Co-Dependent Me.

This is a post I put on my old blog.  I re-read it this morning after seeing a commercial for ok2talk.org and I realized that it was an important post, not just for me expressing my issues, but for others who may have their own issues.  What you need to know before reading this post is that I had a spectacular nervous breakdown about a year and a half ago.  I was hospitalized at an inpatient facility for a week and then at an outpatient facility for a month.  This post is about only one of the things that I learned about myself.

Websters defines codependency as: a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (as an addiction to alcohol or heroin); broadly : dependence on the needs of or control by another.

Great.  Awesome.  Wait, what?

The therapists at my outpatient program diagnosed me as codependent.  At the time I didn't even really know what it meant.  The above definition didn't really help.  There are no addicts in my circle.  I have no burning desire to be controlled by others.  Dependence of the needs of others?  What does that even mean?

Melody Beattie takes pages upon pages in her book "Codependent No More" to define codependency.  She lists 231 symptoms.  231 symptoms.  Those symptoms are grouped into 14 different groups: care taking, low self-worth, repression, obsession, controlling, denial, dependency, poor communication, weak boundaries, lack of trust, anger, sex problems, miscellaneous and progressive.  You can find the full list of symptoms here.  I have way way more than half of these symptoms.  

Fifteen years ago or so I had a boyfriend, who, in midst of our seriously bad breakup, told me that I wasn't happy unless I had a crisis in my life.  I immediately responded that he was a piece of shit and didn't know what he was talking about.  Who on earth would WANT their lives filled with crisis?

The Co-Dependent.  Turns out the guy was right.  And he was wrong.

No one, not even the codependent person wants crisis and chaos.  Not really.  But the codependent, while it is exhausting, finds self worth in helping to resolve other's problems.  And if you are constantly running around trying to solve other people's problems, two things are happening.  First, you aren't taking care of you.  Second, you are creating chaos.

Many of the books written about the codependent are written for the loved one of an addict.  It's a little easier to see.  The enabling, the overcompensating for that person's actions to make their life appear "normal" to outsiders, and I think, most importantly, the inability to walk away from the addict.  

But what about me?  As I said, no addicts here.  

Back to that boyfriend.  He had lost his father at a formative age.  He had very little in the way of rules after that and he, and his brother, ran relatively wild.  He went from relationship to relationship.  Even while in a relationship he always had another woman on the side.  At one point I was the other woman.  At one point, there was another woman.  It took 3 YEARS after our "official" breakup, for the relationship to finally actually end.  Because I couldn't walk away from someone I considered so damaged.  I was going to "fix" him.  I was going to make him see the error of his ways, why he was the way he was and bring him to enlightenment, thus making him the perfect guy for me.  And, also, because whenever he was feeling lonely he came back to me.  Instead of believing my friends who saw that I was allowing myself to be used, I chose to believe that he kept coming back, because he wanted my help.

Eventually I got too tired, mentally and physically to deal with him anymore.  But I still didn't walk away because he was a jerk.  I berated myself for giving up on him.  I could no longer stand to be in his presence, but I couldn't liberate myself from the guilt of not doing what I knew I needed to do to fix his problems.  

This is classic codependency.  

I accepted the diagnosis once the symptoms were laid out for me to see.  I had vowed when I signed myself into the hospital for my breakdown that if I was going to go into inpatient treatment, I was going to do everything in my power to do whatever I had to in order to get well.  That meant lifting the blinders over my eyes.  It meant that when the list of symptoms was presented I had to be honest with myself.  It was a horrifying experience to realize that I had spent the vast majority of my life trying to please everyone.  That I had put all of my energies into making sure that I was liked...by everyone. 

No wonder I was always tired.  It's absolutely draining to calculate everything that you say, do, wear and project in a way designed to make sure that EVERYONE accepts you.  It's draining, because, quite frankly, it's not possible to make sure that everyone accepts you.  There are people that I run across that simply don't like me.  I may or may not know why, but I would spend so much time focusing on making the people who didn't like me change their minds, that I neglected the people who DID love me and care about me.  And I neglected me.  My feelings didn't matter, theirs did.  My problems didn't matter, theirs did.  If I could just say the right thing, dress the right way, then maybe I could gain their love.

Fact is, some people just don't like me.  Some people just don't like you.  And that's their issue, not mine, not yours.

You've heard the saying that the biggest step is admitting that you have a problem.  In my case, that's true.  Don't get me wrong.  Fixing this is really hard.  I had been thinking in this codependent way for so long that it was now just instinct.  I had to retrain my brain.  I think of it like training a puppy.  

The puppies instinct tells him that when he has to go to the bathroom, he should go.  The puppy's human has the job of teaching the puppy that he only goes to the bathroom outside.  It's a matter of small steps.  First it's praise and rewards for going when you take him outside.  Then you train them to go to the door and its praise and rewards for scratching at the door to be let out.  Eventually the dog is trained and will hold it for practically forever until he's let outside.

First I had to reward myself for noticing what I was doing.  Ok, I got over involved, but I NOTICED it.  Then a reward for stopping myself midway through over involvement.  Then a reward for not getting over involved.

It's a long process and if you suffer from codependency, you will have back slips.  The important thing is to NOT beat yourself up for the slip.  You reward yourself for noticing and try to do better next time.  The rewards are always something that is self care.  A nap, a book, and an "Atta girl"!

I'm not going to blow smoke up your butt and tell you that I'm cured.  I'm not.  It takes a lot more then recognition of the problem and a few months of work for that.  But I'm a LOT better.  I see it when it happens.  And I'm often able to stop getting myself over involved.  Not always, but often.  

That boyfriend is now married and has newborn children.  We haven't spoken since we finally split, but I hear about him now and then from mutual friends.  Has he fixed his life?  I don't know.  He seems to be doing well, and I don't pry for information from our mutual friends, because, frankly, I don't want that information.  He's not in my life, and I doubt that he would want me to know too much.   And I don't even need to know if he is a problem, because I wouldn't want to risk getting sucked in.    

So...me? Codependent? 

Yup.

But I'm getting better!

Still breathing....

Why do we care - Royal Baby

 Well, it's finally happened!  The Royal Baby has arrived.  A sweet little bundle of joy that has England in the throes of glee and Americans, at least the ones I know, divided as to whether or not we even care.  

Do I think that this deserves to be top news story on every single channel that has any news to deliver?  No, I don't.  Much more is going on here that we need to be aware of.   However, it's nice to see something happy on the news for once.  

But why do those of us who care, care?  

For me, it goes back to Diana.  A common woman who married a Prince.  I was young at the time and enchanted by the Cinderella story I was seeing.  I got up early and I watched the wedding.  I bought the souvenier book.  Geekier still, I still have the book in a box, protected!  Will I buy the souvenier book for this as yet un-named Prince?  Probably.  

Anyway, Diana.  Cinderella.  Ugly Prince and not so charming, but still.  As a young woman I watched her buck palace tradition and do things the way that she felt they needed to be done.  She was a role model for taking control of your own life and doing what you believe is right, whether or not others agree.  

I was proud of her for getting divorced.  Like I said, the Prince was not so charming and divorcing him for her own self-preservation was the right decision.  I continued to follow the travels and benevolance of this woman and watched carefully the way her children were growing into men more like her then their father.  Young men who followed her example and were rarely seen in public with their father. 

I think that when someone we admire dies, we are interested in the children that person leaves behind.  Will they hold true to the legacy of the deceased parent?  Will they continue to grow on the path that parent put them on or go off into a life of torment and grief and ultimately self-destruction?  Harry had me worried for a few minutes, but no longer!

Now that the next generation has come along, I think that those of us who are interested are interested because we want to see how William and Kate raise that new baby boy.  Are they going to go the way of Diana and do things the way they see fit?  Or will they bow to royal tradition and hand the child to nannies and be less involved in the rearing of their children?  

I'm hoping that the picture to the right tells me everything that I want to know.  It's no accident that Kate emerged from the hospital wearing a blue polka dot dress the way Diana did all those years ago when William was born.  The royals plan things to the last detail and this was no exception, I'm sure.  My hope is that this means that Kate and William plan to do things their way, as William's mother did.  

Many find this interest in the royals to be ridiculous.  After all, we did fight a war to get rid of this crap right?  But, I personally believe that our interest started with Diana.  We don't much care about the queen and we care very little about Charles and Camilla.  It's the ones who go their own way that we watch closely.  Because they are the ones who show us that no matter how much pressure is brought to bear (a whole country's worth?) you can still do things your way.

Just my two cents worth.

Who is this chick anyway?

So I guess introductions are in order.  My name is Leslie and I'm a 43 year old woman married to an extremely wonderful (and thankfully patient) man named Joe.  I have three stepchildren from Joe's previous marriage and we've been blessed with a beautiful grandson as well. 

I lived in Pennsylvania for my entire 42 years of life, within 20 miles of where I was born.  Joe and I moved to South Carolina a year ago so that he could get a job at Boeing.  I spent many years working in the title insurance industry till I finally burned out in spectacular fashion two Novembers ago with my second nervous breakdown. That breakdown now defines me.  Not because it happened, but because of what I've learned.  

How it happened:  I was working for a new start-up title company after being laid off from a great job that I loved, because of the housing meltdown.  I didn't think that opening a new title company was a great idea in the market we were facing, but a job is a job and I really needed one.  

I was working for a husband and wife that I considered friends.  However, business was harder and harder to come by.  I was unable to pull previous clients, partly because I didn't want to screw over my old boss and partly because I'm a shitty saleswoman.  In fact, in my hiring contract, I specifically had it written in that sales was NOT part of my job.  I also continually tried to get the husband to get his title insurance license so that if everything every happened to me, the business could continue.  To his detriment, he did not listen to me.  

Monday before Thanksgiving 2011 I woke up and couldn't even face getting out of bed, let alone going to work.  However, I had a therapy appointment scheduled before work, and my therapist, Betty, was always quite amazing at helping me work through my issues.  I had been on anxiety and depression meds for a few years and had been in therapy for probably close to 10 years by that point.  Meds, with no therapy, is not useful.  You must face the demons and learn to overcome them or the meds are just masking your symptoms and you will never get better, But I digress.

I forced myself out of bed, got dressed and got in the car.  I had been crying on and off the whole time.  When I started my car, I was faced with my biggest pet peeve, Christmas music on the radio before Thanksgiving had even arrived.  Now angry, I began crying harder.  The drive to Betty's office was something that I probably shouldn't have done, for safety's sake, but I could only think of getting to this safe place and finding a way to calm down.  What happened at this safe place, was that my brain completely let go on me.  Probably because I knew it was a safe place to allow it to happen.  

The hardest decision that I ever made was allowing Betty to interrupt my husband at work to come and help me.  I was strong.  I didn't need help, I could get through this.  But the more she begged me (privacy laws prevented her from doing it on her own) the more I realized that it had to happen.  I also allowed her to call my bosses to let them know what was happening and that I wouldn't be in that day.  
When my husband arrived it was decided that the hospital was the only option.  Joe drove me to the emergency room and I remember only a couple things from that day.  One of those things is that I willingly signed myself into the psych ward.  

I spent a week in the psych ward.  It was not a pleasant week, but I learned a lot about myself.  I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and very low spectrum bi-polar disorder.  My husband ran himself ragged that week, going to work during the day, stopping at home to pick up things I needed, coming to the hospital for visiting hours, then going home, shoving dinner down his throat and trying to get to sleep.  Rinse. Repeat.  

My bosses called my husband once during that week.  They weren't calling to see how I was, they were calling to ask him to bring work to the hospital for me to do.  He quit my job for me that day.  

Upon my release from the hospital I was admitted to a day program for a month.  Monday through Friday, 9 to 3.  Group therapy, art therapy, one on one sessions.  This was were I learned that I was severely codependent.  I had never heard of the condition but once I saw the symptoms, I realized that I had nearly all of them. Melody Beattie takes pages upon pages in her book "Codependent No More" to define codependency.  She lists 231 symptoms.  231 symptoms.  Those symptoms are grouped into 14 different groups: care taking, low self-worth, repression, obsession, controlling, denial, dependency, poor communication, weak boundaries, lack of trust, anger, sex problems, miscellaneous and progressive.  You can find the full list of symptoms here. I have way way more than half of these symptoms. 

After the one month day program, I moved to a month of evening group sessions.  We talked about our day, the road bumps we encountered and received help on dealing with those road bumps.  

 A one week stint in the psych ward, 2 months at outpatient treatment and continuing therapy, resulted in a shift in perception that has lowered my anxiety, mitigated my depression and allowed me to live my life with happiness.  

I learned that there are many buttons in my mind that can be pushed to make me angry, frustrated, sad, hopeless and probably worst of all, compliant.  I've learned that my old bosses and others in my life, were and are, experts at pushing those buttons.  Sadly I lived a long time not being completely aware of those buttons and the people who were pushing them.  Too much pushing sent me down the path of a mental breakdown, but it also brought me out to new knowledge about myself.

Don't get me wrong, I still have THOSE days.  But I know now, what buttons are available to be pushed and what to expect when someone jabs their finger into one.  My success rate at dealing with these button pushing is getting better.  I don't always succeed, but noticing not succeeding is a success in it's own way.  

I'm happy to offer advice (I'm not a licensed anything except a notary public, so this will not be medical advice!) to help anyone who is suffering.  

Hopefully I haven't scared you away and you'll tune in for the next installment!

Until then...just breathe~

Dealing with death

Imposing title I suppose, but I have been wondering on this subject for a long time.  My grandparents died in 2002, a month apart, and I was only last year that I realized I never really dealt with any of it.  Too much was going on.  Pop-pop passed, we buried him, Mom-mom went to the hospital, she passed, we buried her.  It was like a dream.  But that's not what I'm wondering about.

I know you've seen it.  We've all seen it.  The cars on the road with the "In Memory" decals on the rear window.

I think about these people every time I see one.  And I wonder...does it help with the healing process or does it keep the person alive for the survivor and stop them from moving on?

I've never actually spoken to someone that has one of these decals...at least not that I'm aware of.

I have keepsakes from my grandparents.  I have my Grandfather's Navy ring on a chain and I wear it when I'm missing him.  I have a stuffed bird that I hug when I'm missing my Grandmother.  But, I can't imagine seeing their names every single time I look in my rear view mirror.  For me, that sounds like an unbelievably painful process.  To be reminded every single time I'm driving, multiple times in fact, that the person I loved is gone.  And what about when it's time to get rid of the car?  Does the pain of the loss become more intense because of the loss of the decal?  Can the decal be transferred to another vehicle?  I suppose that the small ones can, but not the full windshield wraps.  Does the person then suffer the loss all over again?

I ask these questions, because I honestly don't know the answers.  And I'm very interested in finding out the answers.

This is a post I put on my Facebook wall a couple days ago. I'm starting my blog with this post so you know what you are getting into by reading my blog.  I welcome your thoughts, although comments with slurs will be deleted...please try to stay polite!  Thanks!

Those of you who know me well know three things about me. I don't like labels (gay, straight, conservative, liberal, stupid, smart etc.), I don't like stereotypes and I don't like to talk politics on my wall. But, I'm starting to get frustrated with the labels, stereotypes and opinions posed as fact that I see posted on a daily basis. That said I'm gonna have myself a little rant...

I just got off the phone with a dear old friend of mine. This woman is a lesbian. We were on the phone for nearly two hours and the subject of gay marriage came up. My friend has been with her partner for 8 years. They are committed and have gone through lives ups and downs together for that time, just as any committed couple would.

I've seen many postings condemning any action to legalize gay marriage as just another way for the liberals to get more money out of the government. I've ignored many of these posts, commented on a few. But now I have something for the "conservatives" to think about.

Has it EVER occurred to you that this is NOT about money? Has it EVER occurred to you that maybe "gay" couples want to have the same rights as us "straight" people so that they can make sure that their partner is taken care of in the event of one partners death? That un-accepting family members, can not just take everything that the PARTNERSHIP has worked for away from the surviving partner?? That just possibly they want to have their partner make their end of life decisions, and not be blocked out, because of a law?

Some people are making this out as a strictly financial benefit. And it's true, their is a financial benefit. But, think about this for a minute. If you have been in a long term HETEROSEXUAL relationship and you are not married and you get hit by a bus tomorrow, do you want your partner or your parents to have your assets? Do you want your partner or your estranged siblings to make your end of life decisions for you? YOU can run down to city hall this afternoon and make your PARTNERSHIP legal. They can't. Yet, many of these couples have been together for decades and have no rights when their partner becomes sick or dies.

I could really give a crap about the political lines on this one, and don't EVEN spout the Bible at me because God says to treat our neighbors as we ourselves would like to be treated. It is an overriding religious value in every religion.

Liberal, conservative, gay or straight, I don't really care. Treat others as YOU YOURSELF would want to be treated.