Codependency
a key feature of unresolved abandonment.
It can affect your relationships with everyone – your friends, your lovers, your children, your family, your co-workers, etc.
Codependency is all about…
People pleasing
Being over-responsive to others’ needs
Sacrificing your own needs
Giving more than you get
Difficulty setting boundaries
Getting into emotionally non-mutual relationships
Codependency is fueled by primal abandonment fear and hidden shame – the need to serve others to be of any value – the shame of feeling unworthy of being kept on your own merit.
People with codependency tend to struggle with other aspects of unresolved abandonment, i.e.
Low self-esteem
Insecurity interfering in establishing healthy lasting relationships
Self-defeating patterns
Tendency toward addictive / compulsive behaviors including love addiction, alcohol, overeating…
How to Overcome Codependency?
People with long-standing abandonment issues (like codependency) can benefit by engaging in abandonment recovery on an ongoing basis – being in abandonment recovery, one day at a time.
The program’s five Akeru exercises heal the underlying abandonment wound, not by a single application, but by incorporating the tools into your daily life long term.
You can begin abandonment recovery at any time, and it’s never too late to start – even in your 80’s or 90’s. The program brings light, inspiration, and hope to your daily life.
Abandonment recovery is most effective in a people-helping-people setting where you can connect to others through sharing and peer support.
Is ongoing support available?
You can set up your own ongoing abandonment recovery support groups. The Abandonment Recovery Workbook (and here at www.abandonment.net) offers 50 topic questions and an easy to follow peer format to keep your groups going for a year or more. We also offer a protocol for professionally led abandonment recovery groups.
There have been hundreds of these groups established throughout the world, but we need many more thousands of them, so that they can be available in every community.
Option 2: In the meantime, join a 12 step self-help group in your community
I have long proposed the establishment of Abandonment Recovery Anonymous
*Abandonment Recovery’s 5 Akeru Exercises are compatible with 12 step recovery.
Abandonment Recovery Anonymous would create a stable structure for ongoing support in your community. Until such groups are established, you can join one of the other 12 step groups (above) that most closely relates to your issues.
One example is Codependency Anonymous (CoDa) “The only membership required is to want loving relationships and move beyond personal histories.”
In addition to Codependency Anonymous groups (CoDa) which are available in most communities, you may choose from *Adult Child of Alcoholic Anonymous * Emotions Anonymous *Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous *Alcoholics Anonymous *Narcotics Anonymous *Overeaters Anonymous *Gamblers Anonymous *Alanon *Naranon *Gammanon *Alateen, etc.
Contact number 800 780 8576
Sharing is healing. To keep the healing energy focused on your underlying abandonment wound, when you share in any of these groups, you can mention the terms “abandonment” or “abandonment recovery” or “underlying wound of abandonment” or “primal shame” “abandonment fear” or “abandonment trauma” or how abandonment has interfered in your relationships, self-esteem, etc.
The people in these programs are certainly no strangers to abandonment issues, whether they recognize it in these terms or not. Many of them will identify with you, it will raise consciousness, deepen the level of group sharing, and help everyone in the group.