Codependency is SO Tempting
By Cheryl Fidelman, The Conscious Codependence™ Coach.
How can we choose anything other than Codependency when we feel threatened, when we live inside someone else’s world or when we are believing our future tripping? It is SO tempting to choose Codependency. That is to say that it’s SO tempting to leave ourselves because it may seem SO true that not only do we have to but we need to. We get convinced that the only option is to serve the other person.
Sometimes it’s so automatic that it goes well beyond temptation – like a reflex. With your gaze on another person (or people) and trying to figure out what they want or what they’re going to say or what their next move will be, you’ve already left yourself. As you decide what you’re going to do or say in order to usurp what you anticipate their next move will be you’re not in your body – you’re in theirs. And who knows if they are even in their own body? So you’re attempting to occupy another person’s disconnected self while you yourself are not in your body. Which came first? Your disconnection or theirs?
Codependency is a commonly used word in the substance abuse world but I’m using it in reference to the world of personal relationships. For us Codependents people are our substance. Instead of leaving ourselves to grab a beer and leaving ourselves even further once the beer intoxicates us, we leave ourselves to jump into another person’s reality. Once we get there, we create what we think is happening in their reality and then leave ourselves even further while reacting to our projections.
But did the alcoholic or the Codependent have a self to begin with? You may not even feel the temptation to disconnect from yourself if you’re not inside yourself to begin with. For a lot of us Codependents, we are walking around in a permanent state of looking outside of ourselves. When we look inward, what we see and hear is our reactions to others. Our inner private worlds are dedicated to figuring out what we should say or do with another person or what another person should say or do with someone else. We talk to ourselves about protecting ourselves from a past-based (past-tripping) event or defending ourselves from a future (future-tripping) anticipated event.
In the Conscious Codependence™ Process, we become intimately related with the moments that have us leave ourselves. We learn to feel the temptations. We develop a deep relationship with the present moment so that we know what happens inside of us when we feel tempted. It’s a multi-layered phenomenon that if not slowed down and investigated, happens in the blink of an eye. BOOM! And we’re gone to outsource ourselves. In this process, the reflex disappears and we can feel it as a slow moving energetic pull to leave our body and gain the skills to stay in our body and resist the pull.
On some level, I’ve developed a process for the Codependent to gain willpower in the most tempting of moments. Similar to an alcoholic resisting the temptation to have a drink by staying with themselves and the moment, the codependent gets to resist the temptation to figure out another person before figuring out themselves. To think about them, to speak about them, to work for them, to act on their behalf – before deeply relating with themselves. We become REAL TO OURSELVES.
Through this process, we become adept at deeply relating with our own inner world. We become masters at knowing the prism through which we bend reality and create interpretations and projections. We then see people for who they actually are because we are first seeing ourselves for who we actually are. We clearly hear others because we are clearly hearing ourselves. The only temptation that we surrender to is the temptation to have a Self and understand our Selves.
BECAUSE YOUR RELATIONSHIP w/YOURSELF is WHERE it ALL BEGINS.
You can get your FREE PDF of The 3 Codes to Clear Codependencyat www.cherylfidelman.com. The PDF lists the common developmental roots & behavioral patterns of each Code and also some questions to customize them to your experience.
