Hi I’m Christina and I am a Co-dependent person in recovery.
This means that I’ve spent my life trying to gain acceptance and love through outside sources, and completely neglected the inside of myself, just as my caregivers did.
I didn’t know any better.
So here I am nearing 40, and I was on the brink of repeating another cycle. Well I did repeat another cycle, just in a really short time span it came full circle and I landed smack dab facing myself down in the mirror.
Now the real challenge is to give myself love and acceptance and nurturing all while seeing all of the damage I’ve caused, primarily through the behaviors/ mental anguish my children have picked up from me. And now I get to try and figure out how to help them out of that without being Co-dependent lol, good luck, and with being a mom and not their therapist.
How the hell do I do that ? Dear Google, how do I be a mom and not a therapist when my whole life it appears I’m a set of defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms.
What does recovery look like?
Apparently it looks like reclaiming whoever I was before all the mechanisms. This is a tricky process. My intuition has led me for the moment toward music and movement to accomplish this task. Namely piano and dance, and doing things without needing (can’t say wanting because I do want) anyone else to be involved.
Decide
That’s been my word of late. I’ll probably get it tattooed somewhere :p because that’s in the prescription for mid-life crisis, which my good friend last night helped me RE-frame to awakening or something along those lines. It was better so I’ll have to ask her and edit later.
It’s really hard to sit with the realities of my obsessive all or nothing nature when it comes to love and especially how that’s impacted ME (see what I did there, have to add me in now), and my children.
How do I clean this up? And do I have to do that without love at this stage in my life? Or can I do it with love and just continue to keep myself, my routines, and find a balance there.
Do I have to go Sandra Bullock and 28 days and begin with a houseplant and then a pet and you know how it goes. I have been wanting to watch that movie lately.
How did this happen? I know exactly how it happened. And that will be my next steps I suppose is unfolding the experiences that caused this set of behaviors to be my modus operandi.
How do I sit with all of this and hold space for it? To forgive myself for the pain it has caused others and myself, and then to not only validate but value my experience and hopefully at some point share it.
A note: there is no need ever to swallow a diagnosis or a label whole. Some things will apply and some won’t. As a wise professor in graduate school once taught, “chew the meat and spit the bones”. Take what you can learn from to enable yourself, but don’t become disabled (discouraged) by over identifying with an entire thing.
There are a lot of aspects of Co-dependency I have already battled and come out better. However, there are some things I didn’t even realize I was doing that need tending to.
So here’s the real trick for me, rather than work on myself, the way I intend to heal is by not working on myself, or others and learning to play and relax. That’s what I’m hoping to make the rest of my life about. Not irresponsibility or out of balance, which is really tough, but making life light and fun versus an emergency or working at survival all the time, because this is all I knew.
And above all things when I do embark on love having a partner not a project.
This isn’t something I’m labeling the other person. What I mean is not that they are less by being the project, I mean that I am in control of the mechanisms that I use for bonding and attachment and that they are not therapy. That I figure out how to allow myself to be seen, my full self, not for my productivity etc, but just me.
I’m not even sure how to do that, but I know I need to.
Take me as I am… made me think of Chicago and my first love Mike. Our song was You’re the Inspiration. So of course I bought the album (feeling very geeky as I write this). And Will you Still Love Me is also a favorite and despite what a ballad of Co-dependence it is I’m going to link it here lol.
Christina everything does not have to go back to Co-dependence. Just like the song. You are still allowed to be a hopeful romantic and stay on top of your healing. It can all exist.
Ok deep breaths and one healthier step at a time in any given choice. Slowing way down. That’s uncomfortable to even think about. It feels like standing still over hot coals, I’d much rather run across so my feet don’t get burned, but I’ve been running my whole life. I guess it’s time to stay.
STAY…..
I both like and dislike this idea. Stay connected to myself enough to practice what I preach and be consistent in those things. Read the whole book before well meaningly giving it to someone else without even having read it myself.
A strong confident presentation on the outside, with an inside that’s trembling. Finding authenticity and direction amidst another wreckage. Being gentle with my own heart (ick) so I won’t regret an interaction with another when I’m not gentle and bounce about the world in chaotic flurries.
STAY…..
Ok I’ll try…..