It is not so much that we have relationships with Drunks, Addicts, Gamblers and the like ... It is more that we have no idea how to have a relationship with ourselves.
Every Alcoholic or Addict or Gambler or what have you ... is a codependent but not every codependent drinks, drugs or gambles.
Codependency is not about who I am ... but it is about what happened to me ...
We worry insistently about how we are doing and are we getting it right ...
Perfect, Upright ... Beautiful, some days my behaviour stinks ... I'm not my behaviour ...
The Hows of how it happened to me is not so important as it Happened ... and It Hurt and ... I have been living my life adjusting to that old pain ever since ...
I live my life adjusting to some one else' problem ...
We tend to tolerate the intolerable because we don't know when enough is enough ...
We believe we are very spiritual when in fact we are deeply disconnected ...
We need to make ourselves indispensable doing for others what they could very easily do for themselves ...
We take on other peoples problems as our own ...
Deep inbred shame is one of the primary organizing principles of the pain we carry ...
One of the symptoms of this disorder is that it tells the beholder of the disorder that they don't have the disorder in the face of enormous evidence to the contrary
Usually that same pain that we carry was never ours in the first place ... we picked it up along the way and now it is our felt sense of both pain and shame ...
We swing between being super reliable to being super irresponsible ... and have no idea why other then we know we do it and can't really seem to stop ...
Each of us know that there is something missing in our lives ... we just don't know where to look to find it ... So we depend on things from outside ourselves to make us whole ... or to numb the pain that we picked up earlier on in our lives ... sometimes to control the uncontrollable but if we are paying close attention we may just notice that does not work ...
But My God I Gave It One Hell Of A Try ...
We ... With ... Us ... is the key ... just have to learn how to apply it ...
"We worry insistently about how we are doing and are we getting it right" - Man-o-man is that ever me. I am trying to let go but when I let my buttons get pushed I head right down that shame spiral.
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