Revisiting the Codependent Crazies

 
 
Even if we have been in recovery for years, it’s still easy to fall back into the codependent crazies if we aren’t practicing strict awareness. We meet someone new and we may initially feel nothing special about this person. We like them and we enjoy seeing them. But as time passes we can suddenly catch ourselves thinking more and more about them, daydreaming about being with them, wanting to buy things for them, feeling empty and deprived when they aren’t around, wondering about what they are doing—in other words obsessing about them.

When we feel the inner-turmoil of obsessing endlessly about the other person, we have fallen back into the codependent crazies and we are out of control. The painful feelings of obsessive love are a warning sign: they can lift the veil of denial and bring us back to reality. If, at this point, we truly open our inner-eyes we now have a choice: we can continue down the insane path of the codependent crazies by keeping our focus solely and completely on this one person, or we can choose to stick with reality—with what the NOW is telling us—and choose to take our focus off of them and to place it back on us.

By choosing to place our focus back on us, we are choosing to pay attention to our needs and our needs require us to have community—many people active in our lives and thoughts—not just one person. If we choose to keep clinging to that one person, we will continue to make them our Higher Power. We will continue to believe we need them in order to be happy and to feel fulfilled. And this means we will continue the painful practice of obsessing over them, and the even more painful practice of trying to gain all of their attention through people-pleasing, caretaking and other forms of manipulation.

If a relationship is causing us more emotional angst than pleasure, something is wrong. If we keep catching ourselves thinking about one particular person and at the same time not wanting to deal with others at all, something is wrong. If we are feeling anxious, needy, desperate and empty without that particular person present every day, something is wrong. And that something wrong is within us. We need to give it attention, correct our thinking and bring freedom and healing to our feelings.


We need to sit down with our Higher Power, confess how we feel, what we need, what we want and ask for guidance and healing. We need to get to meetings and talk about the fact that we have become codependent crazy again. We need to take care of ourselves. In these ways, we regain our sanity.

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