Family

Family problems come and go but when you can walk into someone's home and immediately feel loved and included, it's a GIFT!
My California family has always been a center of warmth and inclusion for me. I could be away for years, walk in and feel like I am loved and I matter to everyone.
We all have and appreciate the same crazy sense of humor, we all interrupt each other in an energetic Jewish sharing of excitement of what we are talking about.
With all of us aging (like that's an excuse), memory is at a low ebb, so we have to count on each others' support and memory blips to A) be able to finish a sentence, B) remember what we were talking about before we were so rudely interrupted (LOL) and C) creatively finish thoughts and remember the names of movies stars and politicians not to mention people we knew when we were four (and by the way which aunt is in that picture and who potched who on the tuchus, Black Bottom?)
Being separated by miles may enhance the memories but sometimes I wish that I had grown up around my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Maybe it would have been harmful to me in many ways to get embroiled in the family dysfunctions, who knows? Maybe I would have learned to keep my boundaries better because it would have been clear I needed to. Maybe we would not have ended up as loving and connected as we are these days if we had had to deal with each other more often.
I learned, instead, to make family of the friends we met along the way. I also learned to love and be inclusive with family and friends. What felt good to me was what I want to give to others. Being the third and youngest in my nuclear family left me often feel like the odd girl out. I learned to reach out to others for the connection I longed for.
I have family of blood and family of heart and feel fortunate to have developed such loving and warm relationships with so many people in my life.
I thank you all.

Co-Dependency

For years we have heard the word bandied around and it has gone in and out of favor in the therapy world. The older I get the clearer I get about it in myself and thought I'd share some of what I know to help others.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CO-DEPENDENCY/LOVE ADDICTION:

Most CDs come from dysfunctional families of one sort or another and did not have their emotional and relational needs met.
CDs may try to get their unmet dependency needs met, vicariously, by becoming a care giver to others who appear needy.
CDs are often attracted to emotionally unavailable people like those they experienced as children in the hopes that they could change this person into the loving person they have always longed for. Having few healthy boundaries, CDs get involved with people they do not know very well and try to fantasize them into being the person they desire.
CDs are usually terrified of abandonment and rejection and so will do almost anything to hang on to people even when they know the relationship is toxic for them all to avoid the pain of another loss/rejection. Fearing abandonment and rejection CDs stay in and return to painful and destructive relationships and grow more isolated and alienated from friends and family, loved ones, themselves and their higher power.
CDs are willing to do things to help others. Almost nothing is too much trouble, takes too much time or is too expensive if they believe it will help those they care about. It is easy to believe that they have to take care of everyone elses' needs before they can attend to their own.
CDs are used to lack of love in their relationships and are willing to wait, work harder and hope they can eventually please others to gain the love and be valued the way they have always hoped to be. CDs feel empty and incomplete when they are alone.
CDs usually take more than 50% of the blame and responsibility for any problems, real or anticipated.
CDs have critically low self esteem and believe, deep inside, that they must earn the right to enjoy life. Suffering in life and relationships is familiar. Being treated well and cherished is suspect.
CDs have a desperate need to control people and relationships out of fear. We try to mask our fear and efforts at control as "being helpful".
CDs tend to see only their fantasy, not the reality, of their relationships.
CDs are addicted to a person or people and to emotional pain.
CDs can tend toward depression especially as they stuff their hurt and anger and feel powerless in their relationships.
CDs may find nice and stable people boring.
CDs operate from a place of "lack of abundance" and then tend to not take care of themselves emotionally, physically, spiritually and psychologically.
CDs tend to focus on others and what they need and not take responsibility for their own behaviors or needs.
CDs can tend to fear others they perceive as having more power.
CDs become approval seekers and lose their identities in the process. They also lose their internal locus of control and believe others define them and give them worth.
CDs are afraid of anger and angry people and fear personal criticism because it brings them back to feeling shame about being worthless. Shame is experienced at toxic levels.
CDs often feel like victims of their situation, of others, of life.
CDs judge themselves harshly and without the mercy they extend to others.
CDs feel guilty and ashamed if they stand up for themselves and fear being rejected and abandoned for having done so.
CDs tend to be perfectionistic and judgmental.
CDs react to life rather than be proactive about life.

Whoa...how did we get here and how do we get out????

The obvious issues in all of this are that we suffer from low self esteem and poor self image. If you do not feel good about yourself, you do not believe that anyone worthwhile would want to be in a relationship with you, right? We make up stories about people so we can love them, keep attached and to make ourselves feel worthy of love. If love addicts saw the person the way they really are they would feel like THEY are the worthless ones rather than seeing the truth and running.
I tell people over and over to find someone who likes them the way they are, to not settle for a warm body. You don't need to justify and apologize for who you are. Find a way to like, and even LOVE yourself the way you are and then find someone who also likes and even LOVES who you are. Stop trying to fit square pegs into round holes in life! As Popeye said, "I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam!".
Codependents fear abandonment and rejection as if the loss of this particular person will leave them without their life's blood. Adults are not abandoned, they are left. Adults can cope with loss and move on. You will NOT die.
Codependents feel responsible for what everyone else is thinking or feeling or doing. They believe they can read minds and that others should be able to read theirs. What if we lived in a world where everyone was responsible for their own stuff? Obviously this would be a relief in that we wouldn't have to walk on eggshells all the time but for many codependents this is a threat. It is hard to trust others to be responsible, it is hard to trust they will want to stay if we don't control how everything goes in our lives.
Learning to have healthy boundaries is essential. This means physical, sexual and emotional/relational boundaries. If I am responsible only for myself, things change. If I accept and love who I am and don't dip into toxic shame when things don't turn out perfectly, or when people get angry with me I can feel more confortable in my own skin. This also means I don't jump up into grandiosity when things go wrong or make me uncomfortable. I don't need to be "less than", not do I need to be "better than" or "one up" on others. If I am "good enough" and accept others as they are then I get to decide who and when and where for everything in my life.
I can let people into my inner circle without worrying about whether or not they are safe because I trust myself to keep myself safe. If people treat me badly I can use my boundaries to protect myself. I don't need to keep up my guard all the time with everyone because I trust that I want the best for myself and will cherish myself enough to stay safe.
And I don't let people stay in my inner circle if they don't treat me with respect.
As Terry Real says, imagine an ornage peel as your boundaries. The white part on the inside is the boundary that contains you, keeps you from spilling out too much onto others with your anger, lust, anxiety, etc while the orange part of the peel is the boundary that protects you from others. People can say whatever they want about you but that doesn't make it true.
You can listen to what others say and understand that they are talking about their own perceptions rather than facts about you, and then you can get more curious about why they would think that way. And if you care about them, you want to understand so you help make things better between you. And you don't have to let their interpretations define who you are.
We also have to learn to own our interpretations of others and the world around us so that we are not going around dumping our thoughts and feelings onto others. We cannot expect others to treat us with respect if we aren't going to treat them with respect. It is easy to believe our emotional reactions to events are "the truth", and that others have intended to "make us feel" a certain way.
We each are always making up stories about what we hear, see, smell, taste and tounch based on our past experiences. This doesn't mean we are lying, it means we use what we know to make sense of what is happening around us. Sometimes we are right and sometimes not. We cannot depend on our interpretations to be factual in relationships because other people come from different life experiences and may have different meanings attached to events and motivation than the ones we grew up with.
I'll get into all of these issues in more depth in future blogs so I don't want to get bogged down in it here. What I hope to get across is the issues that confront Love Addicts/CoDependents and what some of the things they need to work on to start to feel better about themselves and have heathier and more satisfyingly respectful relationships.
Self esteem, healthy boundaries, respectful communication. Start anywhere and put one foot in front of the other and evolve.
Send me questions or thoughts...I'd love to get some feedback and ideas of what else to write about!