I don't know how to heal.......

» LisaDiane - and maybe I don't want to.......

I have just realized that I am seriously codependent and counter dependent. But the worst part about it is that the thought of trying to change that goes against every feeling in my body. Why in the hell would I want to expose everything about myself?? What could I possibly gain out of being open and honest?? Being consumed with fear feels very comfortable to me. Yes, its also painful, but it keeps me on guard for dangerous situations. Isn't that a good thing??
This has all started for me because after a 15 yr marriage to someone COMPLETELY unavailable, in every possible way, I have (accidentally, I'm sure) found a man who is actually very emotionally healthy and available to me. And its freaking me out! We have lived together for 1.5 yrs and I am worse today (with my games and insecurities and lack of trust) than I was when we first got together (and I was terrified then). He has never abandoned me or rejected me emotionally with all the dramas that I have put him through. He stays with me, trying to talk me thru (off the ledge) and comfort me. He offers me unconditional love. He is starting to get sick of all this tho. He doesn't understand what I am so afraid of and why getting what I need and want is so traumatic for me. Our relationship is growing, but I am incapable of growing with it. Why does him wanting to love me and meet my needs make me feel so panicked??? And how do I stop? How does one just let go of the fears that have been protecting one for all of one's life???

-- posted by LisaDiane

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» mastiffs2005 - Re: and maybe I don't want to.......

In response to message posted by LisaDiane:

I'm sure Robert will be in to answer your question, but I just had to respond to your post I remember feeling EXACTLY this way! You're exactly right that your fears are what feels comfortable to you, and we all have trouble breaking out of our comfort zones, whatever that may be for us. The problem is that you aren't able to fully recognize rational and irrational fears. What you are probably responding to is the fear that his providing what you need is a ploy to get something in return or to bring out your weaknesses to use against you and control and hurt you... that's only natural.

Now... why should you want to heal? So you don't keep living in fear and so that you can accept the love that you are being offered now and finally be happy.

First you have to heal from your past abuse, though. Once you've confronted and healed from that abuse, you'll be able to move forward. Once you've found inner healing, those fears will no longer be your comfort zone - happiness will be, and you'll accept nothing less.

First steps? Counseling, journaling, support groups, letting go of all the funk that is holding you back from having the life you deserve. I had a counselor tell me once that it was my secrets that would kill me - so I started telling everything, getting it all out. My husband now knows every single ugly thing from my past (as does the world, I wrote a book about it LOL) - and now all that pain doesn't have a hold on me any more.

Of course you can't expect it to be easy - it will hurt and be so difficult at times that you'll think you can't bear it - but you can! Then you'll be able to rely on your intuition to protect you because you'll be in touch with your higher self.

Oh, and be easy on your new partner - people who haven't been through what we've been through can't understand what it's like if we don't tell them and explain it to them... once you do that, you'll receive the love and compassion and understanding that will also help you through it all!

I wish you all the best and hope that you begin seeking the help that you need - I do promise that you'll never regret it!

Love & Hugs,
Dar

-- posted by mastiffs2005

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» joy2meu - Re: Re: and maybe I don't want to.......

In response to message posted by DarleneCheek:

LisaDiane,
Darlene gave you a very good answer. The fear you are living life out of, is not normal human fear of the unknown or of being hurt - it is codependent fear. Here are some quotes from some of my articles about it.

"The number one tool of the ego is fear. Anytime we feel fear, there are multiple levels involved - multiple perspectives from which that fear is originating. And, like all the other emotions we experience, fear has a purpose and needs to be honored as a gift. Emotions do not have value in and of themselves - they just are. What give emotions a positive or negative value is how we react to them. Most of us learned to have negative reactions to emotions because our perspective of our own emotions was all messed up in childhood. (Due to the messages and role modeling of the adults around us.)

Fear is an important tool in living. It is there to protect us, to help us avoid situations and people who will do us harm. It is our relationship to fear that is dysfunctional because of our childhood experiences.

There is a level of fear that is unavoidable in being humn - that is fear of the unknown.

"This human experience is a process that involves inherent conflict between the continuously changing nature of life and the human ego's need to survive. In order to insure survival (which is the ego's appointed task) the human ego needs to define things. What is food? What is friend or enemy? Who am I and how do I relate to them? What can hurt me and what brings me pleasure? It also learned that it is healthy to have a fear of the unknown (it was important to check an unknown cave for saber toothed tigers before strolling into it.) As a result, the ego fears change and craves security and stability. But because life is constantly changing, security and stability can only be temporary." - Loving and Nurturing self http://www.joy2meu.com/SelfLove.htm

Fear of the unknown is a natural, normal part of being human. It has a purpose - and deserves to be honored as something which serves us. But, like our relationship with all the aspects of our being, our relationship with that fear is dysfunctional.

The damaged ego responds to it's programming by generating fear of the things we learned to fear as a child: making mistakes; doing it wrong; being emotional; speaking our Truth; taking risks; being alone; not being alone; whatever. We then empower the fear by focusing on it, magnifying it, and generally giving it the power to define us and our life - or by denying it, which also gives it power because in denying our fear we are denying our self and reality. Going to either extreme results in the inability to see the situation clearly.

Because our ego was programmed to react to life from fear, negativity, scarcity, and lack (again due to emotional trauma we experienced, and the messages and role modeling of the adults around us) the disease focuses on and magnifies fear - and then it scrambles around trying to find something to cover up and repress the very fear it is generating. The disease blows the fear way out of proportion and then leads us to addictive and/or compulsive behavior as a way of stuffing the fear.

This is the essence of the dysfunction. We live our life reacting to fear, and the shame, that the disease empowers and then "helps" us avoid by causing us to focus on something outside of ourselves as the cause and/or the cure for the core place within us where we feel empty - where we feel unlovable and unworthy.

We are afraid of our own emotions - of all the repressed feelings and unresolved grief that we are carrying. We learned to be afraid of our own anger and pain and fear. We feel afraid of our fear of our own emotions. It is this fear once (or twice) removed that is paralyzing. That is, the fear of our own fear is our greatest block to healing. We are afraid of our own pain and anger - and then we are afraid of our fear of our own pain and anger.

In order to start finding some balance in recovery, it is important to learn how to take power away from the fear." - Emotional Balance - through the fear http://www.joy2meu.com/Fear.html

"Being in our heads - thinking, fantasizing, ruminating - is a defense we adapted in childhood to help us disassociate from the emotional pain we were experiencing. It is dysfunctional because it keeps us focused on the future or the past - we miss out on being alive today. It is dysfunctional because our attempts to escape unpleasant feelings causes us to generate more unpleasant feelings.

Worry - which is negative fantasizing - is a reaction to fear of the unknown which creates more fear, which creates more worry, which creates more fear, etc. This fear is not a normal human fear of the unknown. It is codependent fear: a distorted, magnified, virulent, mutated species of fear caused by the poisonous combination of a false belief that being human is shameful with a polarized (black and white, right and wrong) perspective of life. This self perpetuating, self destructive type of obsessive thinking feeds not only on fear, but on shaming ourselves for feeling the fear.

The disease of codependency is a dysfunctional emotional defense system adapted by our egos to help us survive. The polarized perspective of life we were programmed with in early childhood, causes us to be afraid of making a mistake, of doing life "wrong." At the core of our being,we feel unlovable and unworthy - because our parents felt unlovable and unworthy - and we spend great amounts of energy trying to keep our shameful defectiveness a secret. We feel that, if we were perfect like we "should" be, we would not feel fear and confusion, and would have reached "happily ever after" by now. So, we shame ourselves for feeling fear, which adds gasoline to the inferno of fear that is driving us. The shame and fear that drive obsession becomes so painful and 'crazy making' that at some point we have to find some way to shut down our minds for a little while - drugs or alcohol or food or sleep or television, etc.

It is a very dysfunctional, and sad, way to relate to life. The fear we are empowering is about the future - the shame is about the past. We are not capable of being in the now and enjoying life because we are caught up in trauma melodramas about things which have not yet happened - or wallowing in orgies of self recrimination about the past, which can not be changed. Codependents do not really live life - we endure, we survive, we persevere." - Obsession / Obsessive Thinking Part 1 http://www.joy2meu.com/obsessive_thinkin...

"In recovery it is important to start realizing that any time that we have an intense emotional reaction with a lot of energy behind it, a lot of power - whether it is terror and panic, despair and helplessness, rage, or whatever - that is a sign that an old wound has been triggered. It is an indication that unresolved grief is involved in our reaction.

One of the first clues to start paying attention to in recovery, clear evidence that inner child wounds are involved, is when our reaction to a situation, person, job interview, whatever, feels life threatening. That is, the situation is not actually, factually, life threatening but it feels like a life or death situation - it feels like our survival depends upon the outcome, the other persons reaction, etc.

In childhood our survival was dependent upon our parents. They were wounded - had their own internal emotional mine fields - so they wounded us. It felt like there was something wrong with our being that was threatening their love for us - and therefore our survival. We learned to focus externally to try to manipulate and control life and other people to try to ensure our survival.

This survival fear is the codependent fear that I spoke of in my article Obsession / Obsessive Thinking Part 1: "a distorted, magnified, virulent, mutated species of fear caused by the poisonous combination of a false belief that being human is shameful with a polarized (black and white, right and wrong) perspective of life."

This gut wrenching survival fear has been running our lives - whether we were charging through life in denial of it, or allowing it to totally dominate our reality. It is vital to learn how to start taking power away from this survival fear." - Emotional Discernment - taking power away from the fear http://www.joy2meu.com/emotional_discern...

We need to shine the Light into the darkness to heal. Our secrets will destroy us because we feel ashamed of them - and they are just a result of being wounded humans. Codependency recovery is about learning to stop judging and shaming ourselves - and starting to be more Loving to ourselves. As long as we don't believe we are Lovable deep down inside, we cannot accept someone else Loving us - and then we sabotage relationships and punish people for Loving us. The inner child healing work it the key. http://Joy2MeU.com/Innerchildhealing.html I recently published an article on my site designed to help people jump start their codependency recovery - you might find it helpful: Assignments for Jump Starting Codependency Recovery
http://Joy2Meu.com/jump_start_recovery.h...
Robert

-- posted by joy2meu

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» LisaDiane - Re: Re: Re: and maybe I don't want to.......

In response to message posted by joy2meu:

Thank you both so much for your replies. Darlene, your kind and open message has given me the inspiration to look beyond my fear and try to heal. Robert, you have given me the tools. I tried some of the affirmations from the "jump start recovery" link, and they made me VERY uncomfortable! I guess that's how I know that I need to do them!
I treasure the responses that you both sent - thank you so much for taking the time to make a connection with me!

-- posted by LisaDiane

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