Soulshine

“I disappear into the person I love. If I love you, you can have it all: My money, my time, my body. I will assume your debts; and I will project upon you all sorts of nifty qualities you’ve never actually cultivated in yourself. I will give you all of this and more until I am so exhausted and so depleted the only way I can recover is by becoming infatuated with someone else.” From Eat, Pray, Love (Columbia Pictures, 2010) This is the best description of codependent behavior that I have ever witnessed. Many authors have attempted to define codependency, but it’s extremely difficult because codependency is so multi-faceted. But this description of codependent behavioral patterns describes my own codependency perfectly, prior to recovery, and so I’m going to dissect the quote. At the height of my codependency, I always found myself disappearing into the person I was in “love” with, or rather, that I was infatuated with. Looking back, I realize now that it w...

Setting boundaries is essential for everyone’s health. When we fail to set proper boundaries, we abuse ourselves and we abuse others by enabling them to stay stuck in unhealthy behaviors. Unhealthy codependents typically build their self-worth on their ability to do for others what those very others should be doing for themselves. This is called enabling. We do it under the guise of being helpful, but the only “help” we are giving to the other person is the “help” to stay stuck in their victimhood or addiction. Enabling results from good intentions and poor boundaries. We enmesh with others and we choose to own their problems. We then think we are justified in fixing their problems. Subconsciously, we also are eager to earn their praise and gratitude for having fixed their problems for them, so we engage in our great powers of enabling. In her book Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children , Allison Bottke has a wonderful checklist for identifying enabling ...

“You Belong To You and not to me Love shouldn’t take away your liberty You Belong To You and no one else Let Love be a heaven and not a hell” Johnny Hates Jazz, You Belong to You (2013) This song lyric by Johnny Hates Jazz is music to every RECOVERING codependent ear. One of the first great lessons of recovery is that we don’t belong to someone else. Many of us spent years searching for that special person that we could belong to, that we could enmesh into and that we could loose ourselves in. Those were the days when all of our focus was outside of ourselves. Back then we thought our salvation existed within someone else. We expected that someone else was responsible for our lives and our happiness. All we had to do was find that special person and they would be our permanent fix. They’d magically transform everything about us. Suddenly everything that was so wrong with us would become so right. Ah, yes! Life would be so good! NOT!!! Every time we thought we’...

“Happiness is a byproduct of the way we live our own lives, not the way others live theirs.” Karen Casey , Codependence and the Power of Detachment Detachment is a major buzzword in codependent recovery circles. So what is detachment? It’s the process of realizing that we are enmeshed in the lives of others, admitting that we are powerless over them and then making the conscious choice to separate or detach ourselves from the people whose lives we’ve been trying to live. Part of losing ourselves in those people involves the need to control them. We mistakenly believe that if we can control them and make them be and do exactly what we want, we will finally be happy. This type of codependent thinking, believing that our happiness is the byproduct of how other people live their lives, is modeled perfectly by Hannah, the character from the movie Pilgrimage that I wrote about yesterday. She was so enmeshed in her son Jim, so caught up in the belief that her happiness was ...

Living the lives of others is a very codependent trait. I was watching an old John Ford movie last night from 1933 called Pilgrimage . It was about a widow named Hannah living on a farm in Arkansas with her young adult son, Jimmy. World War I is raging across Europe and there’s a war raging inside of Hannah. Hannah doesn’t know how to live her own life. She isn’t willing to be responsible for herself and her own happiness even though she is actually a very strong person. She’s made Jimmy into her crutch and she’s living vicariously through him. This seems to work fine until Jimmy meets Mary and falls in love with her. Now Jimmy wants his life back and on his terms. He loves his mother and he has love enough in his heart for her and Mary. Jimmy wants to get married and Hannah is totally opposed. She isn’t willing to release her hostage. Hannah tries everything to keep herself enmeshed in Jimmy. She threatens him, spies on him, goes to Mary and threatens her—and all in th...

“I've asked myself How much do you commit yourself? It's my life Don't you forget It's my life It never ends (It never ends)” It’s My Life by Talk Talk How much do we commit ourselves to our own lives is a good question for everyone to ask. After all, that’s what recovery is all about. Those of us recovering from codependency spent most of our lives committing ourselves to everyone else’s life. We grew-up with our eyes always focused outside of ourselves. We lived by “Who can I commit myself to today? Who can I take care of today? Whose problems can I try to solve today?” Our only interest was in “your” life. Then we get into recovery and we learned that “your” life isn’t “my” life. We learned that they were two separate and distinct entities. We then learned to untangle the two. And in doing so, we discovered that our lifeline isn’t inside of someone else; it’s inside of us. Suddenly, all of our focus shifted, and we began the process of looking...

I’m learning that there is a fine line between the desire to lose yourself in someone and the desire to simply be with someone. So, how do we know when we’ve crossed over the line? We all have the need to be with others, and sometimes that need extends beyond casual friendship. The need can be for someone we feel safe with, someone we can open-up to and talk honestly with, someone we can laugh and cry with; and, ultimately, someone we can simply rest-in knowing that we are always safe and cared for in the arms of that person. The great comfort here is in our knowing that this particular person accepts us and we accept him/her unconditionally. There are no strings attached and thus no need to manipulate each other. And it’s not a matter of getting lost in each other, but rather, in supporting each other. The sort of “need” I just described is very different from feeling desperately “needy” for someone. And “desperate” may be the key word here. Neediness is driven by a deep...

“You knew all along What I never wanted to say Until I learned to love myself I was never ever lovin' anybody else Happiness lies in your own hand It took me much too long To understand how it could be Until you shared your secret with me.” Madonna, Secret Until you learn to love yourself, you will never love anyone else is a “secret” that every codependent must learn, and the sooner the better. I know it seems like a vulgar idea. The very thought of loving myself seemed hopelessly twisted to me early-on in my recovery. But it is totally essential. I wasted much of my life hating me. My self-hatred kept me running from myself and into the arms of anyone who would have miserable, worthless me. It took me on an endless bad trip into the lives of countless toxic people, who also hated themselves. And that bad trip didn’t end until I realized it was impossible for two people who hate themselves to build any type of redeeming relationship. Toxic person pl...

Let’s start by thinking of boundaries in this way: Boundaries are where you end and I begin, or vice-versa. Boundaries separate me from you and in doing so, they protect both of us. Many people go through life, however, without any sense of boundaries because they have very little sense of self. Instead of focusing on themselves and their own needs, they have spent their entire lives focusing on others and their needs. People with no or poor boundaries have blurred the line between where they end and other people begin. In many ways, these individuals are like Siamese twins to everyone that they have chosen to attach themselves to. They can tell you their husband’s favorite sport, their wife’s favorite color, their brother’s favorite food, their daughter’s favorite TV show or their best friend’s favorite book. But they can’t begin to tell you about their favorites in these or most any other category. They have been so busy assuming the identities of other people that thes...