44 - Recovery from Codependency: The Power of Prayer for Recovery

Nov 5

The reason for this podcast is because for people to have more life, more fulfillment. The things talked about here, and the materials referred to, are about knowing the language and content of your heart, and what that can do for you. It won’t stop pain, but helps you know what to do about it. It certainly doesn’t promise perfection or even happiness. But knowing the language and content of the heart helps people develop the ability to live life on life’s terms, with all of its heartbreak and heartache that conflicts with our craving for life without tragedy.

Our goal is for people to experience time in this life as Kairos, which means to experience your life emotionally and spiritually, fully participating in living, rather than Chronos, which means just getting life over with, letting the clock run down.

If we don’t allow ourselves to live emotionally and spiritually connected, then we have to find an escape or addiction.

Without living in Kairos, we are simply on a race to the grave.

Codependency recovery moves us into Kairos.

Because there has been so much misunderstanding about the proper use of feelings, there is a rising backlash against the importance of facing, feeling, and dealing with life by being able to be “response-able” with feelings.

In this podcast, when we discuss feelings, we are always referring to the eight feelings from The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd.

What many people confuse for feelings are actually reactions to having feelings, which leads them to “the right to act out” or react. For example, someone feels hurt, denies the vulnerability of it, and lashes out in fury. That lashing out in fury is a reaction, not response-ability. Response-ability allows a person to face, feel, and deal with hurt in a mature way as The Voice of the Heart describes. We are able to know our feelings and respond to them, versus reacting against them.

It is a concern that predominantly men will reject feelings, as a reaction to “snowflake” people. It is likely that those men will move towards becoming “fake hard” again. We are hearing more and more things like “quit being sheep and be a lion,” as a men’s movement.

We are all for strength, but the kind of strength that grows families and communities. Men who do not deal with feelings offend wives, children, and communities with their rejection and denial. Men who deny their internal makeup are men who toxically shame each other and their families.

We have to keep working on letting people know that feelings, expressed properly, are strengths, not weaknesses. Feelings lead us to become “more powerful,” not less. Feelings expressed properly, increase our perseverance. For example, a hurt person who admits their need and finds healing will be stronger and wiser about how to re-engage in life. Hurt people who heal are less defensive and braver than those who deny hurt.

The pain of life is not going away no matter what techniques or thought processes we come up with to avoid it. We cannot successfully run from our feelings.

We must face life so that we don’t live in denial.

We must feel life to have healing and compassion that leads us to care about others.

We must deal with what we face and feel, so that we continue to perseverance with care for family, marriages, children, and communities.

When we face, feel, and deal with feelings about life, we become more able to live confidently and competently. Not only do we have personal growth and maturity, we become more caring because we can relate to others’ struggles.

Facing, feeling, and dealing with our feelings also allows us to share each other’s burdens and needs, thus opening up many communal opportunities to not having to live alone. We are always stronger together by being connected. God did not make a mistake by creating us to find fulfillment through relationship with others and Him.

Codependency, sadly, really is about running from how God made us. Recovery brings us back to God. Recovery is an emotional and spiritual program.

In recovery, we return to how we are created, just like the opening lines of The Voice of the Heart state: “We are created as emotional and spiritual creatures, created to do one thing in life—live fully. We cannot live fully unless we are living in relationship with ourselves, others, and God.” In recovery we have the lives that we were born to experience.

One beauty of recovery is that when we return to and become who we were always made to be, we gain the strength of truly being able to give ourselves to others. We are able to live fully, and love deeply; we also lead lives that others can emulate because the ability to live fully attracts those who are looking for a life that is better than the symptoms of Codependency.

Recovering people become Portable Sanctuaries as described in Episode #26.

Denial is discussed in Episode #40.

Being honest, open, and willing, and seeking proper help is discussed in Episode #41.

Codependency recovery means putting down the ego and revealing feelings and needs. Amazing connections happen when we do so. We really do become “re-associated” with living how we are created to live. Codependency keeps us behind walls.

Reclaiming the six freedoms requires hard work and needing other people and God. When living in the six freedoms, we no longer only depend on our own “self-sufficiency.”

The Six Freedoms are discussed in Episode #33.

FREE Resource at chipdodd.com- Return to Being Human: 6 Freedoms from Birth

Being “re-associated” with how we are created may mean being “dis-associated” from those people and places where we have been accepted because we didn’t “rock the boat,” and maintained the “status quo.”

Because our new behaviors are breaking up “alliances” that have been formed by living in denial, relationships may go through struggles and changes. We are no longer “good” at Codependency. This is the reason that we need a circle of security, people who we can practice being in recovery with.

Episodes #6 and Episode #7 speak to the formation and need for a “Circle of Security.”

A circle of security is a person or group of people who we can be in relationship with and struggle with, without contempt or toxic shame.

We have talked many times about the stanza from the song, “It’s A Small World.” It seems so childish at first until we hear its wisdom. It expresses in a short stanza what “normal” actually looks like: “It’s a world of laughter and a world of tears;

It’s a world of hope and a world of fears;

There is so much that we share that it’s time we are aware,

It’s a small world after all.”
-The Sherman Brothers

This simple stanza summarizes something wise. It expresses what “normal” looks like.

We have mistakenly determined that what is common, must be normal. Sadly, though codependency is common, but it is not normal.

Addiction has become so common and denial around it so great that addiction has robbed us of normal.

I write at length about addiction and its statistical numbers that make it a pandemic in

Hope in the Age of Addiction, by Chip Dodd and Stephen James.

The pervasiveness of addiction in this country is staggering, and addiction numbers go far beyond illegal drug and alcohol addiction.

Once we establish boundaries, as we talked about in Episode #43, we need continued strength to remain courageous in our recoveries. Remember, courage means full-hearted participation. Courage is the fuel that keeps our recoveries progressing .

When we no longer take responsibility “for” another’s feelings, moods, actions, and we stop mind-reading to anticipate our next move to keep us out of “trouble,” we have changed the “rules.”

When our behaviors change, we need to be aware that loss may follow.

Recovery requires that we be responsible “towards” others, but not “for” others’ feelings, moods, and actions.

We need to be:

honest enough to ask questions;
share our own experience; and
care about theirs.

In recovery, we no longer have to stay in control and caretake others in order to avoid having our own anxiety. We are willing to feel, and we support others in doing the same.

The Serenity Prayer is an essential doorway into all of recovery. It is a doorway into spiritual growth in recovery from Codependency.

The final continuing step in our recovery is Giving it all to God.

Recovery is ultimately a spiritual solution for our emotional struggles. Anxiety and control are no longer our higher power. God is the Higher Power.

We finally give our daily lives over to admitting our need of God and we surrender to God, so He can do for us what we could never do for ourselves—make us whole.

Through relationship with God and with others who are in relationship with God, we leave behind “old playgrounds and playthings,” to enter a new world. In this new world, we need others to guide us, as we learn how to live a healthier way.

We are not strong in ourselves; we are made strong through connection to a community of believers and God.

We reclaim our six freedoms by returning to facing, feeling, and dealing with how we are created: to be in relationship with God and others, from our hearts to the hearts of others and God.

We bring our hearts to God, and begin to practice the first steps of a bigger life, by submitting to The Serenity Prayer.

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.

Serenity means that we trust that things are going to be “okay” because God is in control, and we are not. We must face, feel, and deal with the reality that there are many things we cannot change. God is in charge and in control 24 hours a day. Will we stay in the struggle of trusting that reality and truth?

Handing over control to God allows us also to hand over the symptoms of Codependency, as we acknowledge them and sometimes have to discover them.

Courage means that we be willing to take risks. We are daring to believe that by asking we will receive, by seeking we will find, and by knocking, the door will be opened to us. Matthew 7:7 We are asking for the strength to do the hard things, like seeking forgiveness, giving forgiveness, daring to speak, and daring to be silent. We are not in control, but we are in charge of facing that we will need to take risks with our hearts.

Wisdom means that we will give up control, and still seek greater “know how” about living life on life’s terms. Wisdom in its simplest form means we develop a sense of “timing” about when to act and when not to act, when to listen, and when to talk. We use our life experiences, other peoples’ experiences, our inner-growth, and our growing ability to listen to God with the desire to carry out His will.

The Serenity Prayer is a basic daily morning activity in recovery (and a constant prayer throughout the day), as we also gain more and more spiritual growth through spending more and more time in daily prayer, reading, and meditating upon what we are learning. We gain trust and faith in God.

We must trust and have faith that God is handling our lives, as we turn over control to God, believing that He is with us, and cares for us.

We listen to what the Holy Spirit of God counsels us to do, more than we pay attention to trusting our own power to interpret things and mind read to perpetually “save” ourselves.

We will discover through our own recognitions and the feedback from others over time, that the symptoms that have controlled us in Codependency do indeed begin to fade. Our daily admission and surrender make room for a great God to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. God sets us free to be who we were always made to be. We begin returning to how we are created to be.

An additional Serenity Prayer that is more pointed specifically to puncture the grandiosity that codependents have about control goes as follows:

Serenity Prayer for Codependents

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

the courage to change the person I can,

and the wisdom to know that is ME!

This prayer is a constant reminder that I am my problem. I am also the one who will have to risk seeking solutions, admitting need, and asking for help, as I gain the freedom that comes to recovering people. I can be “response-able” for me, and I can return daily to the God who made me, the God who cares about me, and the God who will be with me as I live my inborn worth that toxic shame had previously suppressed.

The true self is underneath the toxic shame. In recovery, what was once suppressed and not expressed, led to depressing who God made, begins to return to living fully.

Through expressing the true self, a new hope is aroused in us. We even begin to have a gratitude that had escaped us as we survived behind walls of anxiety.

We must remember that recovery: