Someone asked me a question today that set me back on my heels.
Just what's so wrong about codependency? After all, isn't being unselfish and giving, helping and rescuing people from their sad state, putting others' needs ahead of your own, isn't that encouraged? the Christian thing to do? the right thing to do?
Wow. You know, I might have asked that same question up until 3 years ago. I would have felt perfectly justified in asking just what the big deal was. If I even knew there was a big deal. It was just the accepted thing to do: looking after others to the exclusion of myself, being the guardian of my family, holding up the standard of holiness.
I lived in denial. I only saw what I wanted to see: I only saw what would make me the hero, the victim, the only one who was right. Until, that is, I was shown that the way I was living was isolating me, driving away the people I cared about, placing a burden on my soul that wasn't meant to be there, and leaving me resentful and bitter.
My version of Christianity more closely resembled codependency (see my page on what that is, above) than faith in God. I didn't trust God to look after me or to look after my loved ones.
Oh, I SAID I did. But in practice, I didn't. I behaved like it was my responsibility how other people turned out, that I was their protector, their rescuer, their conscience, their watchdog. In essence, I had taken on the role of God in the lives of those I cared about. That is a burden that no human was designed to carry!! I was exhausted : emotionally, spiritually, mentally, financially, physically. And I was so incredibly lonely: a state which, truth be told, I had created by my obsession with being right, with being needed, with being in charge. Fear was a way of life for me. Like Job at the beginning of his story, when he sacrificed animals to God every day in case his children sinned that day, I was so afraid that my husband or kids would mess up that I would go out of my way to protect them and would assume that they were GOING to mess up. I spied on them, jumped on every little thing they did that went against what I wanted for them, over-reacted when they dared question me or my beliefs, ... at the end of the day, they were either too scared of me to confide in me, or they had just tuned me out, saying that Mom was going all Christianazi on them again.
The single biggest revelation I had when, overwhelmed by the circumstances, I first asked for help - which I only did so that I could figure out how to make my husband stop drinking and my kids to stop treating me like I was some sort of ogre - was that I might have the problem, not them. That I actually might BE the problem.
It was quite an epiphany for me when I realized that the way I had been acting was not the right way - that all my attempts at rescuing, controlling, manipulating, intimidating, and care-taking had created the reactions I was seeing in my loved ones. It was a hard truth to face. My life was totally about them, enmeshed in their lives, their reactions, their opinions. I felt responsible for their bad choices. Every decision they made - "good" or "bad" - was automatically a reflection on my abilities as a wife, mother, Christian. I had lost myself, a sense of who I was ... if I ever even had it in the first place.
That was when I reached, as people in recovery say, "my bottom." I finally realized that what I'd been doing was insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - and it was causing the very problem from which I was suffering. I'm so glad that God placed the people in my path to be able to walk me out of that dark and rocky ravine. People who helped me let go of my iron-fisted grip on other people's lives. People who helped me to discover who I was, who accepted me, who loved me, who were patient with me.
My relationships changed. I had damaged the people I loved... SO much!! Slowly I learned who I was, who they were. Slowly I realized that it was okay that I was me and that they were them, that it was okay for them to be different from me. Such basic concepts I had missed - they were new to me. And as I learned them, and this made a change in the way I viewed myself and the people in my life, that heavy self-imposed burden of 'being God' for them, just slipped away from me.
Peace has replaced perfectionism. Serenity has replaced suspicion. I can still very easily slip back into that old fearful and obsessive mind-set at times. But I am able to catch myself at it, and when I do, I can more easily unhook from it and let go. It's not perfect - but that's not my goal. My goal is progress.
I know that God was in charge of this whole thing: He was the One who sent those people who walked with me as I put one foot in front of the other and stepped further and further into the light. And to Him - and to them - I will always be thankful.
Just what's so wrong about codependency? After all, isn't being unselfish and giving, helping and rescuing people from their sad state, putting others' needs ahead of your own, isn't that encouraged? the Christian thing to do? the right thing to do?
Wow. You know, I might have asked that same question up until 3 years ago. I would have felt perfectly justified in asking just what the big deal was. If I even knew there was a big deal. It was just the accepted thing to do: looking after others to the exclusion of myself, being the guardian of my family, holding up the standard of holiness.
I lived in denial. I only saw what I wanted to see: I only saw what would make me the hero, the victim, the only one who was right. Until, that is, I was shown that the way I was living was isolating me, driving away the people I cared about, placing a burden on my soul that wasn't meant to be there, and leaving me resentful and bitter.
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| Image source (via Google): http://www.nofenders.net/2010/05/ its-not-my-fault-honest.html |
Oh, I SAID I did. But in practice, I didn't. I behaved like it was my responsibility how other people turned out, that I was their protector, their rescuer, their conscience, their watchdog. In essence, I had taken on the role of God in the lives of those I cared about. That is a burden that no human was designed to carry!! I was exhausted : emotionally, spiritually, mentally, financially, physically. And I was so incredibly lonely: a state which, truth be told, I had created by my obsession with being right, with being needed, with being in charge. Fear was a way of life for me. Like Job at the beginning of his story, when he sacrificed animals to God every day in case his children sinned that day, I was so afraid that my husband or kids would mess up that I would go out of my way to protect them and would assume that they were GOING to mess up. I spied on them, jumped on every little thing they did that went against what I wanted for them, over-reacted when they dared question me or my beliefs, ... at the end of the day, they were either too scared of me to confide in me, or they had just tuned me out, saying that Mom was going all Christianazi on them again.
The single biggest revelation I had when, overwhelmed by the circumstances, I first asked for help - which I only did so that I could figure out how to make my husband stop drinking and my kids to stop treating me like I was some sort of ogre - was that I might have the problem, not them. That I actually might BE the problem.
It was quite an epiphany for me when I realized that the way I had been acting was not the right way - that all my attempts at rescuing, controlling, manipulating, intimidating, and care-taking had created the reactions I was seeing in my loved ones. It was a hard truth to face. My life was totally about them, enmeshed in their lives, their reactions, their opinions. I felt responsible for their bad choices. Every decision they made - "good" or "bad" - was automatically a reflection on my abilities as a wife, mother, Christian. I had lost myself, a sense of who I was ... if I ever even had it in the first place.
That was when I reached, as people in recovery say, "my bottom." I finally realized that what I'd been doing was insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - and it was causing the very problem from which I was suffering. I'm so glad that God placed the people in my path to be able to walk me out of that dark and rocky ravine. People who helped me let go of my iron-fisted grip on other people's lives. People who helped me to discover who I was, who accepted me, who loved me, who were patient with me.
My relationships changed. I had damaged the people I loved... SO much!! Slowly I learned who I was, who they were. Slowly I realized that it was okay that I was me and that they were them, that it was okay for them to be different from me. Such basic concepts I had missed - they were new to me. And as I learned them, and this made a change in the way I viewed myself and the people in my life, that heavy self-imposed burden of 'being God' for them, just slipped away from me.
Peace has replaced perfectionism. Serenity has replaced suspicion. I can still very easily slip back into that old fearful and obsessive mind-set at times. But I am able to catch myself at it, and when I do, I can more easily unhook from it and let go. It's not perfect - but that's not my goal. My goal is progress.
I know that God was in charge of this whole thing: He was the One who sent those people who walked with me as I put one foot in front of the other and stepped further and further into the light. And to Him - and to them - I will always be thankful.
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