I painted this about looking for love in all the wrong places — success, food, dopamine addiction, and erasing myself in relationships so I would be more easy to love.

I wonder how many of us can relate to that feeling.

Epictetus opens his handbook with one distinction he returns to constantly: some things are within our power, and some things never were. What's ours, he says, is our own judgment, our own choices, our own actions. What's never been ours, no matter how badly we want it, is other people, their opinions of us, whether they stay, whether they approve, whether they finally give us the reassurance we're waiting for. That distinction sounds almost too simple to matter, but it quietly explains a lot of what makes codependent patterns so exhausting. The checking for a reply. The replaying of a conversation to see if you said the right thing. The relief when someone seems okay with you again, followed almost immediately by the next search for a sign that they're not. None of that is really about the other person. It's an attempt to control something that was never available to control in the first place, their inner state, through actions that were always only available to you, your own. This isn't a call to stop caring about people, Epictetus wasn't arguing for that either. It's closer to noticing where your actual authority ends. You can be honest, consistent, and kind. You cannot make someone feel safe, stay regulated, or choose you. Once that line gets clearer, a strange thing tends to happen, the exhausting monitoring starts to lose its grip, not because you care less, but because you've stopped trying to operate machinery that was never yours to run. If this sounds familiar, I'm curious where you first noticed that line for yourself, was there a specific moment you realized you'd been trying to manage someone else's reaction rather than your own actions?

I am in a 3 year marriage where things don't seem to improve and some new challenge keeps fracturing my emotional connection and faith in my marital bond.

Most of the challenges stem from my husband being a stickler and a competitive person about the small stuff and the fundamental stuff.

This has led to me gradually lose agency over my life and my identity - all things in every aspect of my life that made me what I am I have mostly lost or suppressed or not been able to invest in further.

My question is what is it in my personality or mindset that I keep trying and trying while also standing up for myself in this relationship. Why do I have to completely be broken apart and have my pain be validated by those who have seen the struggle to allow myself to start acting in my interest. Why am I struggling to do right by myself even when I know that's the way to go. Despite all this, my brain wants to sequentially solve stuff - first solve marriage, then resurrect life lost in the last 3 years.

Tldr: why am I struggling to focus on myself in a rough marriage and hyper focusing on solving the marriage first?

Wanted to see if anyone feels the same. I read a lot of posts on this sub about attachments to partners and how to deal with that, but my problem is that im kind of okay without a partner.

I'm able to be in a relationship without getting detrimentally attached. I'm okay with being single. My problem is that I literally hate being alone. I can go out and have a great night with friends. It can be 2am and I'm exhausted. But the sadness and despair creeps in the second I lay my head down in my bed by myself.

Doing anything by myself or for myself just sucks. I have no interest in it. I'm bored and sad. I dont like doing hobbies alone. Watching TV is slightly worse alone. I just like being with people.

Idk. I dont think that I hate myself. I think im pretty fun when im socializing. I think im pretty. I just only get satisfaction when im with someone else that I like.

This sucks because people get annoyed when you reach out too much. They think you have no friends. They start to think you're obsessed with them. Thats not the case, I just ALWAYS have to be with or on the phone with someone to not feel sad.

Anyone dealt with this? Anything that helped?

This is meant for my parents (dad is dead, mom alive but uncapable of understanding it). I hope this helps someone...

Every person who crossed my path, from the days of childhood to the present, stands exposed now.

I see you. I see your criminal negligence in choosing parenthood while drowning in your own misery of damage. You impressed your dysfunction into me like a brand, layer by layer, manufacturing the very wounds you claimed to protect against. All of this being done until I couldn't tell where the conditioning ended and I began.

I can see right now the blueprint of the prison I've lived in my whole life.

What you called “guidance” was neglect. What you called “normal” was dysfunction. What you called "family" was a factory of trauma. You didn’t raise me, you imprinted me with every wound you never had the courage to heal yourself. You created this. You built a monster with your negligence and inability to act, this cowardice, the refusal to heal before you harmed.

And now, with precision searing through all of the fog, all of the self-deception that kept me compliant, kept me confused, kept me orbiting your damage as if it were gravity itself only to keep drawing me back closer, and all of the protective narratives I built to survive you, I have chosen to no longer carry your legacy. You built this version of me. You engineered it through your negligent ignorance and your refusal to grow.

That responsibility is now yours to carry, not as punishment, but as truth. And one day, when you're ready, when you can finally stand alone before your own reflection and if you are ever so lucky, you will see it. You will know it’s presence because you can taste, you can smell, the pain. And only then, you will see what it has cost me to break free, to dismantle every lie, to become myself.

I can see on my own now that I was conditioned to believe that every defense I raised, every story I told myself about resilience and strength, was just another layer of the same architecture, built to keep me functional within the system you designed, never free of it.

The endless forgiveness, all of the compassion, every ounce of unwavering acceptance that I manufactured for your failures, was only the conditioning speaking for me while covering the voice of the real man I am. It was yet another invisible wire keeping me compliant to keep me from naming you as the architect of my suffering. You were never protectors. You were never guides. You were the endless supply of fuel for the force of destruction that has become. It is now that I stand and choose, free from your influence, to name you clearly. You were the architects of pain I will no longer carry forward.

This is not an ending. It is the first true beginning.

I am to outgrow you. I am to overcome what was done not by forgiving but accepting. Not by pretending the damage is not real, but by refusing to let your failures define my future.

I am not the sum of your wounds. I am not the product of your negligence. I am the one who has broken free from the architecture you built, who is dismantling every pattern you embedded, who will rebuild from a foundation of my own choosing.

I am without your conditioning. I can now become who I was meant to be before you got to me.

Not from only you, but from every version of myself I built to survive you. From the child who learned to carry shame as a battle scar and to wear it as a medal. From the boy who mistook silence for strength and compliance for love. And from the man who confused survival with living, who built walls so high I called them home and would seek refuge within.

And that should be only to terrify me as all my life, your voice was the only compassion I thought I knew, even when it led me in circles, even when it was only to have kept me compliant. Without it, I should be uncharted. I should be in the raw. I am supposed to have been exposed.

And yet still, I would rather be shattered into a thousand unrecognizable pieces and only to taste the air of freedom once than remain whole and suffocating in a prison of codependent compromise

I can now become who I was meant to be before you got to me.

Before the first wound disguised as wisdom. Before I learned that to be loved, I had to vanish. Before I became so fluent in erasure that I mistook my own absence for peace.

And all of that, standing here as if a child scared by the thunder having the feeling of uncertainty as a boy washing over, I am choosing myself anyway. To become that person that survived beneath all the conditioning. I am certain that I will not recognize him if we ever met.

And this is the bravest thing any person in this life can do. You chose not to. The time has come for you to own the pain. I release you.

I've been a member for CODA for 18 months and am very grateful for it. I just wanted to share here and maybe someone can relate or offer advice.

I've come to realise that my boundaries in romantic relationships and dating were pretty poor/blurry and I've been focusing on that and I think I've come a long way. I was also aware of my boundaries in general being pretty loose, but today I just one of those WTF have I done with my life/ how will I ever get there moments.

I'm a teacher and although I know I have many qualities that make me a good teacher, firm boundaries isn't one. I am currently covering a class for a few weeks so of course it's more difficult than having my own class, but I struggle to be consistent with the class over the day. The day usually starts well but after lunch it all tends to go downhill. I've gone on a bit of a spiral realizing how loose my boundaries as a parent have been and feeling really guilty about that too.

Can anyone share their experience, strength and hope about how they worked on their boundaries, or any resources to recommend?

Thanks

'No good work comes from unrest.

Unrest, fear, anger, or sadness may motivate us. These feelings are sometimes intended to compel action. But our best work emerges after these feelings have been replaced by peace.

We will not accomplish our task any sooner, or any better, by performing it out of a sense of urgency, fear, anger, or sadness.

Let go of unrest. Let peace fill the void. We do not have to forfeit our power, our God given personal power – or our peace – to do the work as we are called upon to do today. We will be given all the power we need to do what we are meant to do, when it is time.

Let peace come first. Then proceed. The task will get done, naturally and on time.

Today, I will get peaceful first, and let my work and life emerge from that base.'

By Melodie Beattie

Months of her telling me she wasn't cheating on me all ended with (you guessed it) her instantly cheating on me the moment I made any choices for my own wellbeing.

It was a constant cycle of her spending too much time and energy on him, ignoring me, then when I am on the verge of a breakdown, soothing me, giving me her full attention, giving me a glimpse of the woman she was for five great years before this man entered our lives. I would feel seen, I would cry, I would be soothed, I would have hope.

And then she'd do it all again.

A few weeks before the relationship ended I finally told her I didn't want to be soothed by the person who was hurting me, I wanted to just live with my hurt and process it with people who I could trust. I don't want attention if it's shaped like this.

A week later I'm packing my bags, and an hour after I'm gone she's sleeping with him. And when she finally decides to let me know that she wants to break up, and that she has been doing this behind my back for two weeks, she starts sending me coping strategies and adding breakup songs to our playlist and then (after a week of denying it was cheating) finally confessed that she cheated on her most precious person who she loves, and how I'm her soulmate and she's so stricken that she hurt me.

And for a few hours it worked. I was telling myself "If she broke up with him now I'd be back."

Today picking up the last of my stuff I asked how she was feeling, if she was talking to her network (Who all hate the man she cheated on me with). She said she talks to them, but she just wishes anyone wanted to celebrate the joy she's feeling. She says that to me.

Yeah that about snapped me out of it.

Today it is easy to say: I deserve better. No more contact. No more caring about a woman who does not care about me in the slightest. No more lovebombs to lure me in just to say or do the cruelest possible thing.

I saw an old post from a few years ago with a link to a discord server, but the link is old now and no longer works. I'm just looking desperately for support.

I got some realizations and intuitions about people-pleasing and social anxiety, so I want to share with you. You can add your own opinions, counterarguments, etc.

First of all, I will talk about people-pleasing. Why does anyone people-please? From my analysis and observations, it's for following reasons.

1) Exploded outside self

This is, I think, one of the schools of thought or common concepts where, when the sense of self gets abused in childhood, given the trauma and abuse, the person explodes in two manners:

A. The inside manner, where the person becomes a self-centered, selfish, narcissistic type at a certain factor

B. The outside manner where the person focused on others' well-being: the actual people pleaser, who does people-pleasing and does not have boundaries, got attracted to a narcissist and got trauma-bonded.

The personality which explodes their sense of self outside: they do the people-pleasing, and they are the actual people pleaser. They often operate under covert contracts: "I will sacrifice my needs and anticipate your every whim, and in exchange, you must never abandon me, criticize me, or make me feel unsafe."

2) To hide the EGO

You might think it's a bit of a blurry point, like people please to hide the ego. Let me explain. Here, I am talking about just people-pleasing and not the people pleaser. If any personality type, like a narcissist or a very self-centered personality type, wants to fit in society, they generally have a very large amount of ego. What they do is they people-please, and they behave like they have very low self-esteem in front of others to fit in society until they have the power.

Because they will directly show the ego, they will be left out. They will get stuck in the eyes of other people, and people will directly put boundaries on their face. Because they have their own sense of self-respect and, actually, they are normal people

I'm a metalhead(28m), and Ive always been into metalheads/goth girls and lately everytime i see one on social media that i find attractive i immediately want to text her.

Right now I'm going through that. There's this girl i added on Facebook and followed on Ig and she is always liking some of my stuff on Facebook and for the first time i talked to her through ig and she replied. We only had a small talk but i wanted to keep talking and i wanted to tell her that i want to meet her but i feel its impulsive and maybe intense and creepy.

I wish i wasn't this way, but sometimes idk how to talk to women.

Promise Ten

"Fears of failure and success will leave us, as we intuitively make healthier choices." BRB p. 591 

While most folks believe they want to be successful, we know that many ACAs fear success. This is a fear born from years of regular servings of failure with side orders of abandonment, shame and humiliation. To be successful means that the spotlight can be turned on us, which recalls painful memories of never being good enough.

As we learn to connect with our inner loving parent, our Inner Child, and our Higher Power, our intuitive sense is sharpened. No longer dependent on old tapes or the critical voice inside of our heads, we are free to use this intuitive sense to make healthy decisions. At the same time, we are clear that we are on a spiritual path and that every situation is a spiritual lesson. There is no way to fail on this path.

Failure is the domain of our inner critic's all-or-nothing thinking. As we learn to see this for what it is, we filter everything around us through our inner loving parent. We become attuned to our Inner Child's quiet and steady voice as it tells us the better course for our spiritual, physical, and emotional development. We release our fears.

On this day I will listen for guidance from my purest Inner Child's perspective and trust that my fears will lose their grip on me. I am open to being guided to higher levels of spiritual, emotional, and physical consciousness.

Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families World Service 
Organization, Inc.

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