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Assignments for Jump Starting Codependency Recovery
"This dance of Codependence is a dance of dysfunctional relationships - of relationships that do not work to meet our needs. That does not mean just romantic relationships, or family relationships, or even human relationships in general.
The fact that dysfunction exists in our romantic, family, and human relationships is a symptom of the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with life - with being human. It is a symptom of the dysfunction which exists in our relationships with ourselves as human beings.
And the dysfunction that exists in our relationship with ourselves is a symptom of Spiritual dis-ease, of not being in balance and harmony with the universe, of feeling disconnected from our Spiritual source.
That is why it is so important to enlarge our perspective. To look beyond the romantic relationship in which we are having problems. To look beyond the dysfunction that exists in our relationships with other people.
The more we enlarge our perspective, the closer we get to the cause instead of just dealing with the symptoms. For example, the more we look at the dysfunction in our relationship with ourselves as human beings the more we can understand the dysfunction in our romantic relationships.
As was stated earlier, our perspective of life dictates our relationship with life. This is true for all types of relationships. Our perspective of God dictates our relationship with God. Our perspective of what a man or a woman is, dictates our relationship with ourselves as men or women, and with other men and women. Our perspective of our emotions dictates our relationship with our own emotional process.
Changing our perspectives is absolutely vital to the growth process. And the process of enlarging our perspective can sometimes convert that which seems to be very complex and totally beyond our understanding into something that is simple and understandable."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. There is nothing wrong with who we are - it is our relationship with self that got messed up in childhood. In Codependency recovery we are changing our relationships with self, life, and other people, from ones that are dysfunctional to ones that work better to help us learn: to become empowered to be positive co-creators in our life instead of negative ones; to stop being at war with ourselves and find some inner peace; to start relaxing and enjoying life as an adventurous journey instead of an endurance contest that we might fail; and to have the freedom to stop allowing our lives to be defined and dictated by the emotional wounds and subconscious intellectual programming from our childhood.
In order to start changing our relationship with ourselves, we need to start focusing some conscious attention on our relationship with self - and start taking some action to change our perspective of our self.
Earlier this year, I was involved in a relationship with a woman who had done some conventional therapy over the years and had attended some Al-Anon meetings years before as the result of being married to an alcoholic - but who had not directly focused on inner child healing work / codependency recovery, or specifically been led to make spirituality a primary focus in her life. She resonated strongly with my writing - which was necessary for us to get together in the first place - but had not focused conscious attention on these areas which are integral to codependency recovery.
In an attempt to help her jump start her codependency recovery, I made up some "assignments" for her in the hopes it would help her to start experiencing what a relief it was to start making Spirituality a priority in her life - and to start focusing on the core issues instead of being caught up in reacting out of her codependent defenses and judging herself for those reactions.
These two areas are what I refer to as the two major dimensions that need to be addressed in codependency recovery, that is: recognizing that we have a dysfunctional relationship with self which was caused by our childhood experiences - and that we have the power to change that relationship into one that works better; and starting to see our life experience as a Spiritual growth process that is unfolding perfectly.
"(I need to make the point here that Codependence and recovery are both multi-leveled, multi-dimensional phenomena. What we are trying to achieve is integration and balance on different levels. In regard to our relationship with ourselves this involves two major dimensions: the horizontal and the vertical. In this context the horizontal is about being human and relating to other humans and our environment. The vertical is Spiritual, about our relationship to a Higher Power, to the Universal Source. If we cannot conceive of a God/Goddess Force that loves us then it makes it virtually impossible to be loving to ourselves. So a Spiritual Awakening is absolutely vital to the process in my opinion. Changing our relationship with ourselves on the horizontal level is both a necessary element in, and possible because we are working on, integrating Spiritual Truth into our inner process.)" - Learning to Love our self
The "assignments" that I wrote up for her did prove to be very helpful in enabling her to make great progress in her codependency recovery. I later shared those "assignments" with several other people who found them very helpful. Those "assignments" are my reason for adding this page to my site at the end of July 2004. I believe that they will be valuable in helping those of you who want to jump start your codependency recovery / inner child healing / Spiritual integration process. The two parts of this page that were the original "assignments" I wrote up for her, are ones focused on Positive Affirmations and inner child healing work.
The positive affirmations are a major tool in recovery and invaluable in helping individuals to start combating the toxic shame at the core of their relationship with self - start opening up to Love through changing the dysfunctional programming adapted by the little child who felt defective and unlovable because his/her parents were wounded and didn't know how to love themselves. The positive affirmations are vital in helping us to start getting more clearly connected to our Spiritual Self - as we learn to stop allowing our damaged and dysfunctionally programmed ego self run our lives.
"The Twelve Step Recovery process is so successful because it provides a formula for integrating different levels. It is by recognizing that we are powerless to control our life experiences out of ego-self that we can access the power out of True Self, Spiritual Self. By surrendering the illusion of ego control we can reconnect with our Higher Selves. Selfishness out of ego-self is destroying the planet. Selfishness out of Spiritual Self is what will save the planet.
It is because there is more than one level of reality that life is paradoxical in nature. What is True and positive on one level - selfishness out of Spiritual Self, can be negative on another level - selfishness out of ego-self. What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, God calls a butterfly."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
It is vital to start being willing to focus on the inner child work because the core of our wounding - the foundation for our relationship with self - was laid in early childhood. Our adult patterns are symptoms / effects our wounding - the cause of our dysfunctional relationships with self, life, and other people goes back to our childhood. We have been living our life in reaction to the defense system that resulted from our ego being conditioned to relate to life from shame, fear, and scarcity.
"Codependence is an emotional and behavioral defense system which was adopted by our egos in order to meet our need to survive as a child. Because we had no tools for reprogramming our egos and healing our emotional wounds (culturally approved grieving, training and initiation rites, healthy role models, etc.), the effect is that as an adult we keep reacting to the programming of our childhood and do not get our needs met - our emotional, mental, Spiritual, or physical needs. Codependence allows us to survive physically but causes us to feel empty and dead inside. Codependence is a defense system that causes us to wound ourselves."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
"We are all carrying around repressed pain, terror, shame, and rage energy from our childhoods, whether it was twenty years ago or fifty years ago. We have this grief energy within us even if we came from a relatively healthy family, because this society is emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional.
When someone "pushes your buttons," he/she is activating that stored, pressurized grief energy. She/he is gouging the old wounds, and all of the newer wounds that are piled on top of those original wounds by our repeating behavior patterns."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
When I printed up a copy of these "assignments" to give to her, I also included a short exercise I had written several years ago for my Journal on detachment. As I talk about in so many of my articles, developing a detached objective observer perspective is vital to changing our perspective of ourselves enough to start seeing ourselves with some clarity - instead of looking through the shame filter of the disease programming. I am including that short article in this page also.
And I am adding one more area to this page. Both the development of the detached witness perspective and this area are mostly conceptual - involving a shift in perspective - but both also require taking some action to raise our consciousness and open our minds, to explore new concepts / perspectives / paradigms / contexts in which to view our self and life. This second conceptual arena that it is vital to focus some attention on in order to change our relationship with our self and get more in alignment with our Self, is learning to separate our self/Self from the disease in our perspective / relationship with ourselves.
Both developing a detached observer perspective and starting to see our self/Self as separate from the disease, are vital components in learning to practice discernment - the "wisdom to know the difference" between the things we have the power to change and the things we do not have the power to change.
"For anyone who is not familiar with the Serenity Prayer, here is the commonly accepted version of it - followed by my own personal adapted version.
" 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 Serenity Prayer is generally thought to have been written by Reinhold Niebuhr)
God / Goddess / Great Spirit, please help me to access:
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (life, other people),
the courage and willingness to change the things I can (me, my own attitudes and behaviors),
and the wisdom and clarity to know the difference.
This is such a powerful, simple, and functional formula for living life that references to it comes up in my writing quite often." - Discernment - The Wisdom to Know the Difference in Serenity Prayer
Codependency is a condition that causes us to live the Serenity Prayer backwards. Recovery is learning to apply the Serenity Prayer in our lives so that we can learn to live life in a way that works - in a way that aligns with how life really works. Learning to live the Serenity Prayer in our life is what will help us learn how to be our own best friend instead of always feeling like a victim of our self, feeling like our own worst enemy.
"I spent most of my life doing the Serenity prayer backwards, that is, trying to change the external things over which I had no control - other people and life events mostly - and taking no responsibility (except shaming and blaming myself) for my own internal process - over which I can have some degree of control. Having some control is not a bad thing; trying to control something or somebody over which I have no control is what is dysfunctional. It was very important for me to start learning how to recognize the boundaries of where I ended and other people began, and to start realizing that I can have some control over my internal process in ways that are not shaming and judgmental - that I can stop being the victim of myself.
I spent most of my life being the victim of my own thoughts, my own emotions, my own behaviors. I was consistently picking untrustworthy people to trust and unavailable people to love. I could not trust my own emotions because I was incapable of being honest with myself emotionally - which made me incapable of Truly being honest on any level.
I had to become willing and open and honest enough to start becoming conscious of the dysfunctional attitudes, the dysfunctional perspectives. I had to become willing to learn discernment in order to make choices about the changes I needed to make in my perspectives - especially my perspective on my own emotional process."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Positive Affirmations
Here is a permanent affirmation for you to continue to say:
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love.
Say it anytime, anyplace, to yourself or out loud every time you think of it. If you say this affirmation 20 times a day it will be wonderful and start changing your life for the better. If you say it 100 times a day, it will be magical and start rapidly bring change. Truly! It will show your willingness to grow and open up to accessing Love and Joy and Truth and Light - and each time you say it will be an action towards opening your inner intuitive channel to the clarity you are seeking.
Here are some affirmations you can choose from to add to your permanent one, to say in concert with your permanent one, when you are ready to do that.
I am Unconditionally Loved in this very moment - I always have been, I always will be.
I am perfectly where I am supposed to be on my Spiritual Path and I am being guided Home.
I am a radiant expression of the Goddess energy/Great Spirit/Christ within.
I am always in the right place at the right time, successfully engaged in the right activity.
I am radiantly beautiful and vibrantly healthy and Joyously alive.
I AM a magnificent Spiritual being having a Joyous and exciting human adventure!
Here are some more affirmations, grouped together in a gradual build up. Starting here with real simple ones rather than ones that you feel you might gag on at this point. You could do each group for a period of time - 3 days, a week, whatever - and then go on to the next group across. It would be great if you could read the group of affirmations 3 times a day out loud. It would be more wonderful if you could do that a dozen times.
(It is not necessary to do a gradual build up for most people. It is okay to jump right to the "gagging" ones.;-)
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Showing the Universe willingness to take action - using your will power to say the affirmations no matter how much ego resistance comes up - is working the third step and aligning yourself with the Divine Plan of Loving Higher Power.
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Making a tape recording of affirmations in your own voice and playing them to yourself can be very powerful. Be sure to include saying "I Love you" to yourself.
Which reminds me, every time you look in the mirror, look yourself in the eye and say, "I Love you ______."
"We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here to experience feelings and touch and Love. The goal of the healing process is not to reach someplace where we are above all the human experiences and feelings. We are here to feel these feelings.
When we become willing to feel the pain, then we become capable of feeling the Joy. The Joy of doing this healing is incredible! Our job is to heal and enJoy. Our job is to be. We are here to be human beings, not human doings.
Our job is to follow the Joy to the Truth. Our job is to feel in the moment.
As long as we are reacting to old wounds and old tapes we cannot respond to the now. The more we heal, the more responsibility we have - that is, ability to respond. The ability to respond in the moment.
By honoring and releasing the sadness and the pain and the anger we can get to the Joy and the Love and the Peace. By stopping the war within we can create world peace. Not today. Probably not in our lifetimes. It will take generations (unless the "hundredth monkey effect" kicks in) but the process has begun!"
Quote Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Some other pages that focus on Positive Affirmations:
Positive Affirmations - setting boundaries with Codependence
More on Positive Affirmations - taking Loving action for our self
Intellectual Discernment - shutting up the critical voice
