 🫂✨

I used to think that if my partner was grumpy it was my responsibility to fix it (even though he *never* asked me to) 🙃

Shadow work questions really helped me get to the root of some of my patterns and this is the question that helped me see why I was making his mood my responsibility:

“If my partner is in a mood, then…” (what am I afraid will happen?)

I realized that my partners mood = me not being safe, and that belief came from times in my life where things *weren’t* safe if someone was in a bad mood.

The problem is that I was bringing a past experience to a present moment, and it was negatively impacting my relationship.

I had an attachment to my safety being tied to my partner and his moods.

That’s why his mood/discomfort equaled my discomfort.

I selfishly wanted him to feel better so that I could feel better, and I’ve learned that this codependent dynamic only leads to more resentment and not feeling good enough *for both partners*

He feels like his feelings are too much, and I feel like my efforts to make him feel better aren’t good enough.

We both feel inadequate and the cycle continues.

We’ve spent the last six years rebuilding our relationship and learning how to hold ourselves through our own discomfort, rather than making the other person responsible for fixing it, and it’s completely saved our relationship.

Using shadow work and inner child healing to learn how to source my safety from within, rather than seeking my partner to provide it for me, has completely changed my life and how I show up and experience the world and I want everyone to know about it.

If you want the exact practice I use every time I’m triggered or feel like I need to *fix* their mood, just type “GUIDE” in the comments and I’ll send you my free shadow work + inner child guide.

You can also follow for more tools and practices to help you feel safe and secure in your relationship 🫂✨