4 Ways Your Feminine Energy Might Create Co-Dependency in Your Business

Photo by Ella Jardim on Unsplash

When I first started my business, I never thought my feminine energy would create co-dependency with my clients and employees, but it did. And before I knew it, I was trying desperately to figure out how to break free from it. 

First, I needed to understand why and how this happened. As a female entrepreneur and leader, my goal has always been to inspire and empower others to take the initiative and achieve what they want. If anything, I felt like I led in a more masculine way.

I was direct, logical, and a no BS kind of person. So never in my wildest dreams did I think my feminine energy would create co-dependency in my business. 

After taking the time to understand how it happens, here’s what I discovered: if your feminine energy is wounded, it can create co-dependency. 

To say I was shocked learning this would be an understatement. I caught myself saying, “What the heck is wounded feminine energy?” I felt far from wounded, and I certainly wasn’t buying into it just yet. Plus, who wants to admit they are wounded like an open sore needing to be healed. No thanks, I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but after I got over myself, I took the plunge. 

And I learned that most people carry some type of wound from their lived experience and societal conditioning. As women, we’re raised to stay quiet, fit in, act appropriately, and be taught not to rock the boat.

It’s a deep-rooted belief to ensure people like you because the other path is so much harder to navigate.

Sound familiar? 

Most people experience something like this at some point in their life that results in beliefs being formed.  

For me, it revolved around the idea that ‘bossy’ wasn’t a good thing. At the age of four, a friend’s mom complained that I was too bossy. As a result, she didn’t want me to be friends with her daughter. 

Ouch, right? 

I was being taught at four years old that parts of me were wrong, and I needed to fix them.

From that point on, without consciously doing it, I tried to make sure everyone liked me. I believed that other people knew better. Granted, I was four, so I trusted the adult’s opinion. 

I toned down who I was to fit in and make sure everyone else felt good. I changed parts of who I was because others told me those parts were bad. And unbeknownst to me, that translated into an adulthood filled with wounded feminine energy. 

Without even knowing it, I was leading from a wounded place. Here’s what it looked like for me broken down: 

The Nurturer Without Boundaries Leads to Overgiving

One of the dominant feminine energies is nurturing. That motherly vibe to want to support our clients and employees. As an empathetic and highly sensitive person, I deeply care for people and hate seeing them suffer in any way. So, I’ll go over and above to help them. 

The kicker is I didn’t have boundaries, which translated into overgiving, and emitted that martyr-type energy. The energy that I’m here to save, fix, or heal you. 

But here’s the thing, that’s pretty pretentious of me. I mean, who the hell do I think I am to give myself that level of importance over someone else. No one needs rescuing, saving, or fixing even though the personal development space is infiltrated with this type of energy and messaging. 

And I think it’s a broken system. 

It creates an environment where people need us forever (i.e., co-dependency). When in reality, what they need is to re-connect with themselves. It also creates a hierarchy of mother, child, or parent-child relationship that disempowers our clients. It creates the space of always looking up at the person in power for direction or feedback. The truth is we hold power within us. It’s not someone else’s power that we need to thrive and succeed; it’s our own.

Intuition-Led Leadership is Hard to Explain

I’ve always had this deep knowing of how to do things, what path to follow, and the best way for me to get there. From the outside looking in, most people often ask me, “How do you do it? And can you show me how?”

The problem with intuition-led leadership is, it’s hard to explain. And it’s not a process you can duplicate, like a recipe. 

Each person’s intuition is unique. So, I struggled to explain my unique process, which created a ‘needy’ energy. My employees and clients needed me to guide them or show them how to do things continuously.

It wasn’t until I realized that the root issue isn’t about showing people how I do things; it’s about helping others tap into their intuition so that they can trust it to make decisions. 

Generosity and People Pleasing Go Hand in Hand

Raise your hand if you consider yourself generous? 

I love to offer support and help other people. I’m an open book that’s willing to share anything and everything to help people. I don’t keep business secrets or hacks close to my chest. I’d rather share truthfully what I’m doing than feed people morsels of it. 

But there is a fine line between giving generously and people-pleasing. For me, parts of my generosity were rooted in pleasing others – giving as a way to receive validation. 

I didn’t always do this, but I noticed a pattern in business. As I was striving for success, I attached my worth to what I achieved. And my validation often came from other people’s praise or recognition. 

I depended on others to give me the signs that what I was doing was good enough and valuable. If you find yourself attaching your worth to outside validation and using your generosity to fuel your motivations, you’re likely creating co-dependency to feel good and worthy. 

Overly Collaborative Relationships Limit Resourcefulness

I’m all for collaboration, forming connections, and building community, but if the volume is turned up too high on this, we limit resourcefulness. 

A big part of entrepreneurship is resourcefulness – you figure out how to solve problems independently and think for yourself first. But if we rely solely on collaboration to launch, grow, or scale your business, it’s creating co-dependency on others’ to make decisions. Now don’t get me wrong, collaboration is vital in business, but too much of it creates an environment where you need others to set your intent and go after what you want. 

It also creates an environment where your clients or employees need collaboration to solve problems. I know from experience because I love connecting and collaborating on ideas so much, so that’s all we did. But I soon realized that my clients and employees couldn’t think for themselves or solve problems without collaboration (i.e., co-dependency when collaboration is turned up too loud).

_

I hope this helps you see how your feminine energy might be creating co-dependency in your business. And where to start to heal the wounded feminine energy that is probably buried deep down within us all. To follow my self-discovery journey as I grow and scale my business, connect with me at creativelyowned.com or on Instagram that’s linked in my bio.