From  Codependent No More pg 36: "A codependent person is one who has let another person's behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person's behavior."

"The heart of the definition and recovery lies not in the other person - no matter how much we believe it does. It lies in ourselves, in the ways we have let other people's behavior affect us and in the ways we try to affect them: the obsession, the controlling, the obsessive "helping," care taking, low self-worth .... that results in abandonment of self, communication problems, intimacy problems, and an ongoing whirlwind trip through the five-stage grief process."

"Co-dependents want and need sick people around them to be happy in an unhealthy way."

Pg 41 "Having these problems does not mean we're bad, defective or inferior." "Wherever we learned to do these things, most of us learned our lessons well."

Pg 42 "We can learn to do things differently. We can change. I think most people want to be healthy and live the best lives they can. But many of us don't know it's okay to do things differently."   

"The first step toward change is awareness. The second is acceptance."

 

What the above information is trying to say is that we need to look inward if we feel we have an unhealthy relationship with others (or others are giving us those hints) where their happiness and feelings are more important than our own. If we get upset because others do not recognize all that we do for them and we get consumed with being angry over it and not being productive and settling into a depression because of that, we possess codependent characteristics. We have options of what to do with those situations where we can take care of ourselves, take back control over our own lives and give ourselves permission to distance from people who are not healthy for us. It is a gift that we can give ourselves. We do not want to swing in the other direction and ONLY care about our feelings though, but we need to find a balance between what we do for others and what we do for ourselves.

 

I encourage you to think about the above information and does it apply to you possibly or a close friend or relative? If so, with practice, these tendencies can be worked on and improved with AWARENESS and ACCEPTANCE as the first two steps.

 

Join me next month with more information on this topic. Thank you for your continued loyalty and support of this newsletter.