Today we are talking about codependency and the power of detachment. Codependency is a malady of sorts. A codependent person lives as if what others think matters more than what they think. As if they can please or change someone else. As if they have to answer to another person or persons, rather than their own inner voice and a Higher Power.
Codependency is not detaching yourself from people with unhealthy patterns and behaviors. Detachment is a solution to codependency by removing yourself from the agony caused by other people’s actions. What is healthy detachment? It is not doing for others what they can and need to do for themselves. It is the ability to care deeply about a situation or another person from an objective point of view. It is not preventing a crisis when it’s clearly not our business to be involved. It is not manipulating others to carry out some aspect of their lives according to our wishes rather than according to their own plan. This is lovingly empowering for them. This also removes the negative connotation detachment has. Detachment is key in becoming free of codependent behaviors and relationship patterns. It is neither being kind or unkind.
Codependent Behaviors Include:
Feeling anxiety, pity, and guilt when others have problems
Feeling angry when your help isn’t effective or appreciated
Wonder why others don’t reciprocate
Feeling insecure
Always feeling sad because you’re giving but not getting from others.
Attract and attracted to needy people
Finding needy people attractive
Over committing yourself
Feeling hurried, overwhelmed and pressured all the time
Feeling others are responsible for your problems
Blame others for the situations you are in
Feeling people are making you crazy
Feeling used often
Feeling bored, useless, and empty if there’s no one to help
Detachment isn’t about just walking away in an unloving way. It is quietly removing yourself from situations you feel aren’t going anywhere. It is letting others define themselves in their own journey. I had codependency as a child. I was always watching others reactions to me. We had codependency in the home as a child. It wasn’t due to alcoholism in my parents, but their parents had it, so it was in the family tree and its effects were evident in their parenting. My father was always very enraged and my mum was a martyr mum. There was no sense of love focused towards the children and it made me look for approval from others. Codependent people need others to make them think they are ok and they do for others anything to make them approve of them.
A friend of mine met a gentleman who was just coming out of a bad situation. He had practically nothing. She rescued him, moved him in with her, bought him clothes; let him use her car and everything else and when he got back on his feet he disappeared. She was enraged because although she didn’t say it, her hidden agenda was thinking, he will stay with me if I rescue him, which isn’t necessarily true. I was always codependent. My shrink told me I had been abandoned in the womb. Then my mother and I were talking about something else and she broke down, started crying and said she had never wanted me even when she was pregnant with me, so the shrink was right, the seeds of abandonment were planted even before I was born.
My first husband left me after 12 years of marriage, so I had a valid sense of abandonment. However, I redid those things with other people. We do the same thing with different people like colleagues, neighbors, friends, and family members. It goes and on, but when the tables don’t turn, we feel devastated. You feel if someone needs you enough, you’ll have control of the person and they’ll never leave you. This is an extreme need for dependency that never gets met. Codependency is being overly involved in other people’s lives. It’s best to lovingly detach yourself, so you can empower them and you are not so codependent.
I had a friend who every time she called had a crisis. One day I said to her, “What will you do without these crises?” It made her feel valued and important. Someone would bring the crisis to her and she’d take it on and make it hers. This happens when we want to be the star in someone else’s life. When we help those in crises, we are the center of their life and we believe they will owe something to us. I had co-dependent feelings as a child and began drinking at 13 and it felt good, and that’s when I got codependency and alcoholism intertwined.
I was reading the book, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? Insights into Personal Growth by John Powell, as I read it to decide whether or not to use it for a class, on page 38 he talks about walking down a New York street with Sidney Harris, a New York journalist by a rude vendor who he buys newspapers from all the time, but Sidney greeted him and tipped him all the time. One day, John asked him why he was so nice to the rude vendor who was always mean to him. He replied, “Why should I let him decide what kind of day I’m going to have?” This is what codependent people do. We chose what we’re going to get into, to let someone upset our day and what we become bothered by. For some people, if people don’t look at them the right way, they feel something is wrong with them. In some families people didn’t get visual facial affirmation, so they crave it as adults. Codependent people also cling to people, but the more you cling to people, the more they want freedom from you. I didn’t feel I had a self. Everyone else was providing pieces of myself; so I could feel I had a whole self. However, when you feel that way people run away from you and you feel emptier and emptier.
When you become attached in an obsessive or wearing way in your head about someone or something you are codependent. When people are pulling you into their crises and you let them. This shows that you are codependent.
Q&A
Caller: I’m a woman who has been dating a codependent man for a few years. He’s always helping others to the point that it interferes with our relationship and he’s always putting other people before me. He’s always involved in other people’s crises till it is resolved. He’s always over extending himself. He never meets any one who doesn’t need his help. He abandons himself and things in his own life because he is hyper focused on others, so he can avoid his own personal life because he’s not what he wants it to be.
Guest/Host: Sounds like he’s rescuing others since they are offering him a sense of well being by his being able to play God in their lives and being needed by them gives him a reason for living. It sounds like you also want to be rescued by him. You are looking for someone else to define your life. How much do you need him to focus on you to feel ok? Because that means there’s something missing in your life. You want him to be doing things that’s only related to you. It’s neediness on your part that he isn’t feeding. I’m a believer in Alcoholics Anonymous and the12 step programs. When we want others to place their attention on us, that a symptom of our codependency because you want him to turn his attention to you. You are focused on his situation and not focusing on you. Like the rude vendor I shared about earlier, he is defining the kind of day you are going to have. Fill your life with your passions that are separate from what he is doing
Caller: I have a codependent friend of 13 years, who complains about everybody including his family using him, and it’s exhausting for me being his friend and I’m thinking of severing the friendship. He even accused me of using him. He’s constantly calling everyday for me to do things with him and if there’s nothing else for me to do I go.
Guest/Host: You have assessed the situation well in saying that it is exhausting, so you don’t have a personal friendship with him. The friendship you have with him includes all these other people, so the relationship is crowded. It reminds me of how I looked so many years ago, earlier in my recovery. I had a friend named Rita who I complained to all the time. She said to me one day, “So What?” I was upset , but I realized later that she was so right. Everybody else had taken center stage in my life. He and all the others in his life have taken center stage in your life.
Caller: People are codependent on me. I meet people, even in the grocery store, but they all have problems. I meet men that have situations. I want relationships that will go to the next level and I spend all this time in it doing for the other person and at the end of these relationships I end up getting hurt. Ever since I was younger, I have grown to love so much with all of my heart. It’s always the same pattern. I just turned 50, so things have to change. I give too much of myself all at one time. I used to be so connected to a higher power and I didn’t have this problem but I stopped. I have to look at myself; I can’t blame the other person.
Guest/Host: You can’t be hurt without being a participant in the process that set you up to get hurt. You are a willing participant, knowing it won’t be a positive end result. It becomes a pattern for us to get involved with the same type of people because we know the dance well and all the situations in their lives. It’s because our lives are focused on them. What’s the payoff when you’re involved with people where you invest so much and they end it? Do you feel you didn’t get a lot of love growing up that you need to be needed? When we give so much of ourselves to maintain a relationship, soon we feel like an empty vessel. There’s value in talking to objective people to help you see what’s occurring in your life and relationships. My book, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow is another book I wrote. This is the book you need to read. It’s right up your alley. Needy people need rescuing, so they look for people who will rescue them. It’s not that you shouldn’t help people but have balance when doing so.
Caller: I’m a 51 codependent person. The source could be because I’m an only child and never had siblings. I was very lonely child growing up. I didn’t have attachments, so when others have problems, I’m like, let’s go solve the problem. I’m in a situation which is a codependent relationship and I’m on the journey of realizing what I’m doing and using it as tools. People should know that codependent people leave you and hurt you. Another thing is that you can also create a stalker or Frankenstein. I was intrigued and wowed when I discovered that I was being stalked but it was very scary not nice and cute like people think. It’s a truly uncomfortable situation. I commend you for calling in and talking openly about it because some men can’t.
Guest/Host: The person had no boundaries and siphons all of you, so they can have a self. They want to suck the life out of you. It’s not fun at all. Get the book Change You Mind. It will keep you charged and focused on your path.
A good case study is Barbara in your book. She defined detachment as not claiming to be a caretaker or victim. Detachment is also detaching from a troubling person or situation. After much hard work, meetings, prayer, and unending willingness she finally reached a place of forgiveness with the men in her life. She has become adept at not being a victim. She was transformed and such a transformation is available to anyone who comes through the doors of a Twelve Step Program.
Final advice: Barbara stands as a great example. When you are healed you reach a point where you can observe situations but not get involved in other peoples lives. You detach and lovingly let them live their own journey. You are available to love, but not lead them through out their lives, because when you take over other people’s lives, you rob them of their sense of their own power at directing their own life.
Source: The Audrey Chapman Show
Host: Audrey Chapman
Guest: Karen Casey, author of Codependency and the Power of Detachment.
www.womens-spirituality.com
Broadcast Date: 10/15/11
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