I couldn't stand seeing anyone or anything get hurt. I couldn't even watch a lion catch a gazelle on TV for instance......it was too painful for me to watch.
I was very defensive on behalf of anything "weaker". I came to the rescue to save them.....because I thought they couldn't save themselves.
I always thought I was "nice" but sometimes I wasn't.....I was simply defensive.
I prided myself in "feeling" everything that others around me felt. I thought it was a "good" thing and that I was particularly "gifted". lol. Little did I realize that I WAS a particularly gifted codependent.
I would also pride myself in anticipating a person's needs.....delivering to them what I suspected they might need before they had a chance to verbalize it.
I often felt like a "victim".....when in truth......I was really a volunteer who just didn't understand I had choices to change things.
My heart was always in the right place but it was waaaaay too tender.
I always wanted to smooth things over........even if it was to force the conflict to the surface just to get it behind us.
I had a pretty huge ego. I thought I could do things better for other people than they could do for themselves.....and I was happy to help.
I was sensitive.....to an extreme......I took everything personally. Someone was mad. It was my fault. Someone was hurting. It was my fault. Someone felt wounded....I must have done something.
I usually felt guilty or shamed about something.
I couldn't say No.......easily.
I had few boundaries and those that I had were very weak and could easily be tread on.
I always felt unloved or under-loved....and undeserving of love.
I always put my needs dead last.......and then was resentful about it.
I reminded myself of the dog that would get kicked over and over and over again but go back with my tail wagging.....just to get kicked again. And I couldn't figure out that I didn't need to go back and I certainly didn't need to wag my tail.
Wow, Kindeyes. I have never read a list of things that more aptly described specific things that were my identical behavior also. I deleted a few before quoting you that weren't exactly the way I was when I was growing up...but these here above were just like shocking to me how accurate they were in describing me.
Recognizing my own codependency - and the extent of it - is really quite shocking.
In many ways I see how these things were developed in me over time based on reinforcements I got from outside of me, but on another level, it feels like I came off the shelf this way and just have a propensity for this way of relating to others and myself -- as if it was factory installed, so to speak. BORN THIS WAY as Lady Gaga would say.
At times I feel overwhelmed with how defective I am in terms of living a mature, responsible, healthfully self-oriented/self-focused way...
In other moments I have compassion for myself...
And then I have to come back to this powerlessness work I've been sitting with...
I am powerless over the events of my past that have contributed to my codependency -- both in terms of things that others have done and how I have reacted to those situations...
And I am also powerless in terms of the degree God has chosen for me to experience this codependency up until this point.
In one of the Al Anon readers, one of the passages talked about how this woman found compassion for her alcoholic father when she realized that as a boy, he was not thinking, "I hope I grow up to be an alcoholic." That it was not something that anyone would choose for themselves.
When she realized that he was powerless over alcohol and the disease of addiction in that way, she had more compassion.
I did not grow up thinking I wanted to be codependent.
I wouldn't consciously choose to be sick in this way that I am and have been for many years. It has created so much pain in my life!
But it is the condition that I have. I suffer from a bad case of codependency. And it's only going to get worse if I don't address it.
So I am trying my best to lovingly tend to it and untangle myself from the distorted thinking and perceptions that lead me to suffer as a result of it.
<deep breath>
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Yes.
Codependency may have made me insane, but I don't have to stay there. I can be restored to sanity by the grace of God and my willingness to turn my life and my will over the care of God.
Steps 1 2 and 3 are really so LOVELY!
Thank you for this thread and for the example of how a 4th step can look on this topic took.