Life Issues In-Focus - Codependency

Do you want to shift energetic patterns that hold Codependency and Relationship Addiction in place?

Codependency refers to an obsessive need for affection, attention and affirmation.

Codependent people get easily drawn into the pain and problems of others, feel responsible to help people solve their problems while ignoring their own, look outside themselves for meaning, identity and value, say yes when they mean no and tend to blame others for their own unhappiness, failures and frustrations.

Codependency is as much a cultural as a personal phenomenon.

Through childhood and adolescence, we get fed codependent relationship ideals as romantic love through movies and hit parades, as Christian ideals of service and care for others, as cultural ideals of being a good mother, a caring wife or just a “good” person that cares for other people's needs more than for their own.

There is a continuum of codependency that most people will fall in.

If you consider codependeny as a pathological problem in a person, you usually find traumatic events in their childhood that reach beyond the cultural 'normality' of constricting the free and healthy development of people's self esteem and coping.

Basic needs like being nurtured, protected and appreciated got neglected, boundaries invaded through abuse, self expression discouraged or punished. This neglect of primal needs then become the obsession of the adult who longs for their fulfilment in every close relationship.

The deep need to be saved from the inner loneliness and emptiness gets projected on to another person, usually an addict in an attempt to save 'him'. This 'addict' traditionally has been an alcoholic but the term codependency has been lately applied to a broad range of people who need help such as drug users, criminals, sex addicts, mentally ill, physically ill, and even workaholics who need someone to support them while they "do their thing."

Needless to say, that the attempt of the codependent person (usually women) to save the 'helpless' or to endlessly support the 'busy important ones' (usually men) is prone to fail which then increases her frustration, anger, disappointment, guilt and low self worth.

Do you recognise any of this? Do you feel like being caught in a vicious circle? Yes, it is a vicious circle as long as you don't pull back the strings that you put around another person and start to look after yourself.

Recovery from codependency requires three simple steps: detach yourself from the other person, take responsibility for managing only your own life, and be good to yourself.

This is easier said than done. In my work with codependency during the last 35 years I discovered that most people do need extra help in shifting the energetic patterns that underlie codependent habitual emotions and responses and in building up healthy relationship patterns and communication skills.

In my Ebook: Beyond suffering (Printversion: Growing through Joy) you will find a comprehensive description of the different stages of love with its own qualities and challenges to give you a broader view of the context of codependency



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