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

by Melody Beattie

1. Learn to recognize when you’re reacting, when you are allowing someone or something to yank your strings.

2. Make yourself comfortable. When you recognize that you’re in the midst of a chaotic reaction, say or do as little as possible until you can restore your level of serenity and peace.

3. Examine what happened. If it’s a minor incident, you may be able to sort through it yourself. If the problem is serious, or is seriously upsetting you, you may want to discuss it with a friend to help clear your thoughts and emotions.

Talk about your feelings. Take responsibility for them. Feel whatever feeling you have. Nobody made you feel. Someone might have helped you feel a particular way, but you did your feeling all by yourself. Deal with it. Then, tell yourself the truth about what happened.1 Was someone trying to sock it to you? (If in doubt about whether to interpret something as an insult or rejection, I prefer to believe it had nothing to do with me. It saves my time and helps me feel good about myself.) Were you trying to control someone or some event? How serious is the problem or issue? Are you taking responsibility for someone else? Are you angry because someone didn’t guess what you really wanted or what you were really trying to say? Are you taking someone’s behavior too personally? Did someone push your insecurity or guilt buttons? Is it truly the end of the world, or is it merely sad and disappointing?

4. Figure out what you need to do to take care of yourself. Make your decisions based on reality, and ma...

Activity Are you spending too much time reacting to someone or something in your environment? Who or what? How are you reacting? Is that how you would choose to behave or feel if you had a choice? Go through the previous steps on detachment for whatever or whoever is bothering you the most. If you need to talk to someone select a trusted friend. If necessary seek professional help. What activities help you feel peaceful and comfortable? (A Twelve Step meeting, a steaming hot shower, a good movie, and dancing are my favorite ones.)

Control is an illusion.

We cannot change people. Any attempts to control them are a delusion as well as an illusion.

For each of us, there comes a time to let go. You will know when that time has come. When you have done all that you can do, it is time to detach. Deal with your feelings. Face your fears about losing control. Gain control of yourself and your responsibilities. Free others to be who they are. In so doing, you will set yourself free.

Activity Is there an event or person in your life that you are trying to control? Why? Write a few paragraphs about it. In what ways (mentally, physically, emotionally, etc.) are you being controlled by whatever or whomever you are attempting to control? What would happen (to you and the other person) if you detached from this situation or person? Will that probably happen anyway, in spite of your controlling gestures? How are you benefiting by attempting to control the situation? How is the other person benefiting by your attempts to control? How effective are your attempts at controlling the outcomes of events?

The Karpman Drama Triangle and the accompanying roles of rescuer, persecutor, and victim, are the work and observation of Stephen B. Karpman.

We rescue ′whenever we take care of other people.

Rescuing or caretaking is not an act of love. The Drama Triangle is a hate triangle. It fosters and maintains self-hate, and it hinders our feelings for other people.

Maybe someone taught us these lies, and we believed them: don’t be selfish, always be kind and help people, never hurt other people’s feelings because we “make them feel,” never say no, and don’t mention personal wants and needs because it’s not polite.

Activities This assignment may take some time, but if caretaking is causing your problems, it may be a breakthrough experience for you. On a sheet of paper, detail all the things you consider your responsibilities. Do this for your participation at work, with children, with friends, and with our spouse or lover. Now, list detail by detail what responsibilities belong to the other people in your life. If any responsibilities are shared, list what percentage you think is appropriate for each person. For instance, if your spouse is working and you have chosen to be a homemaker and work part-time, list what percentage of the financial responsibilities you assume, and what percentage of the household chores he or she assumes. You may be surprised at how much inappropriate responsibility you have taken on and how little you have allowed others to assume. You may also find you have been so busy with other people’s business that you have been neglecting some of your true responsibilities. Become familiar with the Karpman Drama Triangle and how you go through the process in your life. When you find yourself rescuing, watch for the role and mood shifts. When you catch yourself feeling resentful or used, figure out how you rescued. Practice non-rescuing behaviors: Say no when you want to say no. Do things you want to do. Refuse to guess what people want and need; instead insist that others ask you directly for what they want and need from you. Begin asking directly for what you want ...

Colette Dowling wrote about this thought pattern in The Cinderella Complex. Penelope Russianoff discussed it in Why Do I Think I’m Nothing Without a Man?

Nothing will destroy emotional security more quickly than loving someone who is alcoholic or has any other compulsive disorder. These diseases demand us to center our lives around them. Confusion, chaos, and despair reign. Even the healthiest of us may begin to doubt ourselves after living with an alcoholic. Needs go unmet. Love disappears. The needs become greater and so does the self-doubt. Alcoholism creates emotionally insecure people. Alcoholism creates victims of us—drinkers and nondrinkers alike—and we doubt our ability to take care of ourselves.

Here are some ideas that may help: 1. Finish business from our childhoods, as best as we can. Grieve. Get some perspective. Figure out how events from our childhoods are affecting what we′re doing now.

2. Nurture and cherish that frightened, vulnerable, needy child inside us. The child may never completely disappear, no matter how self-sufficient we become. Stress may cause the child to cry out. Unprovoked, the child may come out and demand attention when we least expect it.

Don’t pound on that vulnerable child when he or she doesn’t want to stay in the dark all alone, when he or she becomes frightened. We don’t have to let the child make our choices for us, but don’t ignore the child either. Listen to the child. Let the child cry if he or she needs to. Comfort the child. Figure out what he or she needs.

3. Stop looking for happiness in other people. Our source of happiness and well-being is not inside others; it’s inside us. Learn to center ourselves in ourselves.

4. We can learn to depend on ourselves. Maybe other people haven’t been therefor us, but we can start being therefor us. Stop abandoning ourselves, our needs, our wants, our feelings, our lives, and everything that comprises us. Make a commitment to always be there for ourselves. We can trust ourselves. We can handle and cope with the events, problems, and feelings life throws our way. We can trust our feelings and our judgments. We can solve our problems. We can learn to live with our unsolved problems, too. We must trust the people we are learning to depend upon—ourselves.

5. We can depend on God, too. He’s there, and He cares. Our spiritual beliefs can provide us with a strong sense of emotional security.

6. Strive for undependence. Begin examining the ways we are dependent, emotionally and financially, on the people around us.

Real power comes from feeling our feelings, not from ignoring them.

Real strength comes, not from pretending to be strong all the time, but from acknowledging our weaknesses and vulnerabilities when we feel this way.

Activity Examine the characteristics listed on the next two pages, and decide if you are in a dependent (addicted) or healthy (love) relationship. Characteristics Love (Open System) Addiction (Closed System) Room to grow, expand—desire for other to grow Dependent, based on security and comfort—use intensity of need and infatuation as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness) Separate interests—other friends—maintain other meaningful relationships Total involvement—limited social life—neglect old friends, interests Encouragement of each other’s expanding—secure in own worth Preoccupation with other’s behavior—dependent on other’s approval for own identity and self-worth Trust—openness Jealousy, possessiveness, fears competition, “protects supply” Mutual integrity preserved One partner’s needs suspended for the other’s—self-deprivation Willingness to risk and be real Search for perfect invulnerability—eliminates possible risks Room for exploration of feelings in and out of relationship Reassurance through repeated, ritualized activity Ability to enjoy being alone Intolerance—unable to endure separations (even in conflict)—hang on even tighter. Undergo withdrawal—loss of appetite, restless, lethargic, disoriented agony Accept breakup without feeling a loss of own adequacy and self-worth Feel inadequate, worthless—often one-sided decision Wants best for partner, though apart—can become friends Violent ending—often hate other—try to inflict pain—manipulation to...

Besides giving ourselves what we need, we begin to ask people for what we need and want from them because this is part of taking care of ourselves and being a responsible human being.

Activity As you go through the days ahead, stop and ask yourself what you need to do to take care of yourself. Do it as often as you need to, but do it at least once daily. If you are going through a crisis, you may need to do it every hour. Then give yourself what you need. What do you need from the people around you? At an appropriate time, sit down with them and discuss what you need from them.

We can be gentle, loving, listening, attentive, and kind to ourselves, our feelings, thoughts, needs, wants, desires, and everything we’re made of. We can accept ourselves—all of us. Start where we’re at, and we will become more. Develop our gifts and talents. Trust ourselves. Assert ourselves. We can be trusted. Respect ourselves. Be true to ourselves. Honor ourselves, for that is where our magic lies. That is our key to the world.

Following is an excerpt from Honoring the Self, an excellent book on self-esteem written by Nathaniel Branden. Read closely what he writes. Of all the judgments that we pass in life, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves, for that judgment touches the very center of our existence. ... No significant aspect of our thinking, motivation, feelings, or behavior is unaffected by our self-evaluation. . . .

The first act of honoring the self is the assertion of consciousness: the choice to think, to be aware, to send the searchlight of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our own being. To default on thi...

To honor the self is to be willing to think independently, to live by our own mind, and to have the courage of ou...

To honor the self is to be willing to know not only what we think but also what we feel, what we want, need, desire, suffer over, are frightened or angered by—and to accept our right to experience such feelings. The opposite of th...

To honor the self is to preserve an attitude of self-acceptance—which means to accept what we are, without self-oppression or self-castigation, without any pretense about the truth of our own being, prete...

To honor the self is to live authentically, to speak and act from our innermost c...

To honor the self is to refuse to accept unearned guilt, and to do our best to correct such g...

To honor the self is to be committed to our right to exist which proceeds from the knowledge that our life does not belong to others and that we are not here on ear...

To honor the self is to be in love with our own life, in love with our possibilities for growth and for experiencing joy, in love with the process of discovery and exp...

Thus we can begin to see that to honor the self is to practice selfishness in the highest, noblest, and least understood sense of that word. And this, I shall argue, requires enormous independence, courage, and integrity.9 We need to love ourselves and make a commitment to ourselves. We need to give ourselves some of the boundless loyalty that so many codependents are willing to give others. Out of high self-esteem will come true acts of ...

Activity How do you feel about yourself? Write about it. Include the things you like or don’t like about yoursel...

It hurts deeply to have our dreams destroyed by alcoholism or any other problem. The disease is deadly. It kills everything in sight, including our noblest dreams. “Chemical dependency destroys slowly, but thoroughly,” concluded Janet Woititz.3 How true. How sadly true. And nothing dies slower or more painfully than a dream.

Acceptance is the ultimate paradox: we cannot change who we are until we accept ourselves the way we are.

Activity Are you or is someone in your life going through this grief process for a major loss? Which stage do you think you or that person is in? Review your life and consider the major losses and changes you have gone through. Recall your experiences with the grief process. Write about your feelings as you remember them.

It may appear easier, at times, to not feel. We have so much responsibility because we have taken on so much responsibility for the people around us. We must do what is necessary anyway. Why take the time to feel? What would it change?

Sometimes we try to make our feelings disappear because we are afraid of them. To acknowledge how we really feel would demand a decision—action or change—on our part.2 It would bring us face to face with reality. We would become aware of what we’re thinking, what we want, and what we need to do.

Feelings are not the end all and be all to living. Feelings must not dictate or control our behaviors, but we can’t ignore our feelings either. They won’t be ignored. Our feelings are very important. They count. They matter. The emotional part of us is special. If we make feelings go away, if we push them away, we lose an important part of us and our lives. Feelings are our source of joy, as well as sadness, fear, and anger. The emotional part of us is the part that laughs as well as cries. The emotional part of us is the center for giving and receiving the warm glow of love. That part of us lets us feel close to people. That part of us lets us enjoy touch and other sensual feelings.

Our emotions are connected to our conscious, cognitive thought process and to that mysterious gift called instinct or intuition.

If we aren’t feeling, we’re probably not examining the thinking that goes with it, and we don’t know what our selves are telling us. And if we don’t deal with our feelings we don’t change and we don’t grow We stay stuck.

What do we do with these pesky feelings that seem to be both a burden and a delight? We feel them. We can feel. It’s okay to feel our feelings. It’s okay for us to have feelings—all of them. It’s even okay for men to feel. Feelings are not wrong. They’re not inappropriate. We don’t need to feel guilty about feelings. Feelings are not acts; feeling homicidal rage is entirely different from committing homicide. Feelings shouldn’t be judged as either good or bad. Feelings are emotional energy; they are not personality traits.