Codependent No More Workbook by Melody Beattie Read Free Book Online

ending.
    “Many years later, the principal at the high school I attended asked me to come back and talk to the students about alcoholism and drug addiction. I hated myself so much as a child and teenager that I’d destroyed all pictures of me. Because the principal wanted to surprise me, he managed to find the one picture that existed of me in my teenage years. Before I began my speech, he flashed this larger-than-life photo of me on the auditorium wall. I looked at myself and saw a picture of a teenage girl who looked so dark, so depressed, so burdened. My heart went out to her. You could see how much she hurt. Seeing that picture threw me off balance. It took everything I had to calmly give my speech.
    “That began a process of months of healing from feelings I’d repressed from my childhood and teenage years. I’d felt lost and despised by everyone. I felt so ugly, unwanted, and unlovable. I despised myself. All these emotions tumbled into consciousness.
    “I could barely handle these feelings as an adult. No way could I have handled them as a child, especially without help. I believe that medicating my feelings by drinking and using drugs kept me from committing suicide, something I thought about a lot as a child. Alcoholism and addiction can kill us, but in a strange way, it saved my life. I had tried to deal with the emotionally overwhelming situation of sexual abuse and life in a crazy family the only way I knew—by drinking and using drugs.
    “Now I could stop judging myself and thinking of myself as a bad person for being an alcoholic and an addict. If I felt as a child the way I did for five months after giving that talk, it’s a miracle that I didn’t kill myself when I was a child.”
    Recovery comes in layers. We peel away one problem, and underneath it we find another. Often we address these problems in the reverse order they appeared. The problem that developed last is the one we address first. But there’s no set rule for it, and we’re each unique.
    Codependency isn’t minor. It’s a major problem, and it can be deadly. Even if we don’t die or kill ourselves, we can feel like the living dead. At first, people attending fundamentalist Alcoholics Anonymous meetings didn’t want to acknowledge that many recovering alcoholics had codependent behaviors underneath alcoholism. But many of them felt miserable to the point of being suicidal after becoming sober. Things change. Now many cities offer dual disorder or Double Winner groups. People can go to one meeting and work two Twelve Step programs. Or they can take one First Step that includes powerlessness over both alcoholism and codependent behaviors.
    Surrendering to the truth hurts; otherwise we wouldn’t need to deny reality as long as so many of us do. But recovery means surrendering to divine timing. We’ll stop lying to ourselves when we’re strong enough to face the truth.
    When I began researching and learning about codependency, I had a difficult time understanding the denial part. How could so many intelligent, educated, capable people spend so much of their lives denying reality? Then I found the writings of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. She identified the five stages of dying that later became known as the five stages of loss and grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I would add two more to the list: guilt and obsession. Much of what causes codependency is people becoming stuck in a stage of grief, and then making that stuck behavior a way of life.
    When denial runs our life, it’s because we’re facing the loss of something we’re not prepared to lose. For example, losing our marriage and all the dreams that accompany it is a major loss, not something that comes easy. Facing it can create a lot of grief. It’s normal to want to control the loss, or make whatever’s happening stop taking place. Codependent behaviors are normal, instinctive responses to certain events. Usually those events involve loss.