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“This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.” We avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn’t treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. (p. 67)
We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people.
“When you hold on to a resentment, you are giving somebody you don’t even like rent-free space in your head.”
prayer is seen as a time for daily, personal stocktaking.
So, first we forgive others and let go of resentment.
what is certain is that by making peace with all people, even our enemies, we transcend our very nature.
A miracle is something that transcends the laws of nature.
These are the codependent’s mantras—a mind-numbing sort of self-hypnosis, an automatic survival mode, constant loops playing in the mind. A life deferred to obsessive thoughts about someone else.
The codependent is addicted to the addict.
In other words, codependency, like addiction, is the obsession with controlling the uncontrollable—or, quite literally, to die trying.
As we alluded to at the beginning of this chapter, codependency is quite similar to and in some ways even indistinguishable from addiction.
they are both forms of being divorced from one’s own self.
Each of us has been give a unique mission in this world and a lifetime to carry it out.
but the one thing that the codependent does not do—cannot do without the help of a Higher Power—is let go.
Often, the codependent’s greatest hurdle is to accept that he or she can and must recover even if the addict does not.
But if the codependent ignores his or her own safety and well-being just to keep the addict around, then that is not a choice—that is a compulsion.
But what it is, in reality, is two frightened people giving each other an excuse not to live their lives as their true selves.
The paradox of codependency is that while it expresses itself in the form of a relationship with another person, it is the complete opposite of a relationship.
Codependency is actually the inability to relate genuinely to another human being.
As long as we cannot accept ourselves and others for who we are, there is no true intimacy,
To put it simply, a codependent relationship is one which simulates intimacy, with none of its rewards but all of its dramatic intensity.
Rabbi of Kotzk, once said, “If I am me because I am me, and you are you because you are you, then I am me, and you are you. However, if I am me because you are you, and you are you because I am me, then I am not me, and you are not you!”
the basis for the inability to relate to others is the inability to relate to self.
The Mishnah records that the sage Hillel used to teach: “If I am not for myself, who will be? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
“If I am not for myself, who will be?” The simple meaning of this rhetorical question is an admission that I must be assertive in taking care of my own needs because I cannot expect other people to do it for me.
Only by focusing on what they need to change in themselves, instead of in others, do they eventually gain the requisite self-respect to be able to take care of themselves as well.
Active codependents do not share their love; they trade it.
the codependent comes to learn, we are free at all times to choose peace of mind and happiness for ourselves regardless of the choices that other people make for themselves.
recovery from codependence is based on forming a dynamic relationship with God.
the codependent is committing emotional idolatry—that is, feeling that someone or something has God-like control over reality.
The spiritual basis for recovery from codependency is thus to let go of the maddening pursuit of inhuman perfection and to embrace human imperfection.
the fact is that everything is always the way it needs to be, at least for right now.
Just walk beside me and be my friend,
I have to walk my own path.
We’re both on a journey where God is both the way and the destination.
healthy relationship is one where two people connect to God through each other and succeed.
What keeps us from devouring one another is proper reverence for the Divine.
When we come together as equals, when there is open communication and a healthy give-and-take between us, then we know that God’s Presence is among us.
Volunteering to be a member of the morality police is usually a sign of spiritual sickness.
It is not that the child hears and then rejects his parents’ orders, it’s that there is no parental voice to be heard in the first place.
The parents literally seize their child. They aren’t interested in parenting. They want control.
Torah determines that a boy becomes a “moral adult”—that is, he has the intellectual capacity to know between right and wrong—at thirteen. This is the status known as “bar-mitzvah,” which literally means one who is obligated in the commandments.
Judaism, which sees adulthood as a moral issue, designates it as the point at which you are held responsible for your own actions.
The law is that they must bring him to the elders three times.
In so many words—“Parents, you are killing your child.”
The stark fact about addiction is that it is fatal.
whoever can get themselves into recovery before death is actually looming has already saved themselves quite a bit of misery.
The problem is that in order for recovery to work, it seems that the person must feel that things cannot possibly become worse than they are and still go on ...
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for most addicts, the paradox of recovery is that things have to get a lot worse before they can start to get a little better.
you don’t have to hit the bottom, just your bottom—whatever that means to you. Each of us has our own breaking point.
