Soulshine

In her book Facing Codependence , Pia Melody points out the fact that codependents tend to bounce between extremes. We can bounce from low self-esteem to arrogant, from too vulnerable to invulnerable, from good boy/girl to bad and rebellious, from overly dependent to anti-dependent, and from controlling to chaotic. I know what it’s like to bounce between all of those extremes. Before recovery, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing when I allowed myself to swing like a pendulum between extremes. Now I do. I am aware when I go from feeling empowered to totally disempowered. And that’s a really painful bounce for me because the feelings of being disempowered are ingrained from childhood. Mentally, they make no sense to me. I know I’m not truly disempowered, but my feelings don’t agree. In fact, my feelings violently disagree. At least now I know that these feelings of disempowerment are not really about the NOW. They aren’t about the reality of the present moment. They are a...