Soulshine

It may be a recovery cliche, but it is certainly true: Codependent people do not make friends, or lovers, they take hostages. Whenever we experience that truly needy feeling, that desperate desire to cling to someone, to have ALL of their attention, we have taken them hostage in our minds and hearts. This is when we need to find our way out of the fog by surrendering to our Higher Power and by attending a CODA or Al-Anon meeting. The spirit we experience within the group will help to bring us back to mental and emotional balance, to sanity.

    Nothing changes in our lives until we do. Recovery is the choice we have made in an effort to change our lives for the better. But it is an EFFORT. And it's easy to find ourselves balking at investing in that effort during the recovery process. We can say to ourselves "Why me? My friends don't have to work the 12 Steps. They don't have to go to meetings. They don't have to spend time with a sponsor. They don't have to see a therapist." Sometimes we continue with thoughts like "This isn't my fault that I'm an addict. I didn't ask for it. This is my parents' fault. Why should I have to suffer and work the 12 Steps?" When we find ourselves falling backwards into this mind set, we need to be very careful. We have the right to grieve the fact that we are addicts and that we learned the behavior as children. True we didn't know any better when we started mimicking the behaviors of our parents. It may be their fault, bu...