Codependency Recovery Plan Quotes

“The sad truth is that the more you give up your responsibility the more you become controlled by others and are unable to be your authentic self. However, as you insist upon taking responsibility for yourself and your life you discover it feels good to be responsible, it's empowering. It gives you freedom and means that you can do whatever you wish to do”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“If you wish to be free than you must take responsibility. If you try to abdicate your responsibility then you will never be free. Those in codependent relationships have given up their responsibility, and so have given up their freedom.  Rather than be responsible to themselves they attempt to be responsible for others. But this is really a clever way for them to not have to be responsible to themselves”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“You must see that this voice of this inner critic is false and it is not your voice, but is given to you from others outside of you. As you begin to notice that this inner critic voice does not belong to you it will lessen. And as you begin to replace the voice of the inner critic with inner praise you will find that you can offer yourself the praise, the validation, and the support that you never received.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“When a child does not receive the love that they need their natural tendency is to believe it must be because they are doing something wrong and that they are not worthy of love. This sets up a deep wound in the child. As they go on living their life with this deep belief in unworthiness and unlovability, they will attract life situations which reflect this belief. They will attract relationships with romantic partners who do not love them and do not treat them with respect. They will attract situations in their work life in which their boss does not value them and takes advantage of them.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“There are few joys in life, greater than feeling that you are living your true authentic life. You will discover that as you follow your passion, your destiny and the universe will seemingly magically provide for you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it. This is because you are on the track of your true self.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“This will set up a cycle of creativity and flow, and you will feel more and more empowered to see to your own needs and do what brings you joy.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“You can begin doing simple and small things that are what you want to do and what excites you, rather than doing what you feel you must do in order to please others. You can begin writing that book you've always wanted to write. You can take up playing an instrument you always wish to play. You can start drawing and painting. You can start a garden; you can study a subject you always wanted to study.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“Codependent individuals have experienced many ways in which those they loved and depended on for support and validation have made it difficult for them to follow their passion. Perhaps when they were young, their home life was too unstable and they never had the space and feeling of security to be able to allow their creativity to express itself and for them to explore what they were interested in. Or maybe they had passions in music or art, but their parents were unable to support them in this because they were too focused on their own addiction and dominated by their own depression. Therefore, the child who wished to play guitar never had the opportunity because their parents would never obtain one for them to practice. The child has learned from a very young age that the thing they really love to do, is not practical or is not important. They may go the rest of their life and be very successful in some job, but they will always be disappointed and have resentment towards the fact that they were never allowed to do what they love to do.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“It is a sad truth that many people in our world today are taught from a very young age that the thing they love most, their greatest passion, is not able to support them and that they should not do what they love but rather do something that will make them money and provide them with security.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“parents may have told you that you are stupid, or they made you feel in some way that your opinion doesn't matter from a very young age. You have been told explicitly or implicitly that your natural impulses and true desires are not acceptable. The process of learning to trust yourself means that you find a place within you that knows what is true for you. This again requires taking time to be alone. And to reflect on your truth.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“Perhaps you have learned from a very young age that your opinions are wrong and because of your early childhood experiences, you were not supported in speaking your true voice.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“You have learned that your own feelings and desires are not right. You have been taught that you are wrong. This is completely false. This is a common experience in abusive situations.  The abuser makes the abused feel that they are crazy or that they somehow deserver the abuse.  Learning to trust yourself may take a long time, and be a difficult process. After spending all of your life looking to others for what is true and what is real, yu must discover that place within yourself, which knows what you believe to be true.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“Therefore, an important aspect of being your authentic self is identifying your values.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“The struggle of the codependent individual is that they have never felt safe and comfortable enough, and allowed to be their natural true self. Due to the fact that they have always had to mold themselves and adapt themselves to a frightening and unstable home environment, and have sacrificed themselves for others. They have lost touch with what they want, and who they are, what their dreams are and what they want to do with their lives.  On the journey to recovery, the fun really begins when you begin to learn how to be your authentic self and express it in the world.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“So, perhaps this, this feeling came about when human beings and human consciousness separated from union with All. And became physicalized and became seemingly separated and fell from grace. We ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is the tree of the knowledge of duality and polarity. And it is this that created this belief in sin, belief in one’s own undeserveability, and in one’s own disconnection from the love of God, the love of existence, the love of All That Is. So perhaps if we can see that this is the root, that this belief is not true, but is just a belief that appears to be true.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“The root is somewhere deep in the human psyche. There is some original wound in human consciousness that’s what makes everyone feel on a deeply subconscious level, that “I am wrong”, that “I have sinned, I am not worthy”. Something in the human unconscious, the subconscious feels “Something is wrong.” And then very, very tied to that feeling that something is wrong is the feeling that, “Am I what is wrong?” It feels as though something is wrong, and it’s only natural that it would feel that I must be what is wrong. And perhaps this feeling comes from some primordial separation we have made from God, from All That Is, and from nature. And it is this separation that creates this guilt and this fear, and this deep inner sense that “something is wrong with me”. And therefore “I don’t deserve to be happy, I don’t deserve to be myself.” That in order to appease God, in order to appease others, I have to reject my own nature.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“But it is not the Christian church that is the source of this belief. It is something deeper in the human psyche that caused it to be made manifest in the teachings and the dogmas of the Christian church even though it was not in Jesus Christ’s Teaching. He taught of original innocence, that all are unconditionally loved and innocent no matter what their crimes or their sins.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“This is one of the greatest insanities of our culture. How quickly children are taught that their natural impulses are wrong, are dangerous, and are not allowed. So it begins very early, when the child is only two, three, and four years old. By the time they are five or six, their internal guidance system has been completely poisoned. And it is only the very, very, very rare who will ever overcome that conditioning, overcome the poisoning of their natural true self. There are few who ever fully overcome it. So, it begins when the child is very young. Where they learn that in order to receive love they must control their natural impulses. They must smile and be very nice and diplomatic in order to get something they want. So they trade being their true, natural self in order to receive this pseudo-love, in order to survive.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“However, when adults ridicule children who ask for things they need the child learns that it is better to just be quiet and deny their need.  The person who recognizes their codependent tendencies must learn that it is perfectly normal to be vulnerable and express your needs in your relationships.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“Once again due to early childhood experiences some people never learn that they are entitled to certain basic needs for their safety and well-being. Also, someone may have had all of their material needs met but none of their emotional or spiritual needs satisfied. This person may believe that all their needs are met, but this is only because they do not know what they are missing because they have never experienced it.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“We must learn that all feeling serve a valuable purpose, even painful ones. Codependent individuals have learned to suppress their own feelings and therefore have lost this valuable emotional compass. The following is a list of emotions and the message they have to teach us: -         Sadness can teach us the preciousness of life and the importance of compassion and empathy. A life without sadness would also be unable to experience joy. -         Fear warns us of danger and of things that may harm us.  It also serves to show us what part of ourselves and our life we are unwilling to experience. -         Anger is a message that something you are experiencing is unjustified and in pills us to make a change or correct an injustice. It is also one possible expression of fear. - Guilt is a signal that we have done something that goes against our values and our inner integrity. - Loneliness is a message to connect with others and change how you view your relationship to life. -         Shame is similar to guilt in that it tells us that we have done something we should not have done.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“The difficulty with denial is that we don’t know what we don’t know.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“One can be in denial of the continuing influence of trauma or family dysfunction because it happened in the past.  They may feel that they have grown up and moved beyond it without being aware of the immense negative influence those experiences are still having on their daily life as an adult.   Just because they have left the home where the issues occurred or because the addicted parent recovered does not mean that everything is healed.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“The Lost Child As the name states, the Lost Child is one who chooses to turn within and ignore than harsh reality playing out in their family.  They may lose themselves in fantasies, books, movies, games, and the internet. This person is often the youngest member of the family who has sought to find safety by staying out of the way and being alone.  It is important that they learn to engage with the world and face reality rather than attempting to hide and run away from it.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“The child Will learn to walk on egg shells around their parents so as not to be singled out for anger or shame. Overtime this leads to an individual we’re pressing in hiding their true feelings and not being able to recognize and communicate their needs.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“Poor Communication As one of the most important elements of a healthy and functioning family is communication, one of the first things to go in a dysfunctional family is communication. In a dysfunctional family there is no communication or communication that is done is shared in an indirect, abusive, and dishonest manner.  This communication, rather than being done to understand one another is done in order to control another. Often it will restrict the free expression of the members of the family and will neglect the feelings and opinions of the children. It will also lead to arguing and shouting matches that do not lead to the individuals being heard.   Additionally, the communication is often a vehicle for blame and shame. Another toxic pattern is the prevailing’s of double messages, which is when a parent says one thing but does another. From this the child learns that they cannot trust their parents and that it is justified to lie.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“The common thread of all adults to struggle with codependency is early childhood experiences which taught them in a direct or indirect way that they must change themselves in order to be loved by their parent or guardian or family.  An infant baby or toddler needs love and attention more than anything else, therefore in order to survive they will modify their emotions, thoughts and needs in order to receive that love and attention.  If the mother or guardian is not attentive to the needs of the child and allows them to naturally express themselves and be loved for who they are, then the child will learn to neglect their needs and desires in order to please their mother and therefore survive.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“Not Being Loved for Who You Are If one was to boil down the root cause of codependency into one phrase it could be said to be “not being loved for who you are”. A child needs to love more than any other thing.  Studies have shown that babies born without mothers who do not receive the loving touch and attention of nurses in the hospital will die because they do not receive the most important nourishment of all - love.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“One cannot heal an illness without a proper understanding of what caused the illness.  Without this knowledge all you will be able to do is put band-aids over the wound.  However, by deeply understanding the root causes of an illness, we give ourselves the opportunity to heal the core wounds and find freedom from our struggle.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships

“When the child does not receive the love and affection they require this leads to dysfunction and suffering throughout their life.  Also, when the parenting of the infant is not sufficient, this naturally means that the family as a whole must also be dysfunctional.  This further causes harm to the child’s development and well-being.”
― Julia Lang, Codependency Recovery Plan: How to Stop Being Controlled and Controlling Others, Start Healing From Emotional Abuse as You Learn to Cure Codependent Behavior and Build Happy, Healthy Relationships