Recovery From Codependency

By Darlene Lancer

Codependency is often thought of as a relationship problem and considered by many to be a disease. In the past, it was applied to relationships with alcoholics and drug addicts. It is a relationship problem; however, the relationship that's the problem is not with someone else, but the relationship with yourself, and that is what gets reflected in your relationships with others.
Codependency underlies all addictions. The core symptom of "dependency" manifests as reliance on a person, substance, or process (i.e, activity, such as gambling or sex addiction). Instead of having a healthy relationship with yourself, you make something or someone else more important. Over time, your thoughts, feelings, and actions revolve around that other person, activity, or substance, and you increasingly abandon your relationship with yourself.
Recovery entails a 180 degree reversal of this pattern in order to reconnect with, honor, and act from your core self. Healing develops the following characteristics:
* You're authentic
* You're autonomous
* You're capable of intimacy
* Your values, thoughts, feelings, and actions become integrated and congruent
Change is not easy. It takes time and involves the following four steps:
1. Abstinence
Abstinence or sobriety is necessary to recover from codependency. The goal is to bring your attention back to yourself, to have an internal, rather than external, "locus of control." This means that your actions are primarily motivated by your values, needs, and feelings, not someone else's. You learn to meet those needs in healthy ways. Perfect abstinence or sobriety isn't necessary for progress, and it's impossible with respect to codependency with people. You need and depend upon others and therefore give and compromise in relationships. Instead of abstinence, you learn to detach and not control, people-please, or obsess about others. You become more self-directed and autonomous.
If you're involved with an abuser or addict or grew up as the child of one, you may be afraid to displease your partner, and it can require great courage to break that pattern of conceding our power to someone else.
2. Awareness
It's said that denial is the hallmark of addiction. This is true whether you're an alcoholic or in love with one. Not only do codependents deny their own addiction - whether to a drug, activity, or a person - they deny their feelings, and especially their needs, particularly emotional needs for nurturing and real intimacy.
You may have grown up in a family where you weren't nurtured, your opinions and feelings weren't respected, and your emotional needs weren't adequately met. Over time, rather than risk rejection or criticism, you learned to ignore your needs and feelings, believed that you're were wrong. Some decided to become self-sufficient and/or find comfort in sex, food, drugs, or work.
All this leads to low self-esteem. To reverse these destructive habits, you first must become aware of them. The most damaging obstacle to self-esteem is negative self-talk. Most people aren't aware of their internal voices that push and criticize them - their "Pusher," "Perfectionist," and "Critic." To help you, I wrote a handy ebook, 10 Steps to Self-Esteem - The Ultimate Guide to Stop Self-Criticism.
3. Acceptance
Healing essentially involves self-acceptance. This is not only a step, but a life-long journey. People come to therapy to change themselves, not realizing that the work is about accepting themselves. Ironically, before you can change, you have to accept the situation. As they say, "What you resist, persists."
In recovery, more about yourself is revealed that requires acceptance, and life itself presents limitations and losses to accept. This is maturity. Accepting reality opens the doors of possibility. Change then happens. New ideas and energy emerge that previously were stagnated from self-blame and fighting reality. For example, when you feel sad, lonely, or guilty, instead of making yourself feel worse, you have self-compassion, soothe yourself, and take steps to feel better.
Self-acceptance means that you don't have to please everyone for fear that they won't like you. You honor your needs and unpleasant feelings and are forgiving of yourself and others. This good-will toward yourself allows you to be self-reflective, without being self-critical. Your self-esteem and confidence grow, and consequently, you don't allow others to abuse you or tell you what to do. Instead of manipulating, you become more authentic and assertive, and are capable of greater intimacy.
4. Action
Insight without action only gets you so far. In order to grow, self-awareness and self-acceptance must be accompanied by new behavior. This involves taking risks and venturing outside your comfort one. It may involve speaking up, trying something new, going somewhere alone, or setting a boundary. It also means setting internal boundaries by keeping commitments to yourself, or saying "no" to your Critic or other old habits you want to change. Instead of expecting others to meet all your needs and make you happy, you learn to take actions to meet them, and do things that give you fulfillment and satisfaction in your life.
Each time you try out new behavior or take a risk, you learn something new about yourself and your feelings and needs. You're creating a stronger sense of yourself, as well as self-confidence and self-esteem. This builds upon itself in a positive feedback loop vs. the downward spiral of codependency, which creates more fear, depression, and low self-esteem.
Words are actions. They have power and reflect your self-esteem. Becoming assertive is a learning process and is perhaps the most powerful tool in recovery. Assertiveness requires that you know yourself and risk making that public. It entails setting limits. This is respecting and honoring you. You get to be the author of your life - what you'll do and not do and how people will treat you. Because being assertive is so fundamental to recovery, I wrote How to Speak Your Mind - Become Assertive and Set Limits.
The four A's are a road map. Learn all you can about recovery. Join a 12-Step Program and begin keeping a journal to know yourself better. Codependency for Dummies lays out a detailed recovery plan with self-discovery exercises, tips, and daily reminders. Your recovery must be your priority. Most importantly, be gentle with yourself on your journey.
© Darlene Lancer 2013

Darlene Lancer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, author of Codependency for Dummies, and expert in relationships, codependency, and addiction. She has a broad range of experience, working with individuals and couples for 25 years. She is an author and frequent speaker. She maintains private practice in Santa Monica, CA and coaches internationally. For more information, see http://www.whatiscodependency.com to receive a FREE Report, "14 Tips for Letting Go," and find links to her books, Codependency for Dummies and ebooks, How to Speak Your Mind - Become Assertive and Set Limits and 10 Steps to Self-Esteem: The Ultimate Guide to Stop Self-Criticism.
You can follow her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/codependencyrecovery.

Reclaiming Good Mental Health

By Carolyn Barber

What is good mental health? We are all more or less mentally healthy, and this usually varies through our lives especially as we deal with difficult life events, change and so on. Whether we call this psychological wellbeing, happiness, contentment, positive mindset, all these terms relate to good mental health.
With our physical health, it's part of our everyday discourse to be aspirational. We want to feel physically fit, energetic, strong, balanced in our weight, eating a healthy diet, supple, resilient and not prone to minor ailments. Sure we complain about our problems, and talk about how we can't do all the things we know we ought to do. We know it's not easy to stay physically healthy without working at it, especially if we've experienced health problems. We know that even if we reach the peak of physical fitness, we can't maintain this for the rest of our lives without paying attention to it.
Research tells us that good mental health is even more beneficial than good physical health. A positive mental outlook increases the rate and speed of recovery from serious, even life threatening, illness. Psychological resilience and wellbeing gives people the strength to turn problems into challenges into triumphs.
Yet whenever I ask a group of people to tell me what words come into mind in relation to 'mental health', their responses are about mental ill-health! It's as if the term has been hi-jacked to become totally problem-focused.
In the meantime, we're experiencing an epidemic of mental ill-health. About 1 in 4 people are experiencing some form of common mental health problem such as depression, anxiety and various stress related symptoms. GP surgeries are overwhelmed with such problems, mental health services are only able to provide support for the 1% of the population with much more severe mental health difficulties, and there's a plethora of largely unregulated services, treatments and remedies out on the private market. A recent research study showed that the majority of long term sickness absence from work resulted from stress related conditions.
The trouble with focusing on the problems and the pain, is that that's what we become experts in. We're looking for cures and treatments to fix the problem, instead of focusing on what makes for good mental health. We know that physical health is multi-dimensional - no-one imagines that pumping iron to build your muscles is a recipe for overall physical health, although it will certainly make you stronger for certain activities.
So what are the essentials of good mental health?
Connection is certainly one of the best known. Having positive close relationships is good for our mental health, as is having a wider network of friends, colleagues and acquaintances which will vary over time. Giving to others is another really important aspect of connection, improving our sense of self worth and wellbeing.
Challenge is about learning and development, it's how we grow. For children, everyday brings new challenges, yet as adults we often become increasingly fearful of change, unwilling to learn new skills or put ourselves in unfamiliar situations. So expanding our comfort zone, sometimes in small ways if we're feeling particularly vulnerable, will help develop our self-confidence and sense of personal achievement.
Composure means a sense of balance, and ability to distance ourselves from our thoughts and emotions. It means our ability to respond rather than react. This could be described as our sense of spiritual connection, which may come through a particular belief or faith, or may be found through connection with nature. A mentally healthy person will feel an inner strength of spirit, and find ways to support that.
Character relates to the way in which we interpret our experiences and our responses to them. We all have our own personal story, or stories, which we may or may not tell others. We may cast ourselves as the hero, the victim or the villain, and however we do this will impact generally on our mental health. Someone who has experienced severe life trauma may have great difficulty piecing together their story at all, leaving them feeling literally fragmented. Good mental health means having a strong sense of personal values, awareness of our own strengths, skills and resources, and personal stories of learning from mistakes, survival, success and appreciation.
Creativity represents the fun, childlike aspects of our mental health. As children we are naturally creative and we play. As we grow into adulthood, our creativity and playfulness is often discouraged or devalued, and this can cause great frustration, literally diminishing the capacity of our brain to function as well as it could. Exploring creative activities has often been found to have a powerful therapeutic effect, and good mental health certainly depends in part on opportunities to bring fun, playfulness and creativity into our lives.
These 5 C's of good mental health offer a framework within which we can think about our mental health in the same way as we might our physical health. It's pretty damned hard to be a perfect specimen of physical health,but then who needs to be perfect? Just like our physical health, our mental health is a work in progress and always will be.
In years gone by, many people with physical illnesses were treated cruelly because of ignorance and shame. I recall when cancer was spoken in hushed whispers as the Big C. Nowadays mental ill-health is the 'elephant in the room' which we need to be looking at long and hard, exposing to practical common sense and intelligent discussion.
World Mental Health Day on October 10 has been a timely reminder that good mental health really is something we can aspire to for everyone. Let's make it so!

Carolyn Barber, Bsc (Hons), CQSW, is the founder of Wayfinder Associates, a social care training and consultancy business specialising in team development, independent supervision and staff wellbeing. As a serial social entrepreneur, Carolyn has developed community based programmes to promote understanding of mental wellbeing using positive solution focused approaches.
Carolyn has over 30 years experience in social care as practitioner, trainer, researcher and manager, working across public, voluntary and independent sectors.
GSCC registration no: 1074227
LinkedIn profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/carolynbarber

Mental Health and Spirituality

In the first article in this two-part series, we looked at general circumstances regarding the connection between spiritual experience and mental illness. We will now get a bit more specific.
I've been asked many times how an entity attachment can happen; that depends.
First, a definition: an "entity", as we use it, is any sentient being. Specifically, in this framework it is not incarnated - it's just a cohesive ball of energy, an individual piece of consciousness with intelligence. A soul is an entity, but an entity is not necessarily a soul. An angel is an entity, but an entity is not necessarily an angel. Furthermore, in my work I only deal with negative entities. These have chosen not to work with Light (Spirit, if you will) and not to evolve spiritually - they therefore have no source of power unless they can induce negativity in an individual soul. That's why they seek to attach. They are, in effect, parasites.
Negative entities attach to a soul when it's incarnated into a body... when it's in the learning process and so subject to making mistakes. Often, the life lessons connected with the learning process are so onerous as to cause the person in question to look for easy solutions. In that case they are vulnerable to an attachment. A negative entity is attracted to the situation's energy, and an offer is made (usually very subtly and unconsciously) that appears to offer some relief. Naturally such a being will not literally appear with the classic devilish horns and tail; it will offer an attractive solution and half-truths, while downplaying the downside to the arrangement. Catch more flies with honey, etc...
Therefore, entity attachments are a choice we make. True, it can be because we were tricked somehow... but we're still responsible.
That said, entity attachments in themselves don't seem to be all that prevalent in "causing" what we think of as serious metal illness. They may be more of a symptom, in that one who is already in pain and in a weakened state will be more vulnerable to seeking shortcuts. In the first article I mentioned "soul facet" loss; I believe that this (and related or similar breakdowns of the psychic structure) are more often at the root of mental dysfunction in this life. The soul, if we could see it, would look like a multifaceted gem; and each facet or group of facets serves a particular function. As mentioned before, the partial or complete loss of these functions is extremely disruptive to the personality. As little as 10% loss can show up as mental illness; at 30% loss, psychosis is pretty much a sure thing. The functions affected or lost may very well be ones that may not be critical in the dimensions of pure spirit... but the loss of them can be highly detrimental when a soul does incarnate and attempt to lead a physical life. These can be retrieved, but it becomes much more difficult when the person in question has lost a goodly portion of his or her faculty of free will.
These are just two of the energetic roots that can underlie mental infirmity. There are likely as many different causes as there are for, say, head trauma in the physical body. You can get bonked on the head, or you can fall down the stairs. Slightly different causes, slightly different effects.
But so far we've only been looking at severe mental illness... psychosis, mainly. But what about the less severe variety of neuroses and personality disorders like depression, anxiety, and obsessiveness?
Many of those can also be symptoms of entity attachments and fragment loss - it's just a matter of degree. We often find such attachments specifically bringing depression and the rest; but it can also be a secondary symptom. If the entity is bringing an energy of, say, abstinence, the inability to find or keep a satisfying sex partner or enjoy a good meal can easily lead to depression.
We can even produce some kinds of entities ourselves. The constant, strong repetition of negative thoughts can eventually lead to the formation of an independent "thought form" - in other words, the energy of our thoughts take on a life of its own and becomes an actual entity; and even if the one who produced it wishes to stop the process, the thought form remains attached, tending to keep the cycle going. A few percent loss of soul facets could have a similar effect, depending upon the area they dealt with.
Also, there are environmental influences - which is why we clear properties like homes and businesses. Even if the negativity isn't connected to a particular person but to a place or thing, that dark energy can still have an influence. For instance, you may have a family get along fine when they go out to eat, but begin fighting like cats and dogs when they get home - that's a good example of a house that should be cleared. It may be no accident that you feel badly when you go into a particular place of business, or workplace.
But, a caution: we mustn't be so quick to blame some evil entity for our gloom. We can make the choice to be depressed, or fearful, or anxious. Even if there had been a negative attachment but it's been cleared, we might be in the habit of being depressed. How to tell the difference? Not easy, and the only way I know of is to have an intuitive practitioner take a look.
If it's not an outside influence, painful as it is, it may just be what we're used to - and thus is a comfort zone for us. It's simply what we're accustomed to being. In this case we need to use our free will and make the choice to be happy... or at least not sad. When I find this in a client, the way I advise them to get out of it is to not aim too high at first. Some think that you should just wake up one day and decide to be happy. Studies;have proved that "thinking happy thoughts" only depresses people more because it's a lie. Much better to acknowledge where we are and to accept that we're feeling bad, and that there's nothing wrong with that - it's just the way it is for us at that moment.
When acceptance is realized, we can then work on proceeding from negative to neutral. If you think of a thermometer, for example, you can see that it's impossible for it to go from -5 degrees to +5 degrees without passing through zero degrees. In other words, we're trying to first get to a point where for all practical purposes we have little emotion at all. Popular touchy-feely, sentimental spiritual concepts would have us believe that it's better to have negative emotions than none at all. This is a well-meaning and superficial lie. Having negative emotion as a comfort zone leaves no space for more productive and pleasant experience. But if we empty that emotional space, we then have the opportunity to gradually introduce positive emotions - which will quickly have a snowball effect and eventually become the comfort zone.
Another trick that I myself used: years ago I saw the movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know?". I had varying degrees of interest in the concepts in it, but the one that hit home for me was the idea that bodily chemicals like hormones (or the lack of them) can be in a sense addictive. Like alcohol or heroin, we become acclimated to being under their influence.
So, the minute that our bodies or minds receive a signal indicating that we need another fix, we unconsciously do something about it and produce the chemical (or inhibit it, depending on the mechanism). In order to produce or inhibit it, we need to induce a condition that will do that for us. In the case of depression or anxiety,we need to feel depressed or anxious to get our fix of the chemical. But a rational mind needs a reason feel depressed.
Do you see where this is going? When I decided to take a close look at this phenomenon in myself, I had a eureka moment: I discovered that indeed, a split second before I began to feel badly, my mind began to search for a reason to feel badly. Needless to say, there's always at least one or two things that we can come up with in this regard. The dog's sick... the car's broken down... the mortgage is due - it doesn't matter what it is as long as we can come up with something negative to back up the emotion we wish to evoke in order to get our jolt of sadness.
In my own case, once I truly understood this sequence, it was fairly easy to stop the cycle. For anyone who experiences depression or anxiety on a regular basis, I recommend a close examination of how your mind tricks you into a negative mode. It then becomes a simple matter of taking charge.
It is to be hoped that the reader who has been himself diagnosed with psychosis or another personality disorder will take these words in the spirit in which they are written. Remember that no one (especially a professional) is going to tell you that you're "crazy" for no good reason. On the other hand, at the same time you need to realize that any non-ordinary experiences that you're experiencing need to be related to people in a way that won't frighten them. Find someone you trust and talk to them about it. You may indeed be experiencing a paranormal or spiritual phenomena; but because of the fact that our perceptions of our own reality can become distorted, some kind of confirmation is a good idea.
We've covered some of the possible "spiritual" root causes of both serious mental illness and less debilitating but undesirable dysfunction. If one's belief system doesn't allow for these concepts, it still may be useful for the diagnosed person (and their families) to at least consider that there may be some merit in them. Clearing the energetic causes of personality afflictions is not an instant fix... but it can go a long way toward facilitating the healing process.

Michael has served hundreds of clients worldwide through his intuitive energy clearing practice. He provides spiritual counseling and practical, down-to-earth life coaching.
Although much of his work is based in the metaphysical, Michael does not subscribe to much of the current "New Age" agenda. Spirituality is meaningless unless we can apply it to our physical reality; that's why we're here!
To learn more, please see Michael's website, "The Healed Spirit" at http://www.healedspirit.com.