Are You Creating Chaos in Your Relationships?

Codependents are very good at causing their own chaos in relationships. We love to take things the wrong way. And so we are on constant guard, waiting for everyone around us to make a misstep. We vigilantly search and wait for anyone to say something, to do something or to even look at us in a way that we can misinterpret as a personal attack on us. We’re waiting so we can scream inside—one more time—“A-ha! Another slam against me!” And we can go about our day playing martyr-- again.

Why is it that we are often waiting for someone to hurt us? We say we love people and yet we are always anxiously on alert with these people we “love” just waiting to take anything they say or do in a negative way. Is this love? When we are constantly looking to judge people we say we “love” in a negative light, is this love? No it’s not. We may think we love people but we really don’t. Why? Because we really don’t love ourselves.

Lack of self-love forces us to doubt that anyone else in this world really loves us. Until we learn to love ourselves, we will never believe that anyone else loves us. And so we will forever be on-guard waiting, watching and making sure that the other shoe drops. Since we believe we are so unlovable, we reinforce this belief through self-sabotage; through negatively judging what others say or do as an affront against unlovable us.

So let’s take the focus off of us for a moment. Stop and think about how the people we say we love are affected by our demeaning behavior. First off, most of them do really love us even though we don’t love ourselves. They don’t deserve to have us negatively judging everything they say or do. This certainly isn’t loving them back.

As a recovering person, it now offends me that any friend or other person I love would purposely misinterpret my words or actions negatively toward them. Now, when someone does I ask them “Why? Why would you think I would want to hurt you?” Then I go on to say “There are always multiple ways to interpret what someone has said or done. So why would you think so badly of me as to assume that I am out to hurt you?”

What we don’t understand is that when we purposely look for the negative in what other people say or do, we ARE THINKING REALLY BADLY OF THEM. We aren’t treating them like they are people who love us. We are treating them like they are the enemy. Is this what we really want to do? Probably not. So we need to stop it.

This type of negative thinking and behavior is a reflection of the fact that we aren’t really capable of loving others because we aren’t capable of loving ourselves. Or rather, because we have repeatedly chosen to NOT love ourselves. We are all capable of loving ourselves. We simply choose not to do so.

If you are constantly analyzing everyone’s words and deeds looking to find fault so you can play the martyr, please stop. This behavior is all about YOU and no one else. You need to work on loving who you are. You need to make the choice to stop being mean to yourself and to start loving the person you are. Once you start treating yourself with proper love and respect, you will start believing that other people truly do love and respect you. And eventually, as you grow in self-love, you will begin to authentically love others in the same authentic way in which they love you.