No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well.

And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my master, my false higher power. I had made them into the one person who was responsible for my happiness, my well-being and my very right to exist; because I didn’t know how to own that same power myself.

If the phone failed to ring, and if I couldn’t stand that silence or inner-insanity any longer, I’d desperately dial-up my false higher power. I had to hear the voice of this person and I had to have them reassure me that I was still in the game. I had to know that their failure to call wasn’t signaling the death-blow I knew as abandonment. I needed to hear that they didn’t suddenly somehow hate me. That everything was OK with me. That I was OK. And if I could even, hope upon hope, hear the words “I love you,” I could go on living—for another hour or even possibly for another day—before I’d have to hear those magic words again and again and again. All I needed was those magic, though ultimately empty, words to temporarily fill the forever empty pit within me. Then I could make it through another night of my self-imposed misery.

I say empty words because that’s exactly what they were. I never chose anyone to love me who was emotionally capable of doing so. They may have said nice words, and those nice words may have been a rope to temporarily keep my head above water, but they were essentially empty and devoid of any real feeling or meaning. Any magic they held was indeed a hoax. And even if they had been filled with essential life-giving love, they would have never been enough to fill my inner-void. I had to fill that empty vastness myself. I needed to be the first to honestly say the very loving, sincere words to me that I so desperately wanted to hear from someone else—almost anyone else.

It’s taken several years of recovery work for me to understand that no other person can be the master of my happiness, nor can any other person be my higher power. No one can give me the love I need to give to myself-- first. I have to be responsible for loving me before I can accept love from anyone else. So I have to be the one who fills my inner-emptiness with self-love and the love of a true Higher Power. Then I can accept love from someone else—a love that will complement the love I already possess for myself. And if that person is to truly love me in return, he or she must first possess a necessary self-love of their own in order for my love to complement their own self-love.

If you’re stuck in the dire throes of the codependent crazies, stop looking outside yourself for a fix. Look inside. Nothing else works. Be responsible for you and for your life. Make yourself happy by knowing and loving who you are. If you need help, find a good therapist and a good Codependents Anonymous support group. Only you can love yourself enough to end the codependent crazies forever.