Today in a meeting, I heard a statement that shocked me. It made my heart jump out of my chest.
“Codependency is the underlying condition. We have been medicating it the whole time.”
-Jenner, NY Men’s Meeting
The struggle is to put into words why I feel that this is at the very seed pod of the onion. The point where there are not any more layers to peel back. This is the tootsie roll in the center of the toosie pop, as they say. I appreciated Jenner’s share so much. I realized that codependency issues might just be deeper than any of the layers of addiction that I have walked through on this journey.
I remember telling my accountability partner after listening to a few podcast about a year and a half ago that “I just can’t relate to this codependency stuff. That all just seems like normal behavior to me.” That was because I was not ready to walk through that stage of my recovery. I knew that once I stopped drugging, alcohol was the deeper issue. I knew that once I stopped alcohol, eating became an addiction. Once I stopped overeating, porn was a deeper issue and it dated back to early teen years.
“I can look back, but I don’t want to stare.”
Jenner
Once I stopped porn, social media had to be looked at. That was when I discovered the intriguing happening, the comparison of others lives, the “Instagram effect” where you only see the “fabulous lives of the rich and famous” parts of everyone’s post…not the real issues going on. The assessment was needed on all of my “friends” and family. Were these healthy relationships? If not, they needed to be stopped immediately (just for today) until further notice so that I could work on me. The fact that I was stopping and struggling to stop some unhealthy relationships is a key indicator of Codependency behaviors.
Since I was a small child, I have had to “take the temperature of the room” when I entered. I have needed to get a feel of my brother and sister’s current state. If there was an issue going on or if someone was having a manic bit or on the hot seat, I decided who I was going to be based on other’s. That is codependency. I don’t think I’m worth having my own set of boundaries. So what I would do is go and “act out” instead of having healthy relationships. I would do various levels of things and activities in order to act out like that little kid who just wants love because he did love himself. I would act out, have the same and then create the blame on something or someone else and the cycle would begin again.
The crazy thing is that the love addiction and the need to be loved was only to medicate my codependency struggles. That explains so much for me. Still wrapping my head around it, but it sure does help to share.
I’d like to end this with my favorite way to close a meeting. We have been saying this at the end of our meeting recently and I love it so much.
The truth is, we feel we are “on to” something big. We don’t know where it will lead us. We just don’t know what the upper limits of healthy human functioning are. In any event, our hunch is that we are but newcomers to this larger experience of living, this wider arena of life. If all we are capable of doing here is to convey to you our sense of hope, and our conviction that a new life of fulfillment, richness and mystery surly awaits you as you move into sobriety, then we are meeting our task.
May each of you, as you embark on this adventure, discover your share of the golden braid: that unfolding wonder of which we are all a part. We are with you. We are all joint travelers on destiny’s path, and we all have much to learn from each other.
p159 from our “basic text”