Tag: co-dependency

  • Be you alone.

    Yesterday I was asked if I felt lonely and I felt inside of myself and I didn’t, but I understood lonely and have been there often.

    Yet what I failed to understand until I started writing today was that lonely is seeking that part of ourselves that were wounded in childhood. It isn’t so much someone, but a part of us that is missing. We are lonely for ourselves.

    I was writing along and discovered that my meaning or my view of a childhood wound was neglect, sexual abuse, damage, something awful, but do you know what it really is?

    If you look at this from the point of view of what the child lost instead of what happened to them you would discover that the wound is something missing, not something added to who we were.

    It isn’t that we now carry rape and its disgusting features, especially if you were a child and the man your father, but what happens is that in that instant, we felt that our innocence went missing.

    Most focus on the rape and its ugly addition to us, like it now becomes part of who we are, instead of seeing this as something our innocent self endured.

    What I believe is if we are not treated as innocent, we then believe we are not, and then leave childhood minus our feelings of being precious and innocent.

    Living life without knowing you are innocent and precious will open you up to all kinds of situations where you sell your self short, become a people pleaser, have no sense of your own value and self worth.

    The one two punch that my parents delivered left me feeling that I was no longer innocent, my value had changed, I was no longer precious to him and she was unable to see her precious husband change, so instead I had to be the one.

    How confusing this can all be. You think you have to go back and wrestle with the feelings of being abused, but actually it is feeling the loss of innocence.

    A childhood wound is a hole in our innocence.

    And we are the ones to bring it back.

    We are the ones to strengthen our weakened state.

    In the beginning of healing we find ourselves as leaky as a sieve and we slowly over time, we become a solid bowl.

    My container of self, my wholeness is more solid today than ever before, I had plug the holes by speaking up about my innocence.

    In the past few months, I have been able to witness the loss of innocence, the lure and the grooming and the way others treat my daughter after, myself included, to find the intricacies of abuse and what it actually means to be wounded in childhood without the experience of guarding your self worth and value.

    Sadly, the reason there is so much childhood abuse, is these newly arrived souls on the planet haven’t learned to protect themselves they are easy targets.

    They are loving trusting and kind individuals that get lured and groomed into letting go of their innocence for the pleasure of an abusive person, confused with the attention and courtship, they fail to see the hook, before they swallow the line.

    What makes this so hard to stop, is that the abusers knows how to lure and groom and make comfortable and when they have complete trust and faith, they then ask or move in a direction we did not see coming, and in that instant we are asked to stand by our innocence or please them.

    Comfort them, love them, allow them, do this favor, lend an ear, bring compassion and empathy…letting go of our own innocence we focus on what they are asking, and our innocence fades away.

    We become part of the dance.

    Even though we didn’t start it, we participated and that alone makes us guilty, yet all we did was let our innocence go to please someone one.

    Letting go of our innocence is our crime.

    What I also found is the steep incline it took to get my innocence back, I had to put the ‘blame’ if you will on the one who treated me poorly, they had to own their own actions and I got to own mine.

    While I balanced my self worth sheets inside, I created two columns, what was my responsibility and what was yours.

    Separating who did what to whom, what age, what experience, what was reality in that time frame in my life, and in doing so, was able to see the trend continuing forward, all the places I lost myself.

    What I have found is the characters from way back then to present didn’t change, but rather I was able to see what was actually going on, and how I felt and how they felt about me by our actions.

    I had no one to blame in my adult years but me.

    It is in owning me as an individual and not a public held entity, that I see it all begins and ends with me.

    My business is being me, being whole, and finding myself in the midst of deep lonely feelings, for you can be certain there is another hole to plug.

    Healing is removing the parts of my self that I have given away to others, pieces of my innocence, chunks of my self worth, bits of value. To see all the times I looked at other to carry me, to make me happy, feel loved, feel worthy, all are signs of my weakness…the places I let my self go.

    Each time I am lonely…it is clue, I lost my self there.

    Each time I feel powerless, well you can bet I gave myself up there.
    Each time I am angry at another’s action, I am expecting them to do something for me, carry me, love me, make me feel secure, and so I know I dropped a part of me there.

    It is amazing how fragmented we are, how may folks carry our sense of self.

    It is lonely, if you need others to be you.

    In a co-dependent society, being alone means being lonely for no one is supporting you.

    How awful to stand alone, separated, unattached…

    Being whole means needing no one to be you.

    You just be you alone.

  • Towing others around.

    Last night I dreamt I was peddling a bike that was pulling a big trailer. On the trailer was my husband a lot of junk. Behind me sharing a seat was an unidentified stranger whose feet kept getting in the way of me peddling, impeding our progress.

    It was sooo frustrating and exacerbating and we stopped and started and started and stopped. The hardest part was getting going again, and I hated stopping.

    I kept my head down watching my peddling feet always alert for those big work boots stopping the pedals.

    It was like that man was unaware of his feet, and I was forever letting him know.

    I am in shock and awe, that I didn’t get off the bike and let the two of them be!

    In another dream a few nights before that I was trying to get my son off the floor, and he was immoveable. The harder I tried the more dead weight he became. And I kept finding him in different places and would try and move him.

    Instead of a rock picker I was forever trying to pick him up and the frustration I felt when I tried to get him to help me, and he cared less! Again, why didn’t I just let him lay?

    The struggles showing up in my dreams seem to carry the energy of me in other’s lives, dragging them around with their un-involvement allowing them to ride my coattails or me totally carrying them.

    It shows me hauling them around, while they sit in a relaxed pose watching the world go by.

    Honest, it was like the two of them were looking for interesting places to stop, and I hated stopping, while I was struggling to keep moving.

    I wonder what this metaphor is all about?

    Am I the big boots getting in the flow?

    Am I dragging others when they could move themselves?

    Am I allowing others to get in my way of doing my life?

    The overview and the feelings of how others can drag you down if you believe you should be dragging them is unreal.

    What an energy zapper!

    And more importantly, how can you live a life of a free spirit while towing others around!

  • Against my Mind.

    What an odd Christmas I had, it was almost like an out of body experience, certainly out of control, where Christmas joy seemed to mock me outside, yet inside lay a storm of hurt, anger, sorrow, confusion, resentment, more confusion a mess of wires all tangled up with beauty everywhere.

    It is odd to be so riled up inside and the outside appearing picture perfect.

    Looking inside our home last night, you would see a beautiful family and a wonderful Christmas scene; the only dark cloud was fuming around me.

    Today I didn’t know how my day would go, if I would be able to get out from under the cloud, if the fog would leave so I could sit in peace.

    Sit and just breathe in the day.

    My family watched me cautiously, wary and on tippy toes and eggshells, as I did my self.

    Wondering at my own sense of mental balance.

    This mental dysfunction of co-dependency can strike at any time, a hook is caught upon another’s action and blame and resentment ensue.

    If I could know that a snag was coming, I could head it off at the pass, but I am surprised as the ones I am snagged onto, unconsciously a lesson is arriving unbeknownst to me.

    I stay hooked as long as I blame the other, the only way I can work my way free is to see where my responsibility and actions led to the hookup.

    My freedom comes when I can stay aware in the midst of the snag and wise enough to know it isn’t all their fault, that it takes two to tangle.

    And what I usually find, is that they are doing their thing and I hop on wanting, wishing, dreaming that they will drop their life to satisfy mine.

    Oddly enough while it may have been the worst Christmas Eve ever, it also is a template to model the rest by, using it to design free Christmas activities in the future.

    Today, as the dinner preps were needed, I asked.

    I asked for help.
    I asked for specifics.
    I asked and it was met with no resistance, no complaints.

    Now this can’t be a real test, for they were so not wanting a Johnny raincloud on Christmas day or at the dinner table.

    My tone was different, the manic need was gone, there seemed to be a team spirit, a tone of many helping hands.

    Again, I know that they were coming, that we were coming off of a bad experience, where my manic mood stole Christmas joy, so I can’t be sure the atmosphere changed permanently, but a change was from deep dark fear to neutral.

    I will not say I was filled with joy or filled with gratitude or love or peace, but I was out of the depths of hell.

    Even in neutral the rest could feel their own joy, I wasn’t stealing their peace.

    How awful to witness the affects one dark rain cloud can have on a party, and to be it.

    It’s like the party planner; the event coordinator creates this wonderful display, great food, and then sits and stews in the midst like a bad stench spreading it everywhere.

    Like Dr. Jill Bolte says, “you are responsible for the energy you bring into the room.”

    Yet I felt so out of control.

    What I can do next time is just state how out of control, how angry, hurt, confused, resentful I am and it is best that I be excused.

    Taking my dark insides with me.

    Christmas for me was seeing the damage that darkness of co-dependency can do, how it changes the feelings of the others in the room, how it takes out joy.

    It is scary that I still have episodes of this.

    Yet I feel that each time I learn more about myself and hopefully be wiser next time.

    It left us all happy with neutral, no over joyful or dreaded darkness, just an idle.

    My mental dysfunctional co-dependency bouts start with a small item and pick up speed and volume if left unchecked, its almost like I got drunk on negative energy.

    Today I felt hung over and depleted from being strung so tight my head and jaw in a vice, muscles taunt, breath shallow, vision clouded.

    Braced to fight my misconstrued expectations to the death, while wanting desperately to be free and relaxed and calm and accepting, bending to the change in plans.

    Instead I put support beams of thoughts around the expectations built upon nothing.

    Like fluff on a cloud.

    Nothing supporting nothing.

    Mental thoughts being planned by a mental mind.

    The left side of my head is bruised, my jaw in pain, my left neck and shoulder ache, all a stiff from my struggle with reality.

    What I want most is to relax, to breathe, and to process this episode to my DNA.

    What I caught a few hour glimpse of is my old life, a spirit of Christmas pasts.

    My life review brought to life in reality.
    I had just been thinking a few weeks ago, that our home hasn’t had me go ‘crazy’ in a long while, and there I was in full living color, out of reality, crazy.

    Tonight I am grateful that I visit this state now, but don’t live there full time.

    How incredibly hard that life is.
    How separated, how desolate, how fearful, how lonely…

    What I think now is that this mental dysfunctional co-dependency, is something to manage, never cured.

    That it can sneak in and steal my peace at any time, that the more I set the stage, by voicing my concerns, needs, desires, the less opportunity it has to grab on and hijack my life.

    My antidote is flexibility and freedom.
    Theirs and mine, against my mind.

  • The Cost of my Peace!

    I finally figured out what I can’t accept in having to accept.

     

    I can’t accept that someone can’t change.

     

    And I guess that is not the meaning of acceptance.  I want acceptance with a clause.

     

    I want to accept who you are, but that you can change.

     

    This is incredibly insane. 

    This isn’t acceptance it’s conditional acceptance.

     

    It seems to be hopeless to accept others as they are.

    I am not sure if you can follow this, but in my head it makes sense as to why I am forever waiting and hoping, for I believe to the depth of my being that changes are possible.

     

    Even if the other person has yet to make one step, I am of thinking, ‘they can’.

     

    Yet can they?

     

    It almost seems like I have to become a pessimist or at very least, a realist and see who they are, not their potential with change.

     

    Imagine, “their potential with change” that is so not accepting who they are in this moment, but dreaming and believing that who they are isn’t who they want to be.

     

    Instead who they are ISN’T who I want them to be.

     

    I want them to be different.

    I want them to change to satisfy my ideas of what would make them a better this or a better that.

     

    This is an ongoing problem with me living in the land of potential changes, instead of being real right now.

     

    It is what it is.  I had said a million times.  But what I felt is, ‘it is what it is, until it isn’t’!

     

    Living in a hopeful state that someone will change, leaves you feeling hopeless.

     

    Somehow I have to work on accepting others not ever changing, and by seeing it is I with the problem, not them. 

     

    They are quite happy being as they are.

    As Byron Katie says, “who are you to ruin a good buzz, they are happy drinking!”

     

    I am the one that struggles with accepting that they are okay where they are, that they have no thoughts of changing, and have told me so repeatedly in words, thoughts and deeds!

     

    UGH.

     

    This will sit with me today.

    I accept who they are, but that they can change.

    Which is totally counterintuitive!

     

    I will only accept what is if what is changes!

     

    It would be funny if it wasn’t such a tragedy and if it hadn’t cost me so much peace.

     

    Believing in changes at the cost of my peace!

     

     

  • Chain of Co-dependency

    “The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new. “          

    ~Rajneesh

     

    It is incredible that a mother is born the same day a child is born, that is all it takes to be a mom.  Most never stop to think that we are handing over children to be mothered by someone who has never mothered!  Up and until then she was just a woman.

     

    And this woman is now in charge of another being beside herself. 

     

    We mother from the self we are.

     

    The same woman who arrives at the hospital to have a baby is the same one that mothers; we are not given any magic potion to make us a mother. 

     

    How I treated myself, how I was in relationships, was how I mothered.  I mothered with that same self.

     

    I simply didn’t have a separated self that mothered.  I mothered as me!

     

    All my deficiencies fell onto my children, all my fears trickled into their worlds, and my insecurities were filled by how they behaved.

     

    To totally raise a child that is balanced and independent, you yourself need to be balanced and independent.

     

    My co-dependent nature didn’t allow them to be separated from me.  I had a voice in every choice they made.

    It was like we were the oddest set of Siamese twins.

     

    Attached by an emotional dysfunctional tether, like a layer of skin we lived in each other’s lives connected always by how the other behaved, how they felt affected us, very little degree of separation.

     

    Somehow subconsciously I was weaving us together to be totally dependent upon the other, which deprived both of us from living independent strong lives.

     

    It was scary cutting the ties and letting go of control and not being the most important voice in their lives, and allowing them to be themselves, but I did it.

     

    Instead I focused all my attentions on my self and learning how to mother, or more importantly how to be a strong separated self.

     

    It is incredible to me how we focus on the children, how we want the children to be this and that, so than we can claim we were a good parent.

     

    If you instead focus on the parent, you will see that the lacks in the child all are flowing from the parent.

     

    They are as strong as our weakest link.

     

    It is easier to blame the child than it is to fix our weak link.

     

    I had many weak links, a chain that was falling apart.

     

    Each time I repaired a section; I give my child another link to freedom and self worth.

     

    My chain and my legacy pattern are to be a separated self and to break the chain of co-dependency.

     IMG_3420

  • I Did It!

    It was a photo finish; my 60-day yoga challenge ended about the same time my co-dependent life challenge stopped or was recognized deeply.

     

    I looked up the word co-dependent.

     

    co·de·pen·dent ( kō ' dĭ-pĕn ' dənt ) adj. Mutually dependent. Of or relating to a relationship in which one person is psychologically dependent in an unhealthy way…

     

    Psychologically dependent, is a huge concept that I wasn’t aware of, yet I acted it out daily.

     

    It isn’t like it is my first thought, but it is a humming that goes on in the background, an unease to stand alone without support, hence ‘co-dependent’!

     

    What is even more odd is that if you get support, your mind will tell you that you need ‘everybodies’ support and it picks apart those who don’t support, in word and deed, your latest adventure.

     

    On the eve of this Challenge ending, I say to my husband, “tomorrow is my 60th day of yoga, 60 days in a row,” to which he replies, “oh” and goes back to his reading.

     

    Well, my mind, my little co-dependent mind was given a huge gift in that one little word and no gesture, it ran scenarios for at least an hour, while I tossed and turned trying to calm down to rest.

     

    I finally did yoga breathing in and out, and said to myself, “there will be an answer, let it be,”  in hopes that during the night, or during yoga something would come to me.

     

    My co-dependent mind attacks first the person who it feels should be saying doing and being something for me. 

     

    Yet reality showed me a man calmly reading his magazine, not one who hated me, my yoga, my life etc, just a man calmly enjoying his life.

     

    So, inward my eyes turned, tuning into my feelings, my needs, my cravings, and my desires outside of myself for “good girl”! 

     

    How was it that I and I alone can’t be enough for me?

     

    As I did my yoga today, there was sadness for the girl who isn’t enough by herself for herself, alone.

     

    And ironically, by doing this yoga for 60 days in a row I have been strengthening myself, growing stronger and more balanced alone, I am a whole me, even one who is working to get free of co-dependency.

     

    I also felt the flip side of how I turned on my husband when he didn’t voice a great cheer for me, how instead of love flowing towards him, I had anger.

     

    Anger because HE wasn’t using his voice to cheer me, HIS actions were not supportive enough, he doesn’t see me, etc.

     

    (I was wise enough to keep the words/thoughts to myself, until I had a firm answer.)

     

    Again I had to let him go free, to be a man sitting in a chair reading what IS interesting to HIM.

     

    Imagine!  And guess what, I can freely do my yoga.  He isn’t telling me lift that leg higher, stay in that posture longer and then mad when I can’t or telling me I am not allowed to change and become a yoga lady.

     

    That damn co-dependent mind.  It is that mind that this yoga works the best on, it will take that mind and bring it back to reality.

     

    A boy in a chair reading what he loves, and a girl in the basement doing yoga that she needs in order to set them both free.

     

    Free from the psychological dependency in an unhealthy way.  It is unhealthy and leaves me less than, and leaves him leaving his life to be in mine.

     

    There is only room on the yoga mat for one, me!

    It is a solo dance. 

    I am learning how to live alone.

    You are right Mr. Bikram.

    Yoga makes you you!

     

    My one voice is a cheer enough.

    I did it! 

     

    IMG_1945

  • Nature showed me how.

     

    Below is a segment of a chapter in the book Awakening Intuition by Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz.

     

    “What is the essence of nurturance?  We might find it in a certain South African Fish.  The male fish is the social organizer; he plays the role in the outer world.  When a predator appears, he calls the alarm.  The female fish then opens her mouth and all the babies swim in to be sheltered where it’s safe and warm.  When the danger has passed, the male gives the all-clear, the mother opens her mouth and all the baby fish swim back out into the open water, to continue to grow in independence and autonomy.  This is the kind of warm, rosy image of motherhood most of us cherish, the mother protecting her babies against the dangers of the world, yet letting them frolic and develop on their own when safety permits.  Curiously, though, every once in awhile, one of these fish apparently has a problem with the motherhood role.  When the father calls the alarm, she won’t open her mouth to let the babies in.  They either escape on their own or get eaten by predators.  Conversely, there is on occasion a mother who’ll take the babies in when the alarm sounds, but when she gets the all-clear, she won’t open her mouth to let the babies out, and they smother inside of her.

     

    The magnitude of difference, between a healthy and balanced mom, one who knows when safety is required and one who also knows when to allow the child to go free to develop its independence, and one who is unnatural and dysfunctional, is so wide and vast, with lasting lifelong affects to the child.

     

    If only we were just affected as a child.

     

    Instead when grown in such an unnatural environment we become that, unnatural.  And live an unnatural life, and in my case 46 years of being unnatural.

     

    Living in a world with your head on backwards.

     

    Your thoughts, beliefs, values and morals are all held firmly in place with an unnatural mind.

     

    My mind wasn’t right with reality.

     

    What I now know today, is that my parent’s influence was far reaching and changed who I would become.

     

    I became an odd cartoon figure in their mad play.

    Through conditional love they molded me into this person.

    It had nothing to do with the spirit of me.

     

    Dr. Phil speaks of how parent’s actions write on the tablets of who their children will become, and he is so right.

     

    Children are not raised in a special place outside of the environment of your home.  No, instead they are literally being built by what is going on in your home.

     

    I became what was needed in our home, I became what he needed, what she needed, but I never had the space or the choice to just be me.

     

    It is unbelievable that the environment can override natural tendencies that we can literally learn and grow up being unnatural.

     

    My unnatural state served their needs, but had little to do with mine.  As long as I mirrored their unnaturalness I was part of the team, but that team has no room for natural state of being, of seeing reality in it’s true view.

     

    Their mad play has no lines for me now.

     

    I can still recall the day I was writing an email to my brother about how that childhood play no longer works for me, how those old scripts I will not utter again, how I walked off that stage and onto my own.

     

    Their play hasn’t ended, my absence did not stop production, in fact I think my sister quickly filled my old shoes, but I feel that for the first time I am a star on my own stage.

     

    Isn’t that what all children should feel?

    That they are the main player on their stage called life.

    That it isn’t their job to be the supporting actor, to make another’s play work.

     

    Imagine my whole life up until I was 46 I was a supporting actor in my parents play.  I did barely anything without their approval or a thought of how it would affect them.

     

    I was so totally linked in chains to the stage of their life.

     

    We hear of co-dependency but how about putting our kids in chains to make our life work? Isn’t that being dependent upon our children? 

     

    Take it from one who busted the chains, we know we are no longer supporting you, and are even fearful for going against your play, but know it is the only way we can survive.

     

    My mother and father expected me to continue to support their cause until death do us a part and beyond. 

     

    Society doesn’t look kindly upon children who go against parents, but fails to see the side of the child.  What has the child done, what life has the child had?

     

    Autonomy isn’t to be a supporting actor, independence isn’t found spewing lines the other wants to hear, instead of your own.

     

    And what society fails to support are the children who want to get off the stage.

     

    Instead they want us to try and fit back in with our new scripts and new ways of seeing.  Like that would work?

     

    If I can’t call him dad and treat him like a dad, do you really think my new voice will be welcomed on that stage?

     

    Our voices are drowned out with jeers and sneers, we are made to be the bad man, the one who isn’t loving, forgiving, this or that.

     

    Again, we are set back out in the open sea, alone.

     

    This time though, we are in the sea of normal.

     

    We are learning the ropes of normal, learning what lines we want as our own, learning what steps we want to take, we are free, the designers and choreographers of our own stage.

     

    We are born again we get another chance to live life normally!

    I can also recall feeling like being a baby in those one piece pajamas and looking around knowing I was also the mom.

     

    Like I could be a mom when I felt like such a baby, so naïve and childlike, I was to be running a house, and cooking meals, let alone dealing with a family deeply entrenched in dysfunction, to walking out in public with him on the front page, like oh my God, this is soooo not going to work, that I was put in charge of my own four kids, someone will certainly see the baby inside of me, that I am an imposter and not an adult at all.

     

    It was freaky thinking I was to be in charge when I felt so out of control and helpless, I wanted so badly to be just a baby, to be held and comforted, to be taken care of, to just lay on a blanket and coo.

     

    What I had to do was embrace that child and be an adult at the same time, the balance of not being one or the other, but instead nurture both.

     

    I did what the mother fish was supposed to do for me I mothered myself!

    Nature showed me how.