42 - Recovery from Codependency: Practice Allows Us to Live Fully, Though Imperfectly

Oct 22

In today’s episode we are continuing to discuss how to find recovery from codependency.

Last episode we focused on the equation:

H.O.W. + G.O.D. > E.G.O

Honesty, Openness, and Willingness + Good, Orderly Direction allow us to reduce the ego or the Easing God Out experience of our lives. It also allows us to rediscover our true self and how to live out of it. The ego is the mask we wear to cover up our vulnerability and neediness, and our boundaries.

This episode particularly focuses on the path of recovery, returning to how you are created and to the God who created you.

We have to “get” good at practicing being human. The recovery process essentially is a continuous coming back to how we are made, coming home to God, and God’s creation, and the fellowship of others. Recovery is about living fully in relationship with our own hearts, the hearts of others, and the heart of God.

So many of us wish that recovery was just a “To Do” list to check off or a bad habit to change by being more determined. We want a “pill” or a “self-cure” that will not involve our need of others and time and practice. We want a “pill” rather than a path that takes us on the long walk of living fully, one day at a time.

Remember that codependency is not a habit, one we just consciously change; it is an illness, rooted in denial. Denial literally means being “blind” to feelings. It leaves us with having to control people, places, and things to prevent vulnerability and the arousal of anxiety that will follow if we lose control.

Denial:

I don’t see the “reality” of what is going on around me (my father is a rageful; or my mother is depressed)
(so that) I won’t have feelings that may cause problems
(so that) I won’t need too much, and talk about my needs, having trusted that they would be valued.

This denial allows us to avoid and temporarily quell our anxiety.

Denial:

Don’t See

Don’t Feel

Don’t Need

Don’t Talk

Don’t Trust

If we don’t re-learn how to live truthfully, we cannot live life on life’s terms or tolerate what it takes to love, because feelings are required. The ability to live truthfully and live life on life’s terms takes us back to Episode #18, “Living Fully in ‘The River’”.

Codependency recovery is about:

feeling your feelings,
telling the truth about them,
taking the risk to trust that there is a process of how life works that is bigger and better than our control.
hoping that God, who controls life, will restore us to sanity or wholeness.

Denial keeps us from being whole!

Feelings are actually your “friends,” not your “enemy.” Yes, they are often painful, but they serve a purpose, allowing us to live fully, love deeply, and live whole life in a tragic place.

We have been created to have feelings:

to bond us.
to help us live well in a dangerous place.
to allow us get the help and wholeness that we are created to have.

The paradox of feelings is that by using feelings well, we end up

getting out of pain because it allows us get our needs met
getting help in learning how to live wiser
no longer in need because we asked for help

Codependency is about:

anything I can do to avoid feelings;
letting anxiety be my guide;
ultimately, living my life trying to get control over anxiety. (This need for control takes the place of God.)

Recovery, in the beginning, is sloppy and clumsy because we are learning and practicing “new” truths, new behaviors, new relationships.

Recovery opens the door for us learn, receive feedback about our risks, even ask, “How did I do?”

Being with others while practicing “new” behaviors of sharing the truth of the heart is instrumental because it creates regulation, resonance, and revision, as we talked about in Episode 33, “The Six Freedoms for Healing Codependency”

Dwight D. Eisenhower said that there is no reason to make plans, but you better be good at planning. The exact quote is, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” The point is that recovery does not mean that we just capitulate. We still make plans, but we become flexible and tolerant and persevering enough to know that we do not have control of life. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the general who was the instrumental planner of D-Day in World War II, and then became president of the United States.

You don’t have control over life, but you better be prepared to live it. Codependency recovery is just that; learning how to live after giving up control. It requires practice.

All of life, then, really is practicing. Doctors are practicing, lawyers are practicing, parents are practicing. Knowing and adjusting to accepting that we are all practicing reduces anxiety. We all make mistakes. We are going to need to be good at being human, which is the best we ever become—perfectly imperfect.

Life cannot be “either/or”; it has to be lived as “both/and”:

A person can be super smart about much, and yet doesn’t know everything. In fact, this person may know nothing about plumbing, and everything about brain surgery. So, we can be both super smart and super dumb. Life is “both/and.” We are always going to need each other.

Recovery is:

accepting that you will be human your whole life.
facing that you don’t have control of life, but you desire to live it.
a “both/and” experience. You are going to succeed somedays and still fail some.
daily practice of competently sharing yourself, and being vulnerable to do so.
an emotional and spiritual experience.

We must practice The Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

The full prayer is by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971).

The codependency serenity prayer is more specific.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change,

the courage to change the one I can,

and the wisdom to know that one is me.

Recovery doesn’t mean that you reject your parents or live as a victim your whole life. Recovery requires that you face, feel, and deal with YOUR life.

We didn’t cause codependency, but we are responsible for dealing with it.

We become “response-able” again in recovery.

Giving up control over people, places and things by admitting that you do not have control over most of life, is the true beginning. That prayer is a daily, sometimes moment-to-moment, prayer of assessing responsibility.

Am I attempting to control?
Am I running from my feelings by trying to control so I won’t have to have anxiety?
Am I running from needing?

The paradox of recovery is actually beautiful:

I admit that I am powerless over life. My life becomes more unmanageable the more I attempt to control it (more stressed and anxious), leading to more negative consequences.
I also admit powerlessness over how I am created. This sets me free to begin to return to who I was made to be, leading to inevitable positive consequences.
I return to using the tools of life that I was born with.
I return to myself. And that returns me, inevitably, to the One who created me—God.

I return to God.

Our powerlessness empowers us.

Returning to self and self-care is not selfish.

It is about self-fulfillment, being “self-full,” which allows us to share more of what we have with others. I have plenty, so you are welcomed to have some of what I bring to life—in my experiences, strengths, and hope.

It’s like sharing your lunch with someone who doesn’t have theirs. You have; they receive, and your own joy is doubled. Recovery is far from selfish!

Through recovery from codependency, you and I are able to love—which requires that we be able to hurt.

Codependency recovery requires: