Resistance is a Tool of Denial


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If You’re Unhappy, This May Be Why

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I’ve spent most of my life trying to make other people happy because I felt responsible for their feelings. And the above quote is spot-on true. I’m the one person who’s not been happy, as a result. We are not responsible for other people’s feelings. We aren’t their savior. They are responsible for their feelings and we are responsible for ours. Yes, we can express empathy and compassion for others, but we need to stop taking on their feelings and problems as if they are our own. They aren’t. Another person’s problems and feelings affect us indirectly. Our own problems and feelings affect us directly. If we are feeling directly responsible for another person’s feeling/problems, there is something wrong with us. In other words, if a friend is going through a divorce, that is their problem; not ours. If we feel responsible for solving their problem, or for owning their feelings to the point of neglecting our own problems and feelings, we are trapped in codependent caretaki...
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No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

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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 mas...
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Ghosting is Cowardly, Cruel and Dysfunctional

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Ghosting is a new concept to me. Growing up, it was referred to as “the silent treatment.” I learned from my mother that if I was upset with someone, I simply cut them off by refusing to talk to them or even acknowledge their presence. I didn’t return phone calls, or answer my door if they came knocking. Recovery taught me that this was truly dysfunctional behavior. I think that ghosting is basically dysfunctional too. First, if we realize that a relationship is toxic for us, we need to bring it to a proper closure. We need to have the guts to tell the person in a kind way that things just aren’t working out, but that we still care about them and wish them well. In doing so we show respect both for them and for ourselves. Once we have had proper closure, it’s OK to become absent from that person’s life. At least now there is an understanding between us. To simply disappear from someone’s life because they “failed to appreciate my presence,” is simply revenge. It’s ending the r...
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In Recovery We Learn That Our Self-Worth Never Depends on Another Person

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Actually, I think a better spin on the above quote would be “your self-respect and self-worth never depend on another person.” Why? Because codependents make another person into their Higher Power, just like alcoholics make liquor into their Higher Power. And when we are constantly choosing people— mostly toxic people— to be our false Higher Power we generally make the mistakes listed below: We hand over all of our self-worth and we’ll-being to another person, then we start manipulating, or trying to change them into making us happy (instead of being responsible for our own happiness), we forgive them over and over every time they lie to or abuse us in other ways, because we trust their words while ignoring their actions, and we go running back to them over and over because we have become so addicted to our need for their approval.  In recovery we learn that we don’t need anyone’s approval, especially a toxic person’s, except our own. Recovery teaches us to turn ou...
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