Soulshine

    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 a...

Disney’s Tangled places a new spin on the Grimm Fairytale Rapunzel . We meet Disney’s Rapunzel just before her 18th birthday. She has a spirit of adventure. Every year on her birthday, she has seen lanterns light-up the night sky, and her heart is telling her to follow the lanterns. She is anxious to do so. But Mother Gothel stands in Rapunzel’s way. Mother Gothel is vain, selfish and manipulative, and as a codependent I can unfortunately relate to her need to control someone to ensure her own happiness. Gothel kidnapped the infant Rapunzel because she (Gothel) is able to retain her youthful beauty by simply touching Rapunzel’s golden, radiant hair. So she is determined to keep Rapunzel a prisoner in the tower by infusing her with fear concerning the dangers of the outside world. Fear becomes the major obstacle that stands in the way of Rapunzel’s quest for adventure and freedom to live her own life. She has developed a comfort zone in the tower with Mother Gothel. Part of he...

“I’m sorry I met someone because I know how much you hate it when I’m happy… You’re happiest when I’m miserable ‘cause then you don’t have to look at how miserable you are.” Grace Adler, Will & Grace (2002) Will Truman (Eric McCormack) and Grace Adler (Debra Messing) bounced back and forth within a love/hate friendship for eight seasons on the TV series Will & Grace . Both characters were codependently needy, and they spent many an episode trying to control or fix each other. As I was watching an episode from Season Five, the above quote really made my ears perk up. It made me think back over my life and of how I, too, was often happiest when someone I’d grown close to was miserable. It doesn’t make sense on the surface unless you understand codependent caretaking. Before recovery, I was a professional codependent caretaker. In other words, I came alive in a relationship when the other person was suffering through something they were powerless over. It gave me the ...

Seems most of us enter recovery with a very dire need to control life. The concept of flowing with life is totally foreign to us. We are so used to scripting every moment of every day in our heads. We decide what we think others should or should not do in order to please us. Thoughts like “No one should bother me today,” “He should have called me,” “She should want to see the movie I want to see” run through our heads second by second. These are all controlling thoughts. They are designed to ensure our personal happiness—and yet they do just the opposite: They make us miserable because we can rarely enforce them and make them reality. Every day we have a choice. We can script out our day and set ourselves up on a course of manipulation (control) and disappointment, or we can let go and ease into the flow of the day as determined by our Higher Power. I have learned to stop scripting not only my work days but also my free days and vacation days. Sure, I take time to plan what I...

“You saved Richard Callahan’s life. You can’t live it for him.” Helen Pryor, American Dreams We codependents tend to want to live other people’s lives. And it seems to be especially difficult for codependent parents who are now facing the fact that their children are no longer “kids”—they’re grown adults themselves. I gave a series of talks to mostly baby-boomers last week and a recurring theme was their need to control the lives of their adult children, in particular when it comes to God or church. Many baby-boomers are church goers. They grew-up believing that it was sinful to miss out on attending church on Sundays. Now they are faced with children and grandchildren who don’t believe it’s important to attend church. And so these baby-boomers have an intense need to rectify the situation by trying to impose their beliefs onto their adult children and grandchildren. In effect, these baby-boomers want to live their children’s lives for them and so they coerce and n...

“Gee Baa Baa, here I thought I was making you over… and you’ve made me over good as new.” Tim Osbourne , Lucky Star (1929) Codependency causes many of us to work extra hard at making other people over in our own image and likeness. We can develop a sometimes desperate need to make someone into the person that we want them to be. It’s this deep-seated need that pushes us to manipulate that someone in every way possible until they become what we want. The manipulation involved in making someone over can include lying, withholding information, flattery, criticism and coercion. It can also involve shopping or gift giving. For example, say we’ve targeted someone to be Mr. or Ms. Right, but we don’t quite like the way he/she dresses. So, in order to make them over as we would have them be, we voluntarily buy clothing for them—the clothing that we’d like to see them wearing. We don’t care what they want, or whether this clothing is a natural fit for them. It’s all about maki...

“Yeah, tired of chasing old dreams, tired of wasting days Tired of waking mornings just to wait for you till late Tired of searching high, tired of getting low Tired of listening hard just to wait for you to know that I want you in everything In everything, in anything I do When will you make my phone ring And tell me I can't give you anything Anything at all now?” Deacon Blue, When Will You Make My Telephone Ring? (1988) One of the darkest days of my life involved being laid-off from a job. It was devastating, totally out of the blue. I never felt so numb in my life. Denial kicked-in, but it couldn’t mask the obvious questions that still ached through my mind: What am I gonna do? How will I pay my bills? What if I can’t find another job any time soon? I felt empty and void inside as I headed home that day. I was in a fog and felt like I was moving through each moment in slow motion. Once I got home, I flopped down into a chair and stared at my telephone...