About Co-dependency and other thoughts
About Co-dependency and other thoughts
My name is GG. And I`m a Co-dependent. That`s how members of usually Alcoholics Anonymous present themselfs. A co-dependent is not far from the alcoholic as regarding the addiction. It`s just, he hasn`t got the booze. It`s the addiction to a person. And not ANY person. Many times, a toxic disordered one, or a Narcisist.
It hit me today, after some anxiety rushes and some days when I felt emotionally overwhelmed. I snooped again and I`m not proud of me, I have to stop. I raise my hand being totally responsible for this.
And I remembered about some stuff I read about in the book "Co-dependent no more", and thought it might be useful to some of you, and of course to myself.
- That we are the ones that give away the power of our lives.
- Many people react to our way of treating them, of handling them the power of our lives, our souls on a plate.
- People pleasing? What is the core of our issues, that makes us always thinking and believing ALWAYS another person has the ANSWERS, the key to our happiness.
- Like most and many, I could be very well fitting the definiton of CO-DEPENDENCE.
- Co-dependents, are EMPATHS, people who tend to "feel too much", or "feel things at a bigger intensity" than most.
- Many co-dependents, grew in an environment with possible a disordered parent, an alcoholic. He/she took care of that person, and most of the times, took the BLAME, for that parent`s unpredictable, inconsistent behaviour; was more than one time, often made to feel insignificant unimportant, and blamed for the mood swings of the alcoholic/addict/disordered one.
- Most probably of the time, the co-dependent person, didn`t have a shoulder to cry on; to express his feelings, to hear himself and understand himself. Because most of the time, THE PROBLEM was always about the disordered toxic parent.
- The codependent`s needs are often neglected or totally forgotten. By the others, and later by his own self.
- He believes that if his needs haven`t been filled, if his voice hasn`t been listened, he MUST be a nobody. WORTHLESS. That is the coreidea at the depth of a codependent person.
- Codependents are wounded souls, often engaging in relationships, often abusive, with the same type of character, as the TOXIC parent. This is HOME for him. He hasn`t had another, and no matter how "apparently good" would feel in other "places" (interactions with non-toxic people), you know what they say, "there`s no place like HOME".
-Only that in this case, the co-dependent keeps repeating, and repeating the cycle, picking toxic people, who bring to the surface exactly the same old wounds.
- He does that uncounsciously, trying to FIX something in the past. The relationshiptoxic-parent-child maybe? Expecting to "finnaly", be LOVED RIGHT.
- What the co-dependent does not understand and ACCEPT yet, is that asking from a NARCISISTIC-toxic-parent, to give LOVE in a healthy way, is like asking the colour of the rainbow, to a person who is COLOURBLIND.
- He has to "GIVE UP" trying to fix the past finnaly. To Accept. Feel the feelings. And then Let Go. It is a painful process, and a journey that requires hard working and determination from the codependent. Determination to heal, to HAVE a voice, to stop and give up the urge to control everything, and save everything.
- To take small steps into his listening of a soul, and time to develop a relationship with his own lost self.
- He has to learn to look within. And stop taking the BLAME for feeling ANGER, SADNESS, TEARS.
- Somebody once DID made him feel that way, it is not his imagination. He didn`t let those feelings out, but repressed them; that`s just one of the explanations why co-dependents have ANXIETY ATTACKS.
- There is a lot of repressed ANGER out there.
- They were often made to feel GUILTY for feeling angry. They were made to feel it was THEIR fault, many times. That false guilt is to the core of co-dependent behaviour.
- Imagine the co-dependent this way, the alcoholic has the booze, the addict has the crack. The Co-dependent had to go through all those stages of anger, rage, hate turning hate into himself, and repress, SOBER. He is like a sleepy volcano with all those emotions.
- Being a co-dependent myself, I run from those feelings. I still do. I`m afraid to tottally get into them, especially the anger, since I hate myself from feeling it, I don`t know how to deal with it.
- They say often in therapy, that the way a person deals with their anger influences his/her life, in positive or negative ways.
- I`ve read on a site, about mending the wounded children within, that we have to FEEL THE FEELINGS, WITHOUT TAKING THE BLAME.
- It was interesting, it also said, there are many parts of us wounded by toxic relationships (especially if you had a toxic parent): The Angry child, The Lost child, The Unloved child, The Magic-Thinking child..
- And each time, you have the urge, the need to seek for a solution outside of yourself (like codependents often believe that the toxic partner holds the key to their happiness, or sadness), it means in that moment, you have an UNMET NEED.
- Look for it, talk to yourself in those moments, as crazy as it sounds, in your mind. Reach there, like your Inner Loving Parent that you should have had, would do. Hug yourself.
- Take a worm bubble bath with yourself, or watch a comedy. BE THERE for yourself, in your life. Your soul needs that more than ever.
- And slowly, maybe you`ll learn to find happiness within, having a relationship with yourself, filling your child within needs, and having fun.
- We somehow trusted that the Narcisist holds all the answers to our happiness. We`ve been conditioned to that thinking. If we learn to discover beauty in ourselfs, and no longer feel we have to NEED something from OUTSIDE, to be HAPPY, then we would attract people who treat us healthy, enjoy a sunshine and a wind breeze differently.
- We were made to think we are nothing WITHOUT the Narcisist.
We can STOP this.
Even in religion, take example from Jesus Christ who said: "love somebody else, like you LOVE YOURSELF".
We have to learn and dig deeper into the second part of the phrase :-)
Then, we would be able to findpeople that treat us healthy, worthy, as we truly deserve.
A lot of codependents are overy sensitive, needy people, sometimes they overwork or overdo, trust the wrong kind of people with their soul on a plate, thinking they don`t deserve more than this.
But they DO. They have to learn to free themselfs from the negative thoughs, from the "programming" of the Past.
If we keep running from feeling this, there will always be some other Narc, to "school us" back in, and "punish" us, for our "ungrateful" behaviour.
We have to stop handling them the Power. They are good leaders, but they are NOT good people.
We have to stop running from ourselfs. It is hard work, it is not easy, but I know there must be peace at the end of this addiction. Our peace, our independece and sanity!
P.S: And for the record, did I mention that I snooped again? I feel guilty from myself. I wrote this as a motivation to keep me holding on, to the healthyer side of me. I want to be total NC, and now there`s nobody else to blame, I did it volountarely. Didn`t bothered him, or contacted him, but I feel guilty from all the positive support I received here and wonderful people who keep encouraging me.
Oh, and thank you for reading this by the way! It`s an awful long post, but hope there are some good ideas in it. Before finding this forum, I tried that method with mending my wounded inner child, when I felt the urge to seek the N. And it worked for some while :-)
greengirl91 I really enjoy your insights
Thank you,
greengirl, interesting post and something I think I need
Caligirl, for you, for me and
Thats a wonderful book
Thank you everyone for your
Thanks for sharing; good stuff
I`m glad you find this
GG, you are a very wise
Wow Great Post
BPD, yes! But it`s confusing,
Codependents and Narcs are
I was going to say the exact
Yes at times my relationship
Yes, I believe I read that
I am co dependent
Thank you, Sea, it means a