On New Year’s Eve, I did an “outreach” to a CoDa member. This is something that can be done when you feel the burning need to talk to someone, simply to share if you need a listening ear, or to get advice/feedback.
My two issues I “outreached” about were:
- My great discomfort at holding myself back from trying to wake my husband up when he was running late for a work appointment.
- My “promise” to write back to a friend regarding an outstanding issue by December.
My Codependency
1. Husband
Codependents have a tendency to “save” people. They think people can’t live without them constantly having to save them from their actions or inaction. The underlying reason is an addiction to control. They want to control the people around them. They think they are responsible for other people’s actions.
My husband is a horribly tardy person who is not responsible with time. I always took it upon myself to wake him up every morning after we got married. Since I manage his schedule, I know what time his appointments are.
I was holding myself back from waking him, also filled with frustration on how a grown man can be so irresponsible. I was actually experiencing great physical discomfort in trying NOT to wake him!
2. Friend
This friend is a self-centered (and possibly Narcissistic), self-absorbed Borderline. My Codependency has held me back from telling her my thoughts in fear of her disliking me or having bad thoughts about me. Codependents are people-pleasers. They like to manipulate outcomes, i.e., people’s thoughts and reactions towards them.
My “promise” to her was to get back to her regarding what I call a misunderstanding, but what I now term as a failure to be honest and firm with my opinion. All in all, I don’t wish for this friend to be in my life anymore. I’ve put up long enough with her antics and self-absorbed nature all these years (when she visits me from her country of residence, she ends up talking about herself 90% of the duration, amongst other kinds of obnoxiousness).
I possibly continued the friendship for so long because I was grateful for her support toward me, and maybe I felt pity for her — her psychotic mother, her bad landlord, her unhappiness with her job, her unsupportive friends, etc etc…
Imagine, when she asked when I would get back to her, and I told her December, she threw it in my face saying I must think the world of myself to think that she was willing to wait for so long for my response! Well, she asked, and I gave her a reply, and this is the kind of reaction I get. She said some other nasty stuff, and I really don’t wish to be friends with vindictive, vengeful people.
Hours to midnight on NYE
My CoDa mate left me a voice message. She both comforted me and advised me with her feedback. I was listening to it late into the night, hours to the stroke of midnight.
Regarding that friend, I decided that I was ok to break that “promise”. I had so much anger in me regarding this matter. The emails I keep rewriting in my head just want to school this so-called friend. I will write to her when I am in a better state.
I learnt from my CoDa mate that the discomfort I experienced was due to my learning a New Behaviour, a New Habit. Because I am so used to my “comfort zone”, which is being controlling. This was new to me. I was glad to be enlightened.
This is the token I received at my first CoDa meeting 🙂
Front of CoDa token
Back of CoDa token