Some one said that you have to have special training to put up with an abuser. What they meant was that you probably grew up with someone who had the same characteristics and you learned how to adapt. Not everyone who is abused is co-dependent but a lot of us are!
What Is CO-DEPENDENCY???
I could be co-dependent if ...
- My good feelings about who I am stem from being liked by you.
- My good feelings about who I am stem from receiving approval from you.
- Your struggles affects my serenity.
- My mental attention focuses on solving your problems or relieving your pain.
- My mental attention is focused on pleasing you.
- My mental attention is focused on protecting you.
- My mental attention is focused on manipulating you (to do it my way).
- My self-esteem is bolstered by solving your problems.
- My self-esteem is bolstered by relieving your pain.
- My own hobbies and interests are put aside.
- My time is spent sharing your interests and hobbies.
- Your clothing and personal appearance are dictated by my desires as I feel you are a reflection of me.
- Your behavior is dictated by my desires as I feel you are a reflection of me.
- I am not aware of how I feel. I am aware of how you feel.
- I am not aware of what I want - I ask you what you want.
- I am not aware. I assume.
- The dreams I have for my future are linked to you.
- My fear of rejection determines what I say or do.
- My fear of your anger determines what I say or do.
- I use giving as a way of feeling safe in our relationship.
- My social circle diminishes as I involve myself with you.
- I put values aside in order to connect with you.
- The quality of my life is in relation to the quality of yours.
So I am CO-DEPENDENT?
Now what?
Looks to me like anybody in my life gets a better deal out of me than I do? Wanna be worshipped? Wanna be adored? Wanna have extreme loyalty? Look for me or anyone like me almost anywhere near you! We'll please you. We'll appease you. We'll give you much more than you deserve in exchange for much less than we deserve!
GEEZ! No wonder us co-dependents are in such high demand!
Robin Norwood wrote the book, WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH. Robin talks about what makes us the way we are, what we can do about it and what it takes to recover. Just like a recovering alcoholic, it has to be a conscious choice everyday to do things and make decisions that are good for us, as well as the people around us. She refers to co-dependent women as women who love TOO MUCH. Here are some of the things she says about us:
When being in love means being in pain, we are loving too much.
Loving turns into loving too much when your partner is inappropriate, uncaring, or unavailable, and yet you cannot give him up ... in fact, you want him even more.
We begin by becoming willing to channel the energy and effort that we formerly spent on trying to change someone else toward changing ourselves instead.
You need to recover from loving too much for your own sake, but when you stop suffering, your recovery may be so appealing that others watching may begin to pursue their own recovery! It's contagious.
Our primary aim should be protecting our own serenity and well-being, rather than finding the right man. Then andonly then are we able to begin to choose a companion who can care about us in a wholesome way, because the more we heal our own damage and the less we need from a partner, the more we are able to choose someone who isn't so damaged or needy himself.
For so many of us, the key to recovery is in learning to do the opposite of what we've always done.
Say prayers for the willingness, the strength, and the courage to look honestly at your past - and at your part in it. The psyche hears such efforts at housecleaning and cooperates by bringing forth the buried pain of the past is that it can be consciously released. As soon as our willingness to forgive the past is truly genuine, a great breakthrough of understanding comes and the pain of the past drops away.
Forgiving doesn't mean allowing ourselves to be hurt again; it means, among other things, detaching so that we don't take another's actions toward us so personally. Far from making us weak people who can be stepped on by others, forgiveness frees us so that we never have to allow ourselves to be treated badly again.
No relationship can save you from the pain of your history. Until you walk through your pain, you'll simply repeat your history.
To stop loving too much, you must lay aside your fantasy of being the one who will make all the difference in this man's life. That's YOUR need, and it's not a healthy one.
Sometimes, people need to be apart. But if you separate without learning the lessons that the relationship is trying to teach you, then you'll have to face it again in the next relationship, and again in the one after that. When you can accept this man exactly as he is, without anger or resentment, without wanting to change him or punish him, without taking what he does or doesn't do personally, you will have deepened your soul and received the gift this relationship has been trying to give you. After you've learned the lesson the relationship has been trying to impart, you may find that whether you stay or leave hasn't been the real issue at all.
CAUTION!!! Agreeing to have contact with a man who has been our "drug" may have the same effect that taking a drink would have on asober alcoholic. Years of recovery may be wiped out!
We are certain that if we show someone how much we love them, no matter how he treats us, he will change. What we are really showing him is that it is safe for him to remain the same!
We do not receive more in life by wishing others less. To overcome resentment, bless the other person and pray for his highest good. There's enough good in the world for everybody. We receive what we send out ... so send out BLESSINGS!
As we become more able to accept people AS THEY ARE, we become more able to choose those who are good for us and to bless and release those who are not.
It's vital that we see our failures as lessons - and more than that, as our pathway to God. After all, it isn't what we do well that brings our spiritual surrender, but what we cannot do at all. Every problem is a pathway to God, designed by your soul to get your attention.
Remember that we get worse until we get better, that we go deeper into the problem IN ORDER to finally surrender to healing it ... whatever that might mean.
If you want to get over a heartbreaking end to a relationship with as much speed and as little pain as possible, do this: EVERY TIME HE COMES INTO YOUR THOUGHTS, PRAY AS SINCERELY AS YOU CAN FOR HIS HIGHEST GOOD. PERIOD. Even if it has taken you years to get over relationships before, you'll be amazed at how quickly you'll heal when you take this approach.
WHEN YOU EXCUSE HIS MOODINESS, BAD TEMPER, INDIFFERENCE, AND PUT-DOWNS AS PROBLEMS CAUSED BY AN UNHAPPY CHILDHOOD, AND YOU TRY TO BECOME HIS THERAPIST, YOU ARE LOVING TOO MUCH.
There are no mistakes in life ... only lessons, so get out there and let yourself learn some of what life wants to teach you.
Detaching, which is vital to your recovery, requires that you disentangle your ego from his feelings and especially from his actions and their results. It requires that you allow him to deal with theconsequences of his behavior, and that you don't save him from ANY of his pain. You may continue to care about him, but you don't take care of him. You allow him to find his own way, just as you are working to find yours.
If what we have been doing all along really worked, we wouldn't need to recover.
If something isn't good for us, it isn't really good for anyone else either.
If you choose to begin the process of recovery, you WILL change from a woman who loves someone else so much it hurts into a woman who loves herself enough to stop the pain.
Recovery requires that you change ... but trying to change too hard to change too much too quickly will very likely ensure that you never really change at all. When you pray for help to change, pray as well to be able to wait patiently while the changes are taking place.
Healing comes when we relinquish our beliefs about what SHOULD be and become willing to accept and eventually even appreciate what simply IS.
If you are truly on the path of recovery from loving too much, know that YOU ARE A MIRACLE!
Except for the physical abuse and/or emotional humiliation, the violent relationship, with all its intensity, best fits our culture's idea of how "real love" is expressed. No woman in a stable, healthy relationship is ever wooed with the intensity that an abuser directs toward his partner in the courtship and honeymoon phases of the syndrome of violence. If you are a battered woman, you are a relationship addict with a life-threatening disease for which there is a program of recovery.
10 Steps to Recovery from Relationship Addiction.
- We accept ourselves.
- We accept others as they are.
- We are in touch with our feelings and attitudes about every aspect of our lives.
- We cherish every aspect of ourselves, our personalities, our appearance, our beliefs and values, our bodies, our interests and our accomplishments We validate ourselves rather than search for a relationship to give us a sense of self-worth.
- Our self-esteem is great enough that we can enjoy being with others, especially men, who are fine just as they are. We do not need to be needed in order to feel worthy.
- We allow ourselves to be open and trusting with appropriate people. We are not afraid to be known at a deeply personal level, but also, we do not expose ourselves to the exploitations of those who are not interested in our well-being.
- We learn to ask the question: IS THIS RELATIONSHIP GOOD FOR ME? Does it enable me to grow into all I am capable of being?
- When a relationship is destructive, we are able to let go of it without experiencing disabling depression. We have a circle of supporting friends and healthy interests to see us through crises.
- We value our own serenity above all else. All the struggles, drama, and chaos of the past have lost their appeal. We are protective of ourselves, our health, and our well-being.
- We know that a relationship, in order to work, must be between partners who share similar values, interests, and goals, and who each have a capacity for intimacy. We also know that we are worthy of the best that life has to offer.
Co-dependency behavior is born out some of the same places as full blown drug and alcohol addiction and it comes with it's own set of addictive behaviors. The same 12-step program that heals alcoholics and other addicts can heal us too! I checked the newspapers here and in a town of 300,000, there are several 12-Step Groups that meet.
It's not just the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual abuse that we have to get past. We can be away from the abuser but we still have to cleanse ourselves from the negative energy all that abuse left us with ... We still have to fight the battle inside us. Somewhere, a long time ago, we accepted the notion that people treated us badly because we deserved it! WRONG!!!
Give me a break! Most of us didn't grow up with the Waltons and the Bradys. Most of us grew up in homes where our parents did the best they could while they dealt with their own issues, trying to provide for the family, worrying about their jobs, their financial responsibilities or even struggling with their own addictive behaviors ... The family I was born into suffered and the family I gave birth to suffered. We were what we were. BUT nothing ever stays the same.
I can't change the past. I can change one thing and that one thing is ME! It does take courage to walk those 12-steps ... and it will take courage to do it again tomorrow too!
The 12 Steps of RECOVERY
- We admitted we were POWERLESS over our addiction - that our lives have become unmanageable.
- Came to BELIEVE that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a DECISION to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
- Made a searching and fearless MORAL INVENTORY of ourselves.
- ADMITTED to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were ENTIRELY READY to have God remove all of these defects in character.
- HUMBLY ASK GOD to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a LIST of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct AMENDS to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would re-injure them or others.
- Continue to take PERSONAL INVENTORY and when we have wronged promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH GOD as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to CARRY THE MESSAGE to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
It isn't enough to read it ... We have to "get it" and use it to reprogram the parts of ourselves that need to be reprogrammed. Instead of letting those old ideas about ourselves and the people around us pull us back down, we have to find new ways to think about ourselves, the world around us and our place in our world. It isn't an overnight fix. It takes a lifetime to overcome some things, but we can! It starts with one little step ... admitting that we have a problem and we need help ...
TIMES OF REPROGRAMMING
Melody Beattie wrote CODEPENDENT NO MORE and BEYOND CODEPENDENCY. She also wrote THE LANGUAGE OF LETTING GO. It's a daily journalthat gives you a few paragraphs to think about every day. I especially liked this entry:
TIMES OF REPROGRAMMING
Recovery is not all tiresome, unrewarded work. There are times of joy and rest, times when we comfortably practice what we have learned. There are times of change, times when we struggle to learn something new or overcome a particularproblem.
These are the times when what we have been practicing in recovery begins to show in our life. These times of change are intense, but purposeful.
There are also times when, at a deep level, we are being "reprogrammed". We start letting go of beliefs and behaviors. We may feel frightened or confused during these times. Our old behaviors or patterns may not have worked for us, but they were comfortable andfamiliar. During these times we may feel vulnerable, lonely, and needy - like we are on a journey without aroad map or a flashlight, and we feel as if no one has traveled this ground before.
We may not understand what is being worked out in us. We may not know where or if we are being led.
We are being led. We are not alone. Our Higher Power is working His finest and best to bring true change in us. Others have traveled this road too. We will be led to someone who can help us, someone who can provide the markers we need.
We are being prepared for receiving as much joy and love as our heart can hold.
Recovery is a healing process. We can trust it, even when we don't understand it. We are right where we need to be in this process; we're going through exactly what we need to experience. And where we're going is better than any place we've been.
