We are trained that being good is being selfless because not having a self was not posing a threat to our overbearing caregiver.
I am a recovering codependent. I have spent all my life not knowing there is any other way to receive love but to give up on your self for the other. I have spent 34 years of my life entrapped in a story I kept telling myself that if only I had been less of myself for them they would have loved me more. I kept telling myself that I never did enough to keep them and that I made the mistake of wanting to be happy myself. "No" is never an option for a codependent. Fear is always a good shield against being blindsided by abandonment, so my entire being was hijacked by a crippling and maiming generalized anxiety that ate at my soul like a greedy parasite.
It was always my fault and my responsibility to make things work, never theirs too. I saw my partner like a spoiled baby that had to have all of their needs met a.s.a.p without any sort of regards to and of my own. In the back of my head I knew that I had to perform at the highest level possible all the time to please them because if they're not fully pleased all of the time,they will leave without any regrets. It's like forcing myself to keep a stranger in a relationships with me, a stranger that did not have any feelings for me and never took my best intrest as part of themselves. It never even crossed my mind that I could actually speak my needs to them. It would be a very unpardonable mistake from my part, one that they will never get over. The only hopes I had was that what they wanted was by accident what I wanted to.
Codependents learn that only good people deserve love and get love. You learn that you cannot be less than what is expected of you because that means you'll end up alone and dismissed.
We are trained that being good is being selfless because not having a self was not posing a threat to our overbearing caregiver.
When you learn codependency you automatically learn there are people "in power" over you and then there is you, who wait for the people "in power" to tell you that what you want is either good or bad. You learn that having personal power and being empowered is bad and is threatening to your caregivers. Your caregivers love to have control over you and when they feel they lose control they become threatened and they put you in place.
You carry this with you to adulthood. When you fall in love, you place your whole being and power in the lap of the one who loves you. You know this to be the only acceptable way to be loved.
Comments