Codependent No More Quotes

“I want to thank each person who has the courage to push through and past the set of coping behaviors we’ve come to label as codependency—who learn what it means to take care of themselves. “Nobody taught me how to take care of myself,” a fifty-year-old woman told me recently. “I didn’t have enough money to go to therapy, but I had enough to buy a book.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“People may get angry at us for setting boundaries; they can’t use us anymore. They may try to help us feel guilty so we will remove our boundary and return to the old system of letting them use or abuse us. Don’t feel guilty and don’t back down.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“We’re so careful to see that no one gets hurt. No one, that is, but ourselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“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.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“The rewards from detachment are great: serenity; a deep sense of peace; the ability to give and receive love in self-enhancing, energizing ways; and the freedom to find real solutions to our problems. We find the freedom to live our own lives without excessive feelings of guilt about, or responsibility toward others.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“If you have done nothing to feel embarrassed about, don’t feel embarrassed. I know this is a tough concept, but it can be mastered.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“People ultimately do what they want to do. They feel how they want to feel (or how they are feeling); they think what they want to think; they do the things they believe they need to do; and they will change only when they are ready to change. It doesn’t matter if they’re wrong and we’re right. It doesn’t matter if they’re hurting themselves. It doesn’t matter that we could help them if they’d only listen to, and cooperate with, us. IT DOESN’T MATTER, DOESN’T MATTER, DOESN’T MATTER, DOESN’T MATTER. We”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“You are not responsible for making other people “see the light,” and you do not need to “set them straight.” You are responsible for helping yourself see the light and for setting yourself straight.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“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. Earlier, I described a person caught in”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.1 —II TIMOTHY 1:7”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“The vocation of putting people straight, of tearing off their masks, of forcing them to face the repressed truth, is a highly dangerous and destructive calling,”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“I reacted to other people’s feelings, behaviors, problems, and thoughts. I reacted to what they might by 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.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Recovery is not only fun, it is simple. It is not always easy, but it is simple. It is based on a premise many of us have forgotten or never learned: Each person is responsible for him- or herself. It involves learning one new behavior that we will devote ourselves to: taking care of ourselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Many of us react as though everything is a crisis because we have lived with so many crises for so long that crisis reaction has become a habit.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Codependents appear to be depended upon, but they are dependent.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“[Reactionaries] Just feeling urgent and compulsive is enough to hurt us. We keep ourselves in a crisis state...ready to react to emergencies that aren't really emergencies. Someone does something, so we must do something back. Someone says something, so we must say something. Someone feels a certain way, so we must feel a certain way. WE JUMP INTO THE FIRST FEELING THAT COMES OUR WAY AND THEN WALLOW IN IT.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Self-care is an attitude toward ourselves and our lives that says, I am responsible for myself. I am responsible for leading or not living my life. I am responsible for tending to my spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial well-being. I am responsible for identifying and meeting my needs. I am responsible for solving my problems or learning to live with those I cannot solve. I am responsible for my choices. I am responsible for what I give and receive. I am also responsible for setting and achieving my goals. I am responsible for how much I enjoy life, for how much pleasure I find in daily activities. I am responsible for whom I love and how I choose to express this love. I am responsible for what I do to others and for what I allow others to do to me. I am responsible for my wants and desires. All of me, every aspect of my being, is important. I count for something. I matter. My feelings can be trusted. My thinking is appropriate. I value my wants and needs. I do not deserve and will not tolerate abuse or constant mistreatment. I have rights, and it is my responsibility to assert these rights. The decisions I make and the way I conduct myself will reflect my high self-esteem. My decisions will take into account my responsibilities to myself.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“The big reason for not repressing feelings is that emotional withdrawal causes us to lose our positive feelings. We lose the ability to feel. Sometimes, this may be a welcome relief if the pain becomes too great or too constant, but this is not a good plan for living. We may shut down our deep needs—our need to love and be loved—when we shut down our emotions. We may lose our ability to enjoy sex, the human touch. We lose the ability to feel close to people, otherwise known as intimacy. We lose our capacity to enjoy the pleasant things in life.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“As Thomas Wright writes in an article from the book Co-Dependency, An Emerging Issue, “I suspect codependents have historically attacked social injustice and fought for the rights of the underdog. Codependents want to help. I suspect they have helped. But they probably died thinking they didn’t do enough and were feeling guilty.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“We work it out, or live it out.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Control is an illusion. It doesn’t work.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Taking care of myself is a big job. No wonder I avoided it for so long.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“We’ve realized that women have souls, and men have feelings.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“It’s okay to succeed, to have good things, and to have loving relationships that work.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“I don’t think love has to hurt as much as it did in the past. I don’t think we have to allow love to hurt us as much as it has. We certainly don’t have to let it destroy us.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“We can let ourselves enjoy life. If we want something and can afford it, buy it. If we want to do something that is legal and harmless, do it. When we’re actually involved with doing something that is recreational, don’t find ways to feel bad. Let go and enjoy life.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Reactionaries...just feeling urgent and compulsive is enough to hurt us. Someone does something, so we must do something back Someone says something, so we must say something back. Someone feels a certain way, so we must feel a certain way. WE JUMP INTO THE FIRST FEELING THAT COMES OUR WAY AND THEN WALLOW IT.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Don’t give up hope. It took many of us twenty years or more to acquire these protective behaviors we umbrella with the word codependency. It may take as much time as that to let go of them.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“they had felt so much hurt that hostility was their only defense against being crushed again.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself