Jerusalem Brown, LPC, NCC

FaceTime isn't a phone call. It's a surprise visit. And I don't particularly enjoy surprise visits. If somebody knocked on my door right now without calling first, I'd peek through the blinds just to see who it is, but I'm not opening the door. FaceTime feels exactly the same. One second I'm minding my business. The next second, your forehead is filling my entire screen...

I didn’t stop caring what people thought. I stopped letting every opinion become an emergency inside me. That change was quieter than confidence and more revealing than I expected. Because once I stopped abandoning myself to keep the peace, things—and people—got weird. I started seeing what certain relationships had required me to give up just to stay connected.

When being needed feels like being loved, it's easy to lose yourself. This post exposes the emotional addiction of needing to be needed as part 2 of the "Covert Codependency Exposed" series by Mental Health Monarchs.