[GingerM]

I split this into two avenues:

1. Caretaking: I stopped taking care of others and started taking care of me. This means I had to make a HUGE fundamental shift from always putting others first to putting me first the vast majority of the time. (This has only really been do-able for me in the past year or so, although I worked towards that end for probably 7 or 8 years).

I used to not do things for myself because I felt I wasn't worth it. Now I ask myself "would I do this for someone else?" If the answer is yes, then I do it for myself.

For instance: if I wanted to take ballroom dancing lessons, but said "no, I really don't need it, it's not useful" or something along those lines, I would then ask myself "If my husband wanted to take lessons, would I take them for him?" If the answer was "yes", then I signed up for the lessons - I could only see how I was depriving/not caring for myself when I substituted someone else's name for my own.

2. Loving: this is not the same as caregiving. Loving is open and unasked for. I do things for people because I WANT to, not because they asked me to. In another thread today, I talked about buying a perfect stranger a newspaper. This is an act of love (albeit not strong love) - I did something nice for someone not because they asked me to, but because I wanted to. By giving to people when you WANT to, and not when they're expecting it, you can still have an outlet for those 'caregiving' needs without feeling like you're diminishing the other person or controlling them - especially if you can do it while expecting absolutely nothing in return.

Practicing this on strangers first helps, as you know you will never see them again, and consequently can have absolutely no hopes of any exchange in return from them (one of those pitfalls of ACoAs which is discussed in another thread here).

So I 'caregive' only to myself, but I give love to others, which fills the 'need to be needed' with more of a 'need to make other people's day a little brighter' (or something along those lines). It's still making the world a better place.

I don't know if these will work for you or not, but it seems that's how my transition organically happened.