Soulshine

Sometimes in CODA meetings we allow ourselves to be bothered by someone else who attends the same meeting. We then fixate on that person until we decide that we aren’t going to the meeting anymore because that person bothers us. This is a cop-out on our behalf. It is actually our subconscious choice to ditch recovery in favor of relapsing.                          Why? Because no one can truly bother us unless we choose to allow them to do so. The first recovery lesson we receive In Step One is that we are “powerless over other people.” It’s the addictive part of us that wants to control and change other people to please ourselves. If I am bothered by someone in a meeting it’s because I’m refusing to admit that I am powerless over them. If something about them bothers me, I am choosing to let it bother me. And if I’m thinking about leaving the meeting permanently...

Ah, it’s another beautiful day in recovery! Well, until we meet someone whose neediness triggers all of our old behavioral patterns. Let’s say we’re having lunch with a friend and she has brought along a coworker. We feel an immediate attraction (attachment) to the coworker. Seems he’s just ended a bad relationship. As we listen to him speak, all of our caretaking sensibilities (or should I say nonsense-abilities) start rising from the grave within our souls. The more he speaks, the more we are convinced we can rescue him—and we aren’t even consciously aware that this is what is actually going on inside of us. As we munch on our sandwich, we begin projecting all of our old codependent neediness onto him. Suddenly he is as codependent and as needy as we want him to be. And we are convinced that we can use what we have learned in recovery to make him OK. We begin spilling out recovery jargon, telling him about the latest Melody Beattie book we’re reading, and helping hi...