Happiness Is About Me—And No One Else
“Nothing changes until you do.” Mike Robbins Deeply engrained in codependent thinking is “everyone else needs to change and it’s my job to see that they do.” God knows that before I entered recovery that was my entire philosophy on life. There was good reason for it. I had been taught from an early age to always look outside myself to find happiness. And finding happiness outside of myself meant that I needed to control life, including everyone and everything. It didn’t take long to realize that it was easier to control things than it was to control people. And this marked the beginning of my addictively acting out with things. After all, a chocolate chip cookie can’t scream “Don’t eat me!” Food has no power to stop us from over-consuming it as a means of seeking false happiness. The same is true for alcohol or any other substance. Likewise, clothes in department stores can’t stop us from buying them as a false means of alleviating our self-loathing. Controlling things ...