Codependent No More Quotes

“Yet these codependents who had such great insight into others couldn’t see themselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“It doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. We cannot change people. Any attempts to control them are a delusion as well as an illusion. People will either resist our efforts or redouble their efforts to prove we can’t control them. They may”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“We can feel our feelings, talk about our fears, accept ourselves and our present conditions, and then get started on the journey toward undependence. We can do it. We don't have to feel strong all the time to be undependent and taking care of ourselves. We can and probably will have feelings of fear, weakness, and even hopelessness. That is normal and even healthy. 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.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“The longer this lifetime goes, the more convinced I am that our primary responsibility in life is to find a way to make peace with ourselves, our past, and our present—no matter what we face and no matter how often we need to do that. It’s also our job to mindfully practice self-love. Every day. For all our lives.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“It is natural to want to protect and help the people we care about. It is also natural to be affected by and react to the problems of people around us. As a problem becomes more serious and remains unresolved, we become more affected and react more intensely to it.”
― 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’re 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.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“What are you feeling? What do you think? What do you need to do to take care of yourself ?”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“But I also believe that our giving should come from a place of high self-esteem. I believe acts of kindness are not kind unless we feel good about ourselves, what we are doing, and the person we are doing it for.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Caring about people and giving are good, desirable qualities—something we need to do—but many codependents have misinterpreted the suggestions to “give until it hurts.” We continue giving long after it hurts, usually until we are doubled over in pain. It’s good to give, but we don’t have to give it all away. It’s okay to keep some for ourselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“We rescue because we don’t feel good about ourselves. Although the feelings are transient and artificial, caretaking provides us with a temporary hit of good feelings, self-worth, and power.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“People resent being told or shown they are incompetent, no matter how loudly they plead incompetency.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“you didn’t cause it; you can’t control it; and you can’t cure it.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“When we attempt to control people and things that we have no business controlling, we are controlled. We forfeit our power to think, feel, and act in accordance with our best interests. We frequently lose control of ourselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

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

“We become free to care and to love in ways that help others and don’t hurt ourselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

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

“Whenever we become attached in these ways to someone or something, we become detached from ourselves.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“It’s a “paradoxical dependency.”6 Codependents appear to be depended upon, but they are dependent on. We look strong but feel helpless. We appear controlling, but in reality we are controlled ourselves,”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

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

“codependency involves a habitual system of thinking, feeling, and behaving toward ourselves and others that can cause us pain.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“What began as a little concern may trigger isolation, depression, emotional or physical illness, or suicidal ideations. 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.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“As Thomas Wright wrote in 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

“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

“lies in ourselves, in the ways we have let other people’s behaviors affect us and in the ways we try to affect them: the controlling, the obsessive “helping,” caretaking, low self-worth bordering on self-hatred, self-repression, an abundance of anger and guilt, a peculiar dependency on peculiar people, an attraction to and tolerance for the bizarre, othercenteredness that results in abandonment of self, communication problems, intimacy problems, and an ongoing whirlwind trip through the five-stage grief process.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Defining the problem is important because it helps determine the solution.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations (e.g., we are all human, vulnerable, and imperfect); selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change—however healthy and beneficial that movement might be. These rules are common to alcoholic family systems but can emerge in other families too.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“One common denominator was having a relationship, personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“those self-defeating, learned behaviors or character defects that result in a diminished capacity to initiate or to participate in loving relationships.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“codependency is “an emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules—rules which prevent the open expression of feeling as well as the direct discussion of personal and interpersonal problems.”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“Her problem, she says, is that other people’s moods control her emotions; she, in turn, tries to control their feelings. “I’m a people pleaser,”
― Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself