********{FATCAT}}}}
Helloooo!!! I missed you and am so glad you came back.
I know what you mean about codependency. It is not just about being on the "other side" of a relationship with an addict, but it is about an inner turmoil and inability to take care of ourselves.
I know that I have been this way since I was 6 years old and thought I could "save" my dying father (nobody told me about cancer and that he would die), if I just loved him enough and made sure he took his medications. He used to call me his "little nurse".
When I was 7, a crazy person got into our basement and tried to kill my mother with an axe. He got her hard enough with the blunt end that she ended up with epilepsy, but she managed to get away with me to a neighbours and the police got him and put him away. It was just a freak thing, we didn't live a life conducive to violence and lived in a safe neighbourhood, but because I saw him first and told my mother there was a "monster" in the basement (he wore a rubber pirate's mask) I always felt responsible. And she always told me that I "saved" her by being the reason she did not pass out.
My point is that looking back I can see that I was already codependent, and that even today my biggest trigger is something bad happening to someone I love. It is only through working my program that I could see this and work on changes that would make my life livable again.
My fellowship is CoDA (Codependent's Anonymous) and I chose it because the focus is on all codependecy issues and not just addiction. It was right for me because I knew that, like you, my codepency was bigger than being the mom of an addict.
I fight the same battle as you do in a working environment, and have difficulty standing up for myself (which is different thatn changing them), and sometimes I can successfully do this and other times I just move on because staying in that environment is so bad for me.
But I also find that Al-Anon, Nar-Anon and CoDA are very much the same in that they teach us to look after ourselves and shake the obsession that is codependency.
Sorry, I didn't mean to write the Great Canadian Novel, but I am so glad to see you and it does me good to look at the other outside issues of my own codependency.
Sending HUGE hugs and wish I lived in BC where you people have SPRING!!!! Toronto got a week of it, then icy sleety snow again. Arghhh!