Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

by Melody Beattie

Another reason codependency is called a disease is because it is progressive. As the people around us become sicker, we may begin to react more intensely. What began as a little concern may trigger isolation, depression, emotional or physical illness, or suicidal fantasies. One thing leads to another, and things get worse. Codependency may not be an illness, but it can make you sick. And, it can help the people around you stay sick.

Disease progression is inevitable, if recognition/intervention does not occur...

Codependent behaviors or habits are self-destructive. We frequently react to people who are destroying themselves; we react by learning to destroy ourselves. These habits can lead us into, or keep us in, destructive relationships, relationships that don’t work. These behaviors can sabotage relationships that may otherwise have worked.

However, these self-protective devices may have outgrown their usefulness. Sometimes, the things we do to protect ourselves turn on us and hurt us. They become self-destructive. Many codependents are barely surviving, and most aren’t getting their needs met.

Can we change? Can we learn healthier behaviors? I don’t know if mental, spiritual, and emotional health can be taught, but we can be inspired and encouraged. We can learn to do things differently. We can change.

think and talk a lot about other people. lose sleep over problems or other people’s behavior. worry. never find answers. check on people. try to catch people in acts of misbehavior. feel unable to quit talking, thinking, and worrying about other people or problems. abandon their routine because they are so upset about somebody or something. focus all their energy on other people and problems. wonder why they never have any energy. wonder why they can’t get things done.

pretend circumstances aren’t as bad as they are. tell themselves things will be better tomorrow. stay busy so they don’t have to think about things.

watch problems get worse. believe lies. lie to themselves. wonder why they feel like they’re going crazy.

try to prove they’re good enough to be loved. don’t take time to see if other people are good for them. worry whether other people love or like them.

center their lives around other people. look to relationships to provide all their good feelings.

take themselves too seriously.

ask for what they want and need indirectly—sighing, for example.

How often do you sigh, as a primary form of communication?

say they won’t tolerate certain behaviors from other people. gradually increase their tolerance until they can tolerate and do things they said they never would. let others hurt them. keep letting people hurt them. wonder why they hurt so badly. complain, blame, and try to control while they continue to stand there. finally get angry. become totally intolerant.

feel safer with their anger than with hurt feelings.

You may be reading this book for yourself; you may be codependent. Or, you may be reading this book to help someone else; if so, you probably are codependent. If concern has turned into obsession; if compassion has turned into caretaking; if you are taking care of other people and not taking care of yourself—you may be in trouble with codependency.

Codependents appear to be depended upon, but they are dependent. They look strong but feel helpless. They appear controlling but in reality are controlled themselves,

Many recoveries from problems that involve a person’s mind, emotions, and spirit are long and grueling. Not so, here. Except for normal human emotions we would be feeling anyway, and twinges of discomfort as we begin to behave differently, recovery from codependency is exciting. It is liberating. It lets us be who we are. It lets other people be who they are. It helps us own our God-given power to think, feel, and act. It feels good. It brings peace. It enables us to love ourselves and others. It allows us to receive love—some of the good stuff we’ve all been looking for. It provides an optimum environment for the people around us to get and stay healthy. And recovery helps stop the unbearable pain many of us have been living with.

Each person is responsible for him- or herself. It involves learning one new behavior that we will devote ourselves to: taking care of ourselves.

It (detachment) is not detaching from the person whom we care about, but from the agony of involvement.

We cannot begin to work on ourselves, to live our own lives, feel our own feelings, and solve our own problems until we have detached from the object of our obsession.

Attachment is becoming overly-involved, sometimes hopelessly entangled. Attachment can take several forms:

We may become excessively worried about, and preoccupied with, a problem or person (our mental energy is attached). Or, we may graduate to becoming obsessed with and controlling of the people and problems in our environment (our mental, physical, and emotional energy is directed at the object of our obsession). We may become reactionaries, instead of acting authentically of our own volition (our mental, emotional, and physical energy is attached). We may become emotionally dependent on the people around us

(now we’re really attached). We may become caretakers (rescuers, enablers) to the people around us (firmly attaching...

If we’re focusing all our energies on people and problems, we have little left for the business of living our own lives. And, there is just so much worry and responsibility in the air. If we take it all on ourselves, there is none left for the people around us. It overworks us and underworks them. Furthermore, worrying about people and problems doesn’t help. It doesn’t solve problems, it doesn’t help other people, and it doesn’t help us. It is wasted energy.

Obsession with another human being, or a problem, is an awful thing to be caught up in. Have you ever seen someone who is obsessed with someone or something? That person can talk about nothing else, can think of nothing else. Even if he appears to be listening when you talk, you know that person doesn’t hear you. His mind is tossing and turning, crashing and banging, around and around on an endless racetrack of compulsive thought. He is preoccupied. He relates whatever you say, no matter how unrelated it actually is, to the object of his obsession.

Maybe you’ve been obsessed with someone or something. Someone does or says something. A thought occurs to you. Something reminds you of a past event. A problem enters your awareness. Something happens or doesn’t happen. Or you sense something’s happening, but you’re not sure what. He doesn’t call, and he usually calls by now. He doesn’t answer the phone, and he should. It’s payday. In the past he always got drunk on payday.

But anxiety hangs in there. It grips the mind, paralyzing it for all but its own purposes—an endless rehashing of the same useless thoughts. It is the fuel that propels us into controlling behaviors of all sorts. We can think of nothing but keeping a lid on things, controlling the problem, and making it go away; it is the stuff codependency is made of.

Worrying, obsessing, and controlling are illusions. They are tricks we play on ourselves. We feel like we are doing something to solve our problems, but we’re not.

Maybe we’ve been attached to people—living their lives for and through them—for so long that we don’t have any life of our own left to live. It’s safer to stay attached. At least we know we’re alive if we’re reacting. At least we’ve got something to do if we’re obsessing or controlling.

Detachment is not a cold, hostile withdrawal; a resigned, despairing acceptance of anything life and people throw our way; a robotical walk through life oblivious to, and totally unaffected by people and problems; a Pollyanna-like ignorant bliss; a shirking of our true responsibilities to ourselves and others; a severing of our relationships. Nor is it a removal of our love and concern, although sometimes these ways of detaching might be the best we can do, for the moment.

Ideally, detachment is releasing, or detaching from, a person or problem in love. We mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically disengage ourselves from unhealthy (and frequently painful) entanglements with

another person’s life and responsibilities, and from proble...

Detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for himself, that we can’t solve problems that aren’t ours to solve, and that worrying doesn’t help.

If people have created some disasters for themselves, we allow them to face their own proverbial music. We allow people to be who they are. We give them the freedom to be responsible and to grow. And we give ourselves that same freedom. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We strive to ascertain what it is we can change and what we cannot change. Then we stop trying to change things we can’t. We do what we can to solve a problem, and then we stop fretting and stewing. If we cannot solve a problem and we have done what we could, we learn to live with, or in spite of, that problem. And we try to live happily—focusing heroically on what is good in our lives today, and feeling grateful for that.

Detachment involves “present moment living”—living in the here and now. We allow life to happen instead of forcing and trying to control it. We relinquish regrets over the past and fears about the future. We make the most of each day.

It requires faith—in ourselves, in God, in other people, and in the natural order and destiny of things in this world. We believe in the rightness and appropriateness of each moment. We release our burdens and cares, and give ourselves the freedom to enjoy life in spite of our unsolved problems. We trust that all is well in spite of the conflicts. We trust that Someone greater than ourselves knows, has ordained, and cares about what is happening.

Detaching does not mean we don’t care. It means we learn to love, care, and be involved without going crazy. We stop creating all this chaos in our minds and environments. When we are not anxiously and compulsively thrashing about, we become able to make good decisions about how to love people, and how to solve our problems. We become free to care and to love in ways that help others and don’t hurt ourselves.

Sometimes detachment even motivates and frees people around us to begin to solve their problems. We stop worrying about them, and they pick up the slack and finally start worrying about themselves. What a grand plan! We each mind our own business.

These people learned to live with, and in spite of, their problems. They grieved for their losses, then found a way to live their lives not in resignation, martyrdom, and despair, but with enthusiasm, peace, and a true sense of gratitude for that which was good.

They took care of their actual responsibilities.

They gave to people, they helped people, and they loved people. But they also gave to and loved themselves. They held themselves in high esteem. They didn’t do these things perfectly, or without effort, or instantly. But they ...

Detachment is both an act and an art. It is a way of life. I believe it is also a gift. And it will be given to those who seek it.

How do we detach? How do we extricate our emotions, mind, body, and spirit from the agony of entanglement? As best we can. And, probably, a bit clumsily at first.

I believe detachment can become a habitual response, in the same manner that obsessing, worrying, and controlling became habitual responses—by practice.

I think it is better to do everything in an attitude of love.

If you can’t detach in love, it is my opinion that it is better to detach in anger rather than to stay attached.

When should we detach? When we can’t stop thinking, talking about, or worrying about someone or something; when our emotions are churning and boiling; when we feel like we have to do something about someone because we can’t stand it another minute; when we’re hanging on by a thread, and it feels like that single thread is frayed; and when we believe we can no longer live with the problem we’ve been trying to live with.

Many of them may be destroying themselves, you, and your family, right before your eyes. But I can’t do anything to control those people, and you probably can’t either. If you could, you probably would have done it by now.

If you can’t let go completely, try to “hang on loose.”8 Relax. Sit back. Now, take a deep breath. The focus is on you.

I reacted to other people’s feelings, behaviors, problems, and thoughts. I reacted to what they might be feeling, thinking, or doing. I reacted to my own feelings, my own thoughts, my own problems. My strong point seemed to be reacting to crises—I thought almost everything was a crisis. I overreacted.

I reacted to almost everything that came into my awareness and environment. My entire life had been