What keeps me up at night, part one
I'd mentioned a few posts back how I have co-dependency issues. It's all psychobabble rap to me. But I did seek out the rapper (babbler?), back when all the shit in my life started to hit the fan all at once, and had resolved to accept that person's educated conclusions and diagnoses. When the therapist and I recognized my baggage coming around the carousel I felt I had to claim it. But as a peg on which to hang my overcoat of woe, it's never felt quite right to me. Of course, that means I'm in DENIAL, right?

As I've come to understand it, co-dependency means if you care "too much" for someone else's problems, and pick up too much of the slack created by those problems, you're only making everything worse. You're enabling the "bad" (shorthand for pathological or addictive) behavior of the other person, because you can only feel better about yourself if you give all your time and attention to the other. And it's all your fault, and you have to accept it as such. If you pin it on the other person, you're taking on the dynamic of the other co-dependent role; suddenly that other person is enabling you.

If you fail to own up to your enabling role, the consequences get severe down the line. You get so wrapped up in the other person's needs and wants that you abandon pursuing fulfillment of your own. Your sense of worth is entirely dependent on the other person, and of course, that person needs you, couldn't survive without you, etc. So a dysfunctional symbiosis is created and they have a label for it. You put the label on your baggage and carry it everywhere you go. You go to groupthink sessions, read books and do "homework" exercises, sort through and repack that baggage until the contents fit, say, in a backpack. Easier to carry around than eight pieces of cruiserweight Samsonite but still there, and heavy as ever. You can never be completely rid of it, apparently.

Such a concise definition for my problems. Thanks, Doc. But why do I feel so, well, ripped off?

Though a lot of the premises in the co-dependency schema ring true for me, there's few people for whom they don't. Realistically, anyone who cares for another can be called "co-dependent" to some degree. You give someone love n' sunshine, you ought to get some back. What are the alternatives? Disdain? Apathy? Hostility?

Apparently so. Seems the only way I can avoid being co-dependent is to avoid any sort of dependency.

I'm looking at something now, a handout from those group therapy days:

Whenever my mind begins to focus on the life of another, I will gently remind myself to return my mind to the focus of self. I will take responsibility for the direction, quality and meaning I give my own life.

I will take responsibility for how I spend my time, how I choose to react, what meaning and importance I choose to give to what happens throughout the day around me.

I will choose the direction I will go in rather than being directed by my reaction to others in choosing the direction and tone of my day.

I will take responsibility for my feelings, knowing no one else can make me feel anything unless I allow it. I can choose serenity and inner peace that is not dependent on outside circumstances or other people.

Essentially, to avoid co-dependency, become antisocial. Or, at the very least, become an unapproachable prick. You'll never have a "co-dependency" problem, to be sure, because nobody will want anything to do with you. At least that's how I'm experiencing it these days.

I fear following this program has conditioned me to become cynical about loving and caring, because the moment I consider the remotest possibility of allowing such thoughts to emerge, the klaxons sound, the Mars lights revolve and HAL 9000 announces "I can't allow that, Dave."

If a person's words or kindnesses give me a glow, and I sit back in a quiet place to let those thoughts coalesce into something I might recognize as a good feeling, HAL says "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?"

And after I've turned down enough invitations to spend time with friends, let months go by without calling what's left of my family, left enough parties too early because I "didn't like the vibe," refuse to re-enter the dating scene because I feel too "exploitable," then wonder why nobody bothers with me anymore, HAL says "We are foolproof and incapable of error."

Hey, I'm serene. I'm at peace. I'd like to figure out how to keep those attributes without living in a cave. Maybe serenity and peace aren't all they're cracked up to be. Maybe if I watch 2001 again, I'll remember that Dave eventually figured out how to pull the plug on that fucker. 2:11:52 AM    comment []trackback []