Make A Purchase: Special Offer!
Drawing a boundary between the Disease and self/Self
At the core of the dis-ease of codependency, at the foundation of our relationship with self, is what I call toxic shame. In my definition, the difference between guilt and shame is that guilt is about behavior (I did something wrong, I made a mistake, etc.) while shame is about our being (something is wrong with me, I am a mistake.) It is the feeling deep down inside of us that we are somehow defective, that we are somehow unlovable and unworthy because our parents were wounded codependents.
"That shame is toxic and is not ours - it never was! We did nothing to be ashamed of - we were just little kids. Just as our parents were little kids when they were wounded and shamed, and their parents before them, etc., etc. This is shame about being human that has been passed down from generation to generation.
There is no blame here, there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and scrambled minds.
Because of our broken hearts, our emotional wounds, and our scrambled minds, our subconscious programming, what the disease of Codependence causes us to do is abandon ourselves. It causes the abandonment of self, the abandonment of our own inner child - and that inner child is the gateway to our channel to the Higher Self.
The one who betrayed us and abandoned and abused us the most was ourselves. That is how the emotional defense system that is Codependence works. The battle cry of Codependence is "I'll show you - I'll get me.""
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
There is nothing wrong with who we are - we are Spiritual Beings having a human experience - it is our relationship with self that got screwed up in childhood. It is our dysfunctional relationship with self and life that causes us to be our own worst enemy - that causes us to sabotage good things in our lives and create negative self fulfilling prophecies.
In our recovery, we are working to change our relationship with self into one that is based upon Love instead of shame. In order to do that it is necessary to make paradigm shifts, change the perspectives from which we are looking at ourselves.
"We learned about life as children and it is necessary to change the way we intellectually view life in order to stop being the victim of the old tapes. By looking at, becoming conscious of, our attitudes, definitions, and perspectives, we can start discerning what works for us and what does not work. We can then start making choices about whether our intellectual view of life is serving us - or if it is setting us up to be victims because we are expecting life to be something which it is not."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
As long as we are reacting out of the old tapes and childhood wounds, we are powerless to change our behavior because we keep reacting between black and white extremes: overreact or underreact; blame them or blame me; be in a lousy relationship or be alone. As long as we are looking at ourselves through the dark glasses clouded with shame and judgment that is the disease programming, we are not seeing ourselves clearly. In recovery we are cleaning our glasses - changing our perspectives.
"We do not know how to be Loving to ourselves because we were raised in societies that taught us it was shameful to be human - shameful to make mistakes, to be emotional, to be sexual, to be something other than "perfect." Feeling that there is something inherently wrong with who we are as beings is the toxic shame that is the enemy within. . . . . .
. . . . . . It is important to start seeing the reality of the cause and effect dynamic that governs life so that we can start changing the behavior patterns that we adapted to cope with life. Until we are open to seeing the cause and effect between our childhood and our adult patterns, we will continue to give power to the belief that there is something wrong with us individually. That toxic shame feeling that tells us it is our fault that life hasn't worked the way we thought it was going to, is the main enemy here. It is very important to develop a relationship with life that allows for the belief that it is not shameful to be human - and that who we are is not bad or wrong." - The Recovery Process for inner child healing - spiritual integration
Developing a detached observer perspective allows us to start to see ourselves with some objectivity so that we can recognize the cause and effect dynamics in our life. We can start to recognize that we are creating negative consequences for ourselves - staying in relationships or jobs that are abusive, picking unavailable people to love and/or running away from someone who is available and does Love us, doing the same things over and over again while expecting different results - not because we are defective but because of our childhood wounding and programming. That allows us to start developing some compassion for ourselves - and also to start taking responsibility for the choices we are making that are setting us up to repeat the patterns and sabotage our self.
As long as we are shaming and blaming our self, we are giving aid and support to the enemy. Who we are is not the enemy - it is how we learned to relate to our self that is the enemy within. We are not defective - we are wounded. In order to start Loving our self, to start relating to our self in more kind and Loving ways, it is vital to stop identifying our self with the disease. Our mind gives us negative, fear and shame based messages because of our disease programming, not because that is just how our mind works individually. Our behavior has been a result of codependent reactions that are part of our ego defense system, but that does not make us shameful beings.
We can start to set a boundary in our perspective between being and behavior. That is, we can start recognizing that everyone is perfect in their being, in their Spiritual Essence / True Self - and that everyone has some screwed up behaviors because of our wounding. Through developing a boundary in our perspective of being and behavior, we can start honoring and Loving our being while recognizing and taking action to start changing dysfunctional behavior patterns and reactive codependent defenses.
The way we start accessing Love is through connecting with our True Self / Spiritual Self. That allows us to start to have some compassion for our human self - and to start discerning the difference between being an imperfect wounded human being (what we are) and feeling like a defective, shameful, unlovable failure (what our disease tells us we are.)
By starting to recognize that it is not shameful or bad to be human, by starting to tune into our Spiritual Self which is the part of us that Knows we are connected to everyone and everything and that Love is the ultimate Truth, we can start to set / see a boundary between our self/Self and the disease of codependency. Reconnecting with the Spiritual meaning and purpose of life helps us to start tuning into Spiritual Self - our intuitive inner channel to Higher Self / Higher Power / God / Goddess / Great Spirit / Universal Force. That helps us to start having some compassion for our human self so that we can start separating our concept of self from the disease programming - from the demon / critical parent / disease voice / enemy within.
Here is are some graphics I am borrowing from one of my Positive Affirmations articles to try to make a graphic point about how important it is to start seeing the disease as a separate part of ourselves.
"That "critical parent" voice in our head is the disease lying to us. Any shaming, judgmental voice inside of us is the disease talking to us - and it is always lying. This disease of Codependence is very adaptable, and it attacks us from all sides. The voices of the disease that are totally resistant to becoming involved in healing and Recovery are the same voices that turn right around and tell us, using Spiritual language, that we are not doing Recovery good enough, that we are not doing it right.
We need to become clear internally on what messages are coming from the disease, from the old tapes, and which ones are coming from the True Self - what some people call "the small quiet voice."
We need to turn down the volume on those loud, yammering voices that shame and judge us and turn up the volume on the quiet Loving voice. As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are feeding back into the disease, we are feeding the dragon within that is eating the life out of us. Codependence is a disease that feeds on itself - it is self-perpetuating."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
The critical parent / disease voice / gatekeeper / monster/perpetrator/demon/enemy within is the result of ego programming that causes us to view ourselves and life from a shame based negative perspective. As long as we are interpreting life / defining self / translating our emotional reactions out of the intellectual paradigm that we were conditioned / programmed / brainwashed with in childhood, we are set up to feel like a victim - doomed to keep allowing our disease to dictate and define our lives for us.
"Our experiential reality is determined by the interpretations of our mind - by the intellectual paradigm which we are using to define / determine / translate / explain our reality. The attitudes, definitions, and belief systems which we hold mentally dictate our emotional reactions. Attitudes, definitions, and beliefs determine perspective and expectation - which in turn dictates our relationships. Our relationships to our self, to life, to other people, to The God-Force / Goddess Energy / Great Spirit. Our relationships to our own emotions, bodies, gender, etc., are dictated by the attitudes, definitions, and beliefs that we are holding mentally / intellectually. And we acquired those mental constructs / ideas / concepts in early childhood from the emotional experiences, intellectual teachings, and role modeling of the beings around us. If we have not done our emotional healing so that we can get in touch with our subconscious intellectual programming then we are still reacting to that early childhood programming / intellectual paradigm even though we may not be aware of it consciously." - The True Nature of Love-part 4, Energetic Clarity
We have a dis-ease / reactive condition caused - as I say in this quote - by "the emotional experiences, intellectual teachings, and role modeling of the beings around us" in early childhood. The dynamics of the disease are the same for all of us - and are very predictable. Out of the disease we always react to extremes - and we do things that hurt our self.
We do not have to keep being the victim of our childhood wounding and programming. As I said in the introduction above, it is so important and vital to start seeing 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."
"Human beings have the capacity to grow. Any time someone says anything to the effect: "That is just how it is." "That is just how I am." "I can't help myself." etc., they are making a victim statement . . . . . As I point out so often in my writing, our attitudes, definitions and beliefs - the intellectual paradigm we are empowering (consciously or subconsciously) - determines our perspectives and expectations which in turn dictate our emotional reactions and relationships.
We do not have to be the victim of our childhood programming." - Old tapes / traditional beliefs and gender roles for men and women
It order to stop living life as a victim it is vital to start seeing our disease as separate from our self. To start recognizing that there are multiple parts to our being. We have a Spiritual / Higher / True Self that we can tune into. We have a human self that was wounded - and continues to be rewounded as long as we are reacting to life out of the dysfunctional programming. We have a disease / reactive condition that is a very powerful form of Delayed Stress Syndrome.
"Codependency is a conditioned reflex. It is a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Codependence as Delayed Stress Syndrome) It is an effect of brainwashing, a result of behavior modification. Codependency is condition, or dis-ease, that is caused by environmental conditions and conditioning rather than a phenomena which is genetic or innate to human nature. (Disease = a disturbance in a natural process, an abnormal condition which disturbs normal organic structural integrity / process.)" - Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in The Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Chapter 5: Codependency = conditioned reactive programming
It is a powerful, insidious, self perpetuating, self defeating cycle of thinking and behavior that we are powerless over until we start learning how to stop it from dictating and defining our lives. A big step in starting to own the power to change the quality of our life experience, change our relationship with self, is to start drawing a boundary / seeing a separation between who we are and the disease / reactive condition of codependency that is a result of our childhood experiences.
Here is a long excerpt from one of my articles in the Serenity Prayer series that addresses how important it is to start recognizing - and taking action to change - the dysfunctional ego programming from our childhood.
"The "critical parent" voice in our head is a manifestation of our damaged ego programming. The ego is the part of our being whose responsibility it is to help us survive. Because of the emotional trauma we suffered due to the reality that our parents were wounded in their childhoods - and the dysfunctional programming of the emotionally dishonest, Spiritual hostile cultures we grew up in - our egos got programmed very badly. Our egos got programmed to relate to life from a perspective of fear and shame, lack and scarcity.
The critical parent voice developed to try to control our own emotions and behavior so that we could survive in the dysfunctional environments we were born into. In that development, it adapted the same tools that were used on us: fear, shame, and guilt. In recovery, we are working on reprogramming that critical voice to stop reacting out of fear based upon shame so that we can start learning how to be more Loving to ourselves - and how to relate to life and other people in a way that is more functional in terms of allowing us to get our needs met and enjoy life.
It is vital in recovery to start learning how to tell that critical voice to "shut up!" It has been the play by play announcer that has been defining our lives for us. It is time to start learning how to have a more Loving, objective, and nurturing play by play announcer inside our own heads.
Like the emotionally wounded inner child places within us, the critical parent voice is just a part of us. We can start learning how to have some control over that part of us. We can start learning how to be discerning about what is going on in our minds so that we can see ourselves and life with more clarity and Truth.
When I say, in the quote from my book above, that the disease is always lying - I do not mean that there isn't some truth in what it is saying. However, because it is programmed to relate to life from a black and white / right and wrong perspective, and to believe that being human (making mistakes, not being perfect) is shameful, what it does often is take a grain of truth and blow it way out of proportion. The reality that the inner child places within us are reacting out of life and death urgency causes the critical voice to magnify, twist and distort that grain of truth into a shaming, blaming, all encompassing indictment of our self. The pain of being shamefully "wrong" / defective then causes us to want to blame it all on something / someone else because the only choices in a black and white perspective are to blame them or blame me. To blame me throws me into that deep dark pit of pain and despair within where I feel inherently unlovable and unworthy.
In order to stop being the victim of our self and our wounding it is vital to start setting boundaries with that critical parent voice - to start learning how to stop the inner child abuse that is part of the disease dynamic. Recognizing that it is not telling us the whole truth, that it is the result of faulty programming and polarized perspective, is the first step to starting to see that the critical parent voice is not an inherent part of our being. It is not an integral component of who we are - it is a part of us that was created by programming and wounding, it is a part of us that we can have some control over, that we can change.
Then we can start practicing some discernment and use the magnificent tool that is our mind to start reprogramming the part of our mind that has been our own worst enemy. Then we can start counteracting all the negative messages with positive messages. Positive affirmations are a very important tool in this process. The reality of our codependency is that we are programmed to negatively affirm ourselves hundreds of times a day - and that is on a good day, on a "bad" one we can get into the thousands. We need to stop empowering the negative programming and start choosing to introduce positive programming into our own internal process. This is one of the ways that we start relating to our self in a more Loving way.
It is vital to start recognizing that any fear or shame based messages, any black and white messages, any "should"s, "have to"s, "must"s - are coming from the critical parent voice. We can learn to start countering the shame based messages with Love based affirmations, the fear based messages with faith based messages, the "should"s and "have to"s by affirming that we do have choices, that we do have access to wisdom.
In learning to access that wisdom - the "small quiet voice", the voice of our Spirit / True Self that never speaks with shame and judgment - we can start our own internal environmental clean up program. We can learn to stop the toxic waste that is spewing out the critical parent voice from polluting our own internal landscape.
We have choices. We have access to the power and wisdom of the Spirit. We can learn to be more Loving to our self by developing an internal defense attorney, an internal "knight in shining armor," to defend and rescue our self and our inner children from the programming of our childhood." - Intellectual Discernment - shutting up the critical voice
We have been our own worst enemies because of our wounding and programming - but we are not the enemy. The enemy is the disease, and it is within us. It is very important to stop blaming ourselves and start learning how to have some discernment so we can start having the wisdom to tell the difference between messages coming from the disease - i.e. negative programming / critical parent disease voice - and messages coming from our intuition / Spirit, from our own heart and soul. As we start to have some discernment mentally we can stop interpreting our emotional reactions as being bad or wrong or shameful so that we can start changing our relationship with our own emotions, with our own emotional wounds.
We do have the power to change our relationship with our self. By being willing to start taking action: to align with Spiritual Self (positive affirmations); to change our relationship with our self by being willing to start focusing some attention on our childhood wounds; to start consciously attempting to develop a detached observer perspective; and to start seeing our disease as separate from our self/Self; we can start to learn how to get past our ego defenses and start having the capacity to open our hearts to our self so that we can learn to Love in a healthy way.
Learning to open up to Love is why we are here going through this adventure. In order to open up to receive Love from others and to give it in a healthy way, we need to be willing to take Loving action for our self to stop empowering the disease and start aligning with the Truth of Love.
"We need to own that we have the power to choose where to focus our mind. We can consciously start viewing ourselves from the "witness" perspective. It is time to fire the judge - our critical parent - and choose to replace that judge with our Higher Self, who is a loving parent. We can then intervene in our own process to protect ourselves from the perpetrator within - the critical parent/disease voice.
(It is almost impossible to go from critical parent to compassionate loving parent in one step - so the first step often is to try to observe ourselves from a neutral position or a "scientific observer" perspective.)
This is what enlightenment and consciousness raising are all about. Owning our power to be a co-creator of our lives by changing our relationship with ourselves. We can change the way we think. We can change the way we respond to our own emotions. We need to detach from our wounded self in order to allow our Spiritual Self to guide us. We are Unconditionally Loved. The Spirit does not speak to us from judgment and shame.
One of the visualizations that has helped me over the years is an image of a small control room in my brain. This control room is full of dials and gauges and lights and sirens. In this control room are a bunch of Keebler-like elves whose job it is to make sure that I don't get too emotional for my own good. Whenever I feel anything too strongly (including Joy, happiness, self-love) the lights start flashing and the sirens start wailing and the elves go crazy running around trying to get things under control. They start pushing some of the old survival buttons: feeling too happy - drink; feeling too sad- eat sugar; feeling scared - get laid; or whatever.
To me, the process of recovery is about teaching those elves to chill out. Reprogramming my ego-defenses to knowing that it is ok to feel the feelings. That feeling and releasing the emotions is not only ok it is what will work best in allowing me to have my needs fulfilled.
We need to change our relationship with ourselves and our own emotions in order to stop being at war with ourselves. The first step to doing that is to detach from ourselves enough to start protecting ourselves from the perpetrator that lives within us." - Learning to Love our self
The core of the work is to stop shaming and judging our self and start being Loving to our self - to stop the internal conflict and start developing some inner peace. It is the hardest thing for us to do because of our programming - but it can be done. If you are willing to take some of the actions contained in these assignments, you will be Loving yourself by doing something Loving for your self
The positive affirmations are an invaluable, ongoing tool in recovery. The inner child work is the key to opening up to learning to have some compassion for our self, learning to Love our self - as I say in the quote from my book above - that inner child is the gateway to our channel to the Higher Self, to connecting with our own heart and soul. Being willing to develop the detached observer perspective and start seeing our disease as just a part of us that we can take some control over, are keys to being able to do the emotional healing and change our dysfunctional relationship patterns.
"As long as we are judging and shaming ourselves we are giving power to the disease. We are feeding the monster that is devouring us.
We need to take responsibility without taking the blame. We need to own and honor the feelings without being a victim of them.
We need to rescue and nurture and Love our inner children - and STOP them from controlling our lives. STOP them from driving the bus! Children are not supposed to drive, they are not supposed to be in control.
And they are not supposed to be abused and abandoned. We have been doing it backwards. We abandoned and abused our inner children. Locked them in a dark place within us. And at the same time let the children drive the bus - let the children's wounds dictate our lives.
We were powerless out of ego-self to do anything any different than we did it. We are powerless out of ego-self to heal this disease. Through Spiritual Self, through our Spiritual Connection, we have access to all the power in the Universe.
We need to have the willingness: willingness to get to a new level of self-honesty; willingness to start listening to the Loving inner voice instead of the shaming ones; willingness to face the terror of healing the emotional wounds."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Have the willingness to say the Positive Affirmation over and over again as a way of shutting up the shaming and blaming inner messages:
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!!
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!!
I am a Spiritual Being full of Light and Love!!
The more you are willing to start taking Loving action for yourself, the easier it will be to start separating your disease from your self/Self. That will make it easier to face the terror of healing the emotional wounds - of being willing to take the journey within through the black hole of your grief. That is how we open our hearts to Love - to Loving our self and allowing others to Love us.
"A "state of Grace" is the condition of being Loved unconditionally by our Creator without having to earn that Love. We are Loved unconditionally by the Great Spirit. What we need to do is to learn to accept that state of Grace.
The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not Lovable. And we cannot do that without going through the black hole. The black hole that we need to surrender to traveling through is the black hole of our grief. The journey within - through our feelings - is the journey to knowing that we are Loved, that we are Lovable.
It is through willingness and acceptance, through surrender, trust, and faith, that we can begin to own the state of Grace which is our True condition."
Quote from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls
Besides the articles in the Inner Child Healing section, the following two series of articles will be helpful: The Serenity Prayer series which begins with: Discernment - The Wisdom to Know the Difference in Serenity Prayer and the 12 steps series which begins with: The Miracle of The Twelve Step Recovery Process - a formula for integration and balance
