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Top 2. Jan 8, 2005 11:43 AM

» joy2meu - Re: Her pain-my pain

In response to Her pain-my pain posted by Autumnnut:

Autumnnut,
You didn't become inept at parenting, you just never really learned how to parent in a healthy way. It is impossible to parent in a healthy way if we don't have a healthy relationship with our self. Our role models for parenting were our parents - who didn't know how to be healthy either. And rather we parent like our parents did, or go to the other extreme by trying to do it completely different than they did, we are being codependent - we are reacting to the extremes of codependency.

Codependency is a conditioned reflex - and also a form of Delayed Stress Syndrome - which causes us to live life in reaction to old tapes and old wounds. (see the codependency pages of my web site: http://Joy2MeU.com/Codependence1.html ) As long as we are reacting to life and other people out of childhood wounding and intellectual programming, we are powerless to do anything but react to extremes. This reacting to extremes dynamic is the result of growing up in cultures that taught us to see our self and life from a black and white, right and wrong, perspective. We were taught that right is what we "should" do, and that "wrong" was bad and shameful. We also got the message that life was a test that we could fail - by being imperfect and doing things "wrong." That sets us up to judge and shame our self for being imperfect, wounded, humans.

This causes us to react to situations in ways that are dysfunctional, that do not work, and then judge and shame our self for our reactions. It causes us to believe that we are responsible for other peoples feelings, and to judge and shame ourselves for our own feelings and behavior. It is very nasty, extremely powerful and insidious. The bottom line of what we need to do in codependency recovery is to stop shaming and judging ourselves for being wounded, imperfect human beings, and start seeing our self, life, and other people with more clearly and objectively so that we can change our relationships with self, life, and other people into a healthier, more functional relationships.

In other words, the key to changing your relationship with your daughter is to change your relationship with your self and life. In focusing on your relationship with you daughter (or any other person) you are only seeing symptoms - not dealing with the cause. The cause goes back to your childhood wounding and programming.

The vitally important step in this process, the one that makes the rest of recovery possible, is to start learning how to detach from what is going on - both externally and internally - enough to stop shaming and judging your self and start seeing what is happening with more clarity. Here is a quote from an online book I am writing in which I talk about the importance of detachment when it comes to codependence recovery.

"The healing process is full of paradox and irony on multiple levels. One of those paradoxes is that in order to get in touch with our ONENESS with everything, we must first be able to define our self as separate from others. And in order to become an integrated whole being, we must first separate and own all of the different parts of our self within. As long as we don't have clear boundaries between our self and others, we cannot know where we end and someone else starts - we cannot get clear on what is our stuff and what is theirs. As long as we don't have clear boundaries within ourselves, we are set up to be the victim of our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

Detachment is a vital technique in starting to see our self and others more clearly.

Most people who have any experience with twelve step programs will associate the term 'detachment' with Al-Anon. In Al-Anon terms detachment means to let go of believing that one has the power to make an alcoholic drink - or not drink. To stop taking an alcoholics behavior personally. It means to let go of feeling responsible for another persons feelings and behavior.

Detaching from feeling responsible for the feelings and behavior of other people is one of the initial stages of any codependency recovery. We learned in childhood that we had the power to make our parents happy or sad, angry or scared. We experienced painful consequences when our behavior was not what the adults around us considered acceptable. Some of us came from families where being a human child was not acceptable behavior. Some of us came from families afflicted with alcoholism or mental illness, in which case the definition of acceptable behavior varied wildly from one day to the next. Some of us came from families where as children we were allowed to have the power and be in control - which is terrifying and abusive to a child. Some of us came from families where no one in the family had permission to be human. None of these environments taught us how to relate to self and life in a healthy way.

We grew up getting the message that we were responsible for other people feelings and behavior. And we were taught to give other people or outside agencies power over how we felt about ourselves. We learned to do life backwards.

"I spent most of my life doing the Serenity prayer backwards, that is, trying to change the external things over which I had no control - other people and life events mostly - and taking no responsibility (except shaming and blaming myself) for my own internal process - over which I can have some degree of control. Having some control is not a bad thing; trying to control something or somebody over which I have no control is what is dysfunctional." Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls http://Joy2MeU.com/joy_22.htm

We tried to control other people so we could protect ourselves emotionally. Some of us (classic codependent behavior) tried to control through people pleasing, being a chameleon, wearing a mask, dancing to other people's tunes. Some of us (classic counterdependent behavior - the opposite extreme) protected ourselves by pretending that we didn't need other people. Either way we were living life in reaction to our childhood wounds - we were not making clear, conscious choices. (If we think our choice is to be in an abusive relationship or not to be in a relationship at all, that is not a choice - that is reacting between two extremes that are symptoms of our childhood wounds.)" - Codependency Recovery: Wounded Souls Dancing in the Light Book 2: A Dysfunctional Relationship with Life Author's Foreword http://Joy2MeU.com/Codependency_Recovery...

One of the reasons that you have not been able to change your behavior and do things differently is that you are trying to change from the outside in, rather than inside out. That means you are focusing on symptoms rather than cause. When we try to change from outside in, we end up trying to do things "right" - and then shaming and judging ourselves for not being able to do it perfect / "right." It is vitally important to start focusing on cause - our childhood emotional wounding and programming - so that we can change our behavior patterns and mental process. That is what inner child healing is all about - changing our core relationship with self, life, and other people - by focusing on the cause instead of the symptomatic effects.

I would encourage you to keep reading my work - and especially to focus on the inner child healing approach I share on my website. http://Joy2MeU.com/Innerchildhealing.html There is hope - there is a way out. The problems you are experiencing are not because there is something wrong with you, with who you are - it is your relationship with self and life that got so screwed up in childhood. You do have the power to change your relationship with self, life, and others by focusing on the cause and learning how to live the Serenity Prayer in your life, instead of trying to do life backwards - trying to play the game of life by rules that do not work.
Robert

-- posted by joy2meu

Top 3. Jan 8, 2005 7:23 PM

» Autumnnut - Re: Re: Her pain-my pain

In response to Re: Her pain-my pain posted by joy2meu:

Robert,
Thank you so much for responding to my post. I understand what I have to do but I am sad that I have now passed this model of parenting to my children. Is there really any way to stop this disease from passing to the next generation? I feel like it's already too late, not for me to change, but for my girls. Are they now destined to carry this on because of the traumas they have suffered?

-- posted by Autumnnut

Top 4. Jan 27, 2005 2:03 PM

» joy2meu - Re: Re: Re: Her pain-my pain

In response to Re: Re: Her pain-my pain posted by Autumnnut:

Autumnnut,
Yes, it is sad. And it is important to grieve for the past - but it is also vital to not judge and shame yourself for it. Here is a quote from my book:

"We must start recognizing our powerlessness over this disease of Codependence.

As long as we did not know we had a choice we did not have one.

If we never knew how to say "no," then we never really said "yes."

We were powerless to do anything any different than we did it. We were doing the best we knew how with the tools that we had. None of us had the power to write a different script for our lives.

We need to grieve for the past. For the ways in which we abandoned and abused ourselves. For the ways we deprived ourselves. We need to own that sadness. But we also need to stop blaming ourselves for it. It was not our fault!

We did not have the power to do it any differently." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

We cannot change the past, so it is vital to stop judging ourselves for it. You could not have done it differently. It is by becoming conscious of your codependency and getting into recovery that you are doing your part to break the cycle of this disease. It is important to remember that the tools, knowledge, and guidance needed to break these cycles and recover from the condition of codependency are relatively very new in civilization. (I am going to share quotes from a few of my articles here in the hopes they might help you with your process of forgiving your self.)

"For all of the so called progress of our modern societies, we still are far behind most aboriginal cultures in terms of respect for individual rights and dignity in some kind of balance with the good of the whole. (I am speaking here of tribal aboriginal societies - not urbanized ones.) Nowhere is this more evident in terms of our relationship to our children.

Modern civilizations - both Eastern and Western - are no more than a generation or two removed from the belief that children were property. This, of course, goes hand in hand with the belief that women were property. The idea that children have rights, individuality, and dignity is relatively new in modern society. The predominant and underlying belief, as it has been manifested in the treatment of children, has been that children are extensions of, and tools to be used by, their parents.

A very telling insight into the basic beliefs underlying Western attitudes towards children is shared by inner child pioneer Alice Miller in her book The Drama of The Gifted Child. She shares how the 19th Century German Philosophers who laid the groundwork for modern psychology, emphasized the importance of stamping out a child's "exuberance." In other words, a child's spirit must be crushed in order to control them.

Children are to be seen and not heard. Spare the rod and spoil the child.

It is only in very recent history, that our society has even recognized child abuse as a crime instead of an inherent right of the parent. The concept of healthy parenting as a skill to be learned is very new in society." - Inner Child Healing - Why do it?

"As I have shared elsewhere, we are only a generation or two removed from cultural treatment of both women and children as property. It is only within the last 15 years or so, that such things as healthy parenting classes existed to acknowledge the reality that though we may have to get a license to have a dog or drive a car, there are no such requirements for becoming a parent." - Men and Women are from the same planet

"So often when I am working with someone, helping them to understand their codependency, they will say, "Why didn't I learn this sooner. I feel so stupid that I have have wasted so many years in denial about how much my childhood experiences were running my life."

What I need to remind them of, is that the information we have now wasn't available when they were growing up. It was in only the late 70s and early 80s that researchers were able to identify the Adult Child Syndrome, that family dynamics researchers were starting to speak of the concept of dysfunctional families. Before Betty Ford had the courage to go public with her recovery from alcoholism in the late 70s, there was very little information widely available about alcoholism. Phil Donahue started bringing controversial topics out of the closet in the 70s, and was followed in the 80s by Oprah Winfrey. These were the first times that such subjects as child abuse and incest were openly discussed in American society. Denial, keeping secrets, had been the traditional norm in both families and society." - The Condition of Codependency

The disease of codependency causes reaction to extremes. Because of this, many people in the last generation to be raised in a time when children didn't really have any rights, in a time prior to the great changes in society brought about by the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement, among other things - went to the other extreme when they became parents. It is quite normal that many of us in the baby boom generation - that were raised in a time when keeping secrets and keeping up appearances was still paramount in society - reacted to growing up with parents who controlled us by breaking our spirits, by going to the other extreme and giving our children too much power. That is abusive to a child also. What is healthy is finding the middle ground. The key is learning how to Love our selves and be emotionally healthy, so that we can not only be healthier parents but healthier role models. Giving children healthy messages while acting acting out in an emotionally unhealthy way ourselves will not work to make us healthy parents. As I say in my book:

"What we traditionally have called normal parenting in this society is abusive because it is emotionally dishonest. Children learn who they are as emotional beings from the role modeling of their parents. "Do as I say not as I do," does not work with children. Emotionally dishonest parents cannot be emotionally healthy role models, and cannot provide healthy parenting."

So, in order to be a healthy parent, it is vital to become a healthier person.

Your daughters were wounded, and do carry subconscious and emotional programming that will cause them to act out codependent patterns in how they relate to themselves, life, and other people. But they will be able to see the effects of the codependency much sooner, and probably get into recovery much younger than you ever had a chance of doing - because the information is available now. And the role modeling you do for them by starting to get healthier will be as if you were planting seeds within their consciousness that will bloom at some time in the future. They will probably be disturbed and resentful of the changes in your behavior at first - because children are normally scared of changes in the status quo, in what they have experienced as normal. Eventually however, as you get healthier, you will be available to them as a healthier resource and support than you could ever be while still in denial of your codependency.

So, yes they will probably carry this on for a while, but there is more hope for them - and all future generations - as more and more of us get involved in codependency recovery.

I hope this has been helpful. I am going to close my response here with another quote from my book - a quote that speaks to how important it is to focus on our own individual healing as a way of changing the human condition.
Robert

"We are Spiritual Beings and we are here in these bodies, at this time, to do this healing.

So the bad news is that the world is a real mess because we have been doing it all backwards. The good news is that it was all part of the Divine Script and that the healing has begun.

The good news individually is that the dance is changing, the healing and Joy are available to us now. The bad news individually (from an emotional perspective) is that in order to do this healing, it is necessary to do our grief processing, to feel our feelings. It is necessary to go through the black hole.

That is the reason we came into body in this lifetime - to go through that black hole, to do this healing!

The time has come for you to remember that. This is your wake-up call. It is not the first and it probably will not be the last. But it is not an accident or a coincidence that you are reading this today.

It is time to stop the nonsense of believing that our purpose and meaning comes from the money, or the job, or the relationship. We are here to be a part of the Transformational Healing Process that has begun on this planet - we are here to heal our relationship with ourselves, with our wounded souls.

The time has come to stop doing it backwards. It is time to stop shaming and abusing an innocent child, to stop judging and blaming an innocent Adult Child. The time has come to start Loving yourself. . . . . . .

Love is the secret weapon in this war! Learning to Love ourselves, and remembering that the God-Force Loves us, is what will bring peace within.

In closing this section I am going to share a story that I heard at a Twelve Step meeting. It is a story about a parent and a child.

This was one of those times when the parent was busy with something that needed to be done and the child was bored and wanted some attention. The parent needed to concentrate and was desperate to find something to distract the child for a little while so that the parent could get done with what needed to be done and could then give the child some attention. In glancing around, the parent noticed a large fold out map of the world from a magazine. The parent took the map of the world and cut it up into pieces and gave it to the child along with some scotch tape and said, "Here honey, why don’t you see how quickly you can put this map of the world together."

The child liked this idea and quickly went to work. The parent was sure that this little ploy had bought some valuable time to get finished with the project at hand. But in only a very few minutes the child called out that the map was all put together. The parent could not believe it and went over to where the child was sitting on the floor and was astounded to see the map all put together.

"How did you do that so fast?!" The parent asked.

The child, looking a little sheepish, said, "Well, I kinda cheated a little. On the other side of the map of the world was the picture of a person. I just put the person together and the world came together all by itself."

That’s what this Recovery process is all about. If we just focus on putting ourselves together the world will take care of itself." - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

-- posted by joy2meu