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<blockquote data-quote="recoveringenabler" data-source="post: 714656" data-attributes="member: 13542"><p>Hi More2Life.</p><p></p><p>I am in No. Ca. and our largest HMO offered a codependency course thru their Substance Abuse Program, if by any chance you are in CA. and are a member of this HMO, check into it, it saved me. If not, contact NAMI and if you can, get yourself into one of their parent courses. NAMI may be able to recommend a therapist too. Get as much support as you can in <u>every</u> way you can.....I was in CODA, private therapy and group therapy with other parents of difficult adult kids, I connected on this forum daily, I read scores of books.....I changed my diet, began an exercise program and put the entire focus on myself. Another avenue which was invaluable was acupuncture. It provided instant relaxation and calm, as well as offering balance and more health.</p><p></p><p>For those of us with the kind of backgrounds you and I had, codependency issues can become the normal. I had to work on myself first. I had to be taught a different way of not only responding but perceiving the situation very differently. I know you love your daughter and grandchildren, however, at least for me, I had to<u> love myself more.</u> I had to start from that premise and as a result I am a much better grandmother to my granddaughter whom I raised. I am more present, more loving and more available because my life is not taken up being an enabler. There is a distinction between giving with love and enabling......enabling is often about lowering our own fear and anxiety, very much like a drug addict. Our "fix" is to enable, then our own fears subside for the moment......until the next drama where our fears arise......we have to stop the patterned response. The only way I could do that was by professional help. It disrupted my own belief about myself to learn that codependency was to stop MY anxiety and fear.... and not the all giving, loving stance I liked to see it as. As the quote goes, "first the truth will piss you off and then it will free you!" Each time I announced my "faulty" thinking, a therapist would offer a new and different way to consider. At first it made me angry......but little by little I came to see that they were right, there were many ways of responding and I was stuck in one, enabling. A clue they offered was that when you give with loving kindness, you feel good, when you enable, you often feel bad, resentful, worried. (But don't take that so literally, it's simply a guideline, I listened to other group members in the parent course 'argue for their limitations' by continuing to say, "no I always feel loving and great when I give (enable)." Unfortunately those folks kept their limited thinking and stayed in the dysfunctional setup.)</p><p></p><p> The remarkable thing, More2Life, was that each step brought relief, a new sense of my own power, and peace of mind and joy began bubbling up too. I had been encased in the cement of only one way of responding and learning I had many ways of responding freed me up in ways I am still amazed by.</p><p></p><p>I was in the Codependency course for 2 years. It's a year long course, but I continued into their third phase because my life was changing in such positive ways. I had operated out of the Codependency model for my entire life, thinking this was what love was, this was how you parented, this was how you gave. It was attached to my self perception too because you get a lot of pats on the back for being such a <em>good giver.</em> You also attract people who are takers......and I did my share of that, as it sounds like you did too. I became willing to give up the inauthentic way I was living to find my authentic self, thereby ensuring a very different way of life receiving love, being more lighthearted, having fun and accepting myself.</p><p></p><p>The only power we really have is to change ourselves. My suggestion to you would be to take a time out from your daughter and grandkids. Find a therapist, get support and start learning how to love and accept yourself. If you enter back into your daughter's world, you will not be strong enough to keep your word to stop and the craziness will continue. Remove yourself for the time being and work exclusively on yourself. You can communicate that to your daughter and the grands as well, that Grandma is taking a time out for herself. Without the continuing manipulations you will have a bit of peace and give yourself some time to start to break the lifelong patterns.</p><p></p><p><em>"I hope my daughter comes around. But what if she doesn't?" </em>More2Life, your daughter is not likely to "come around" especially if she is a borderline without professional help. Waiting for that to happen is a set up for failure and allows you all to continue with the dysfunctional patterning you are all comfortable with. Stop. Remove yourself temporarily. Concentrate on YOU. Once you make that internal commitment to do that, you will see that things begin to change fairly quickly......that internal shift is a huge one, a hard one, but it is necessary if you want to get yourself out of the rabbit hole. Choose YOU. If you let go for a little while, no one is going to die, the likelihood is nothing negative will happen, you do not control any of it. Even though we codependents feel responsible for everything, we are not. Even though we feel we must act now or we will explode, we will not. If you can make it thru that fearful time when you want so much to act, to help, to enable, you will get to the other side and from there you can make different choices. It's not easy, which is why I recommend professional help. My experience is that those who seek support move through this and find a very different kind of life on the other side of codependency. <em><u>You can do this. </u></em></p><p></p><p>Every time you set a boundary and then cave in, you reinforce that your word means nothing and you can easily be manipulated. We train those around us to treat us a certain way and I had to re-train everyone around me once I made the changes.....</p><p></p><p> When I entered the codependency course, the first thing the therapist said to the group was that codependents usually wait to find help until they are so sick and so tired and so worn out that they become willing to do "whatever it takes" to feel better. That was true for me. I was at the end. It broke for me too.</p><p></p><p><em>"it's so difficult to even think of detaching from them. I love them all so much.</em>" Detachment doesn't mean you do not see your daughter or grandkids (although it can), it means you detach from their behaviors, dramas, bad choices, manipulations, chaos and anything else that is a negative for you. I still have a limited relationship with my daughter, she now understands my boundaries and respects them, however, she is who she is and continues to live her life the way that she sees fit, we both know I cannot participate in the parts that cause me stress and worry.....over time we've identified those parts and both of us are aware of them. Most often parents look at it like either I help or they are homeless.......or either I help or they will starve.....or either I help or they will die. I've learned that when we look at anything like that, we can be fairly certain that our own issues have clouded our ability to see any other options so we stay stuck in the either/or thinking and as a result, <u>nothing changes. </u></p><p></p><p>My granddaughter has reaped the benefits of my giving up enabling.....she and I have a wonderful relationship unburdened by my past codependency issues.....it's real and loving and steadfast. Your grands will reap that benefit too when you are who you want to be......you will model to them a healthy, loving, available grandma who loves herself enough to stop others from harming her. That is a great lesson for them especially with their mom, it will give them the courage they may need one day to make the same choice. I know it helped my granddaughter who chose to remove herself from her mothers life, because she valued her own. It starts with you.</p><p></p><p>Hang in there.....you're on the path.......you're not alone......you can do this.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="recoveringenabler, post: 714656, member: 13542"] Hi More2Life. I am in No. Ca. and our largest HMO offered a codependency course thru their Substance Abuse Program, if by any chance you are in CA. and are a member of this HMO, check into it, it saved me. If not, contact NAMI and if you can, get yourself into one of their parent courses. NAMI may be able to recommend a therapist too. Get as much support as you can in [U]every[/U] way you can.....I was in CODA, private therapy and group therapy with other parents of difficult adult kids, I connected on this forum daily, I read scores of books.....I changed my diet, began an exercise program and put the entire focus on myself. Another avenue which was invaluable was acupuncture. It provided instant relaxation and calm, as well as offering balance and more health. For those of us with the kind of backgrounds you and I had, codependency issues can become the normal. I had to work on myself first. I had to be taught a different way of not only responding but perceiving the situation very differently. I know you love your daughter and grandchildren, however, at least for me, I had to[U] love myself more.[/U] I had to start from that premise and as a result I am a much better grandmother to my granddaughter whom I raised. I am more present, more loving and more available because my life is not taken up being an enabler. There is a distinction between giving with love and enabling......enabling is often about lowering our own fear and anxiety, very much like a drug addict. Our "fix" is to enable, then our own fears subside for the moment......until the next drama where our fears arise......we have to stop the patterned response. The only way I could do that was by professional help. It disrupted my own belief about myself to learn that codependency was to stop MY anxiety and fear.... and not the all giving, loving stance I liked to see it as. As the quote goes, "first the truth will piss you off and then it will free you!" Each time I announced my "faulty" thinking, a therapist would offer a new and different way to consider. At first it made me angry......but little by little I came to see that they were right, there were many ways of responding and I was stuck in one, enabling. A clue they offered was that when you give with loving kindness, you feel good, when you enable, you often feel bad, resentful, worried. (But don't take that so literally, it's simply a guideline, I listened to other group members in the parent course 'argue for their limitations' by continuing to say, "no I always feel loving and great when I give (enable)." Unfortunately those folks kept their limited thinking and stayed in the dysfunctional setup.) The remarkable thing, More2Life, was that each step brought relief, a new sense of my own power, and peace of mind and joy began bubbling up too. I had been encased in the cement of only one way of responding and learning I had many ways of responding freed me up in ways I am still amazed by. I was in the Codependency course for 2 years. It's a year long course, but I continued into their third phase because my life was changing in such positive ways. I had operated out of the Codependency model for my entire life, thinking this was what love was, this was how you parented, this was how you gave. It was attached to my self perception too because you get a lot of pats on the back for being such a [I]good giver.[/I] You also attract people who are takers......and I did my share of that, as it sounds like you did too. I became willing to give up the inauthentic way I was living to find my authentic self, thereby ensuring a very different way of life receiving love, being more lighthearted, having fun and accepting myself. The only power we really have is to change ourselves. My suggestion to you would be to take a time out from your daughter and grandkids. Find a therapist, get support and start learning how to love and accept yourself. If you enter back into your daughter's world, you will not be strong enough to keep your word to stop and the craziness will continue. Remove yourself for the time being and work exclusively on yourself. You can communicate that to your daughter and the grands as well, that Grandma is taking a time out for herself. Without the continuing manipulations you will have a bit of peace and give yourself some time to start to break the lifelong patterns. [I]"I hope my daughter comes around. But what if she doesn't?" [/I]More2Life, your daughter is not likely to "come around" especially if she is a borderline without professional help. Waiting for that to happen is a set up for failure and allows you all to continue with the dysfunctional patterning you are all comfortable with. Stop. Remove yourself temporarily. Concentrate on YOU. Once you make that internal commitment to do that, you will see that things begin to change fairly quickly......that internal shift is a huge one, a hard one, but it is necessary if you want to get yourself out of the rabbit hole. Choose YOU. If you let go for a little while, no one is going to die, the likelihood is nothing negative will happen, you do not control any of it. Even though we codependents feel responsible for everything, we are not. Even though we feel we must act now or we will explode, we will not. If you can make it thru that fearful time when you want so much to act, to help, to enable, you will get to the other side and from there you can make different choices. It's not easy, which is why I recommend professional help. My experience is that those who seek support move through this and find a very different kind of life on the other side of codependency. [I][U]You can do this. [/U][/I] Every time you set a boundary and then cave in, you reinforce that your word means nothing and you can easily be manipulated. We train those around us to treat us a certain way and I had to re-train everyone around me once I made the changes..... When I entered the codependency course, the first thing the therapist said to the group was that codependents usually wait to find help until they are so sick and so tired and so worn out that they become willing to do "whatever it takes" to feel better. That was true for me. I was at the end. It broke for me too. [I]"it's so difficult to even think of detaching from them. I love them all so much.[/I]" Detachment doesn't mean you do not see your daughter or grandkids (although it can), it means you detach from their behaviors, dramas, bad choices, manipulations, chaos and anything else that is a negative for you. I still have a limited relationship with my daughter, she now understands my boundaries and respects them, however, she is who she is and continues to live her life the way that she sees fit, we both know I cannot participate in the parts that cause me stress and worry.....over time we've identified those parts and both of us are aware of them. Most often parents look at it like either I help or they are homeless.......or either I help or they will starve.....or either I help or they will die. I've learned that when we look at anything like that, we can be fairly certain that our own issues have clouded our ability to see any other options so we stay stuck in the either/or thinking and as a result, [U]nothing changes. [/U] My granddaughter has reaped the benefits of my giving up enabling.....she and I have a wonderful relationship unburdened by my past codependency issues.....it's real and loving and steadfast. Your grands will reap that benefit too when you are who you want to be......you will model to them a healthy, loving, available grandma who loves herself enough to stop others from harming her. That is a great lesson for them especially with their mom, it will give them the courage they may need one day to make the same choice. I know it helped my granddaughter who chose to remove herself from her mothers life, because she valued her own. It starts with you. Hang in there.....you're on the path.......you're not alone......you can do this. [/QUOTE]
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