Recognizing Co-dependent Patterns

There are lots of ways to avoid recognizing the existence of co-dependency. Co dependency is the direct result of me adjusting my life to someone else's problem ... especially if this happens early on in life and my need to adapt to their problems becomes part of my normal. Then adapting those habits I picked up into my terrible dailiness ... and then depending on those habits to get me through my adult life.... spending my adult life tripping over the very things that helped me ... saved me ... away back when I had a prime stressor in my life ... people describe the avoidance patterns thusly:

• It's like being asleep.

• You dream that things are one way when really they are not.

• Even if they aren't that way, you just keep dreaming it anyway. Because almost everything you have been exposed to has co-dependent overtones, you may not know that there is something better.

• For some, denial may have been a learned survival or safety mechanism.

• If you really saw or talked about what was happening in your family when you grew up, you might not have survived childhood.

• You may have been taught not to notice what was happening to you and to other people in your family in order to maintain a "one big happy family" fantasy for the outside world.

• Of all the things you were taught to ignore, it is the lack of recognition of your own feelings that usually has the most devastating effects on you and your relationships and others.

Co-dependency, like all addictions,

It Is A Feeling Disorder.

A Prayer For All Seasons

To be honest, I’m not sure who I'm praying to.

Maybe I'm talking to myself.

To be honest, I can't take "it" anymore.

Oh yes I could still do "it”.... At least for a while longer but...

I don't know what I feel like

I wanna quit hurting.

I wanna quit hurting me and being my own worst enemy.

I wanna quit hurting my family, my friends, my neighbours.

I just wanna quit all this stuff.

To be honest, I don't know how and I don't know what to do.

I believe this is what "they" call lost and I am not sure if anyone or anything is listening,

But if someone or something is,

Please listen,

Please help,

Come find me

I'm hiding in plain sight.

taken from Experience Has Taught Us: 175 Missing Pieces