Forget the Supreme Makeover—Go Natural

“Gee Baa Baa, here I thought I was making you over…

and you’ve made me over good as new.”

Tim Osbourne, Lucky Star (1929)

Codependency causes many of us to work extra hard at making other people over in our own image and likeness. We can develop a sometimes desperate need to make someone into the person that we want them to be. It’s this deep-seated need that pushes us to manipulate that someone in every way possible until they become what we want.

The manipulation involved in making someone over can include lying, withholding information, flattery, criticism and coercion. It can also involve shopping or gift giving. For example, say we’ve targeted someone to be Mr. or Ms. Right, but we don’t quite like the way he/she dresses. So, in order to make them over as we would have them be, we voluntarily buy clothing for them—the clothing that we’d like to see them wearing. We don’t care what they want, or whether this clothing is a natural fit for them. It’s all about making them over to be our prince or princess the way we see fit.

This type of manipulative make-over almost always ends up exploding in the face of the codependent who utilizes it. Sooner or later the person being made-over is going to feel uncomfortable enough—and disrespected enough—to revolt with anger. And rightfully so.

Healthy relationships are all about accepting and loving people the way that they are. Mutual love and acceptance is a great means of showing respect for one another. Sometimes, when we allow people to be who they are, they actually begin to make-us-over in positive ways without even trying to change us. We see the positives in how they choose to behave and live their lives and we then make the conscious—and sometimes subconscious-- choice to change for the better ourselves.

This is exactly what happens between Tim and Baa Baa in the 1929 film Lucky Star. Tim has self-righteously worked hard to make Baa Baa over in his prim and proper image and likeness. She’s tolerated his behavior patiently and innocently. But, without his knowing it, her innocence and her naturalness has actually changed him for the better. Tim wakes-up to his manipulative behavior and repents of it while acknowledging that, without any effort or manipulation, Baa Baa has made him a better person.

The moral here is, in recovery we learn to accept people as they are. And we do that by first learning to accept ourselves the way we are, to be natural in our own skin, to attract the people who like us just the way we are and to return the compliment to them by accepting and loving them just as they are. We then open the door to then naturally being changed for the better by the good they see in us—and vice-versa.