Good morning, Path to Warren podcast. This is Matt Warren, and it is Monday morning, July 20, 2020. This is episode 18. In episode 18, I’d like to talk about some new terms I’ve heard over the weekend and try to get some feedback from you guys in the comments to see what your thoughts are and if you can relate just to get current and tell you a little bit about what’s going on. I’ve realized that I’ve got some codependency opportunities, as they say, because we don’t have problems, we have opportunities. Right? So I’ve learned that I have a co-dependency issue with some people that were involved early on in my life. I started listening to the podcast Code Dependency No More, and there was a speaker on there this weekend that really said some things that I thought were amazing. The speaker said, I consider myself more of a instead of a therapist, she considers herself more of a researcher and an investigator. And what she’s doing is when people come to her about having a codependency or an addiction, what she does is instead of being a therapist, she acts as an investigator to try to get the family impact. What she wants to do is go back and see what role did you play in childhood? What were your roles in life and all the way back to being a young child? And then what was it like for your parents when they were a child? And this uncovering process, this self discovery, she said, is unbelievable in what it shows. So as of Saturday, two days ago, my dad helped my sister move. I don’t know for the 6th time, who knows how long it’s been. But I realized that my parents are in this predicament of codependency, and I believe that it’s raging right now and I’m trying to wrap my head around it. I didn’t realize this really until I started studying it. But the codependency part, it’s divided into two parts. You got the person that’s the controlling person, and then you got the person that has the mindset to take the controlling. So we could really break it into two parts. They gave the analogy of everybody has a circle and consider yourself a certain size circle. If your spouse or your other person that you’re qualifier, as they call it in another program, if the other person is a circle as well. Ideally those circles should be the same size. But what happens is in a codependent relationship, the coda is much smaller, the circle is much smaller than the other person. And actually the circle is within the bigger circle of the other person. So I thought that was fascinating and it has an effect on all aspects of that codependence life. Everything from the thoughts that that person has that I have, the thoughts that I have are all about that larger person. I found that amazing. What they wanted me to do was they were suggesting that I just go back and find out. Tell me what it was like for your mom. Tell me what it was like for your dad. Well, let’s dive into my mom. She was always the loving, caring person for me. She was the codependent in this relationship of my dad, who was the workaholic, worked all the time, did a lot of traveling. It’s hard because I’m very grateful for what he taught me in life and all that he showed me with working and work ethic and all those traits up until recovery. I joked about being a workaholic today. I don’t joke about that anymore. I think it’s a serious behavior issue that I have to work on because what I’ve learned is I could use that as a coping mechanism. I could use that as an escape mechanism to get out of my mind of what I don’t want to look at instead of facing my feelings or my emotions. A lot of times I would overwork or drink a drug. Today, I don’t do those things. Today, I’m trying very hard to break those cycles. And I was taught a pretty neat tool this weekend, listening to these Codependency No More tapes. One of the tools that they talked about was making a list. It’s kind of like the Ben Franklin close. When you’re in sales, you write all the pros of the deal versus all the cons of the deal or positives and negatives. Well, in this approach to self discovery or about an issue or a person, they say write down what is clear on one column and then write down what is unclear on another column. So the example they used were something along the lines of, if somebody comes into your house and they’re stumbling and they slurred their words, those are clear. What it’s unclear is, are they on drugs? Are they on pain pills? Are they just sleepy? And those are the unclear items. So what I started to do in my head was to make a list of what’s clear about this issue of my sister moving and what’s unclear. And I’m not going to be able to fit all of this in this podcast right now. But what’s clear is that my parents had a rule. They changed their locks on their house about eight months ago. They had the garage combination changed. They met with a therapist that was helping them deal with my sister and her issues. And they got away from meeting with that person that’s named Sue. They got away from that. And now guess what happened over the weekend. My dad spent his weekend. After a long, supposed to be relaxing vacation, he spent his Saturday moving her out of her apartment and into their house. This is the clear. What’s clear to me is that she moved into their house, and it’s not like it’s for a weekend. It is for a month. She’s living there until August 14. Holy cow. Their codependency is raging. They cannot cut her off. What’s unclear is if she financed it, if she took out a loan. What’s unclear is how is she affording this move? She’s going to Greenville. How is she going to move to Greenville? I believe my parents are still funding her and still helping to pay for her. I don’t know this for a fact. I know that a lot of her inheritance from granddaddy were kept from her. She never received the check that my brother and I did. I received about $30,000 from my grandfather when he passed away. It was actually before he passed away because he wanted to see us enjoy it, but she never received that. My parents hid that from her and so maybe they’re funding it with that. Maybe they’re doing what’s best for her in their minds and forking it out as she needs it. But it’s created a situation where she cannot stand on her own. What’s clear is that she is unable to sell things on social sites like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. She was texting my wife about hey, do you want some nice items from my apartment that you can sell and keep the money? They’re too nice, but I don’t have the patience or something to sell it on these apps and my wife and I were thinking, oh my gosh, your job is at DoorDash, you work for DoorDash and you don’t have the patience or the time to sell these items and get the cash yourself. Thankfully, my wife refused to take her junk but there’s a lot in there and I’m going to continue on. I just wanted to take a moment to get current and share a little bit about what’s going on with my self discovery of codependency behavior in myself and try to pick up some things from my parent’s world and life trying to do some family impact study to see what kind of impact my family and my childhood had on my life. I hope you have a wonderful day. If you like this podcast please subscribe and stay tuned. We’ll talk more about the solution to come. Hope you have a wonderful day and remember to make your contribution. Thanks.