A personal story about a home repair dispute that became an unexpected lesson in boundaries, codependency, and not abandoning myself when my needs met resistance. I reflect on the drama triangle, over-explaining, and how learning to pause and stay grounded led to a better outcome.
I want to write about a recent situation that looked like a simple home repair issue, but turned into a very clear lesson for me about boundaries, codependency, and what happens inside me when my needs meet resistance.
This wasn’t about someone being right or wrong. It was about how quickly I lose my internal footing when conflict shows up, and how practicing healthier boundaries changed that experience.
Continue reading “Learning Healthy Boundaries Without Abandoning Myself”I can’t remember where I learned this, but it’s been extremely helpful to me and others in addiction recovery. A lot of it probably came from the ideas that Joe and Charlie cover in their step 4 mp3’s (there are 7-8 mp3’s there, I linked just to the first one), which I highly recommend. They discuss resentment and how we tend to use resentment to cover our own defects by focusing on others’ defects.
Continue reading “The Lies That Are Hidden In My Anger and Resentment”Over the years in recovery with my spouse, we have had different levels of disclosure between us based on where each of us are in recovery and what we needed at the time. Sometimes we are just going along in recovery with no particular needs other than some basic transparency. Sometimes she needs to build trust with me. Sometimes, she’s overwhelmed and needs a break. I outline each kind of disclosure we have used over the years below. In each case, we discuss as a couple what we both want and need and are in agreement on which level of disclosure we both want.
Continue reading “Connection with a spouse”I have found that pride is like codependency in its sneakiness. One good way for me to detect pride in myself is to look at how good of a follower I am. In the context of being a facilitator, for example, I can ask myself if I am following the guidelines (and my leaders) or not. If I am following them, am I following them with all my heart, wanting their ideas to work, and thereby I am being a good follower? If I do my own things that I think are better, then I am seeking praise for doing those things because my idea was better than theirs. This is the same thing Satan did with God’s plan. If Satan is anything like me when I’m doing this, he didn’t want to follow the plan because he could get glory for coming up with a better way of doing things.
I was locked into a deadly pride cycle as a facilitator for several years. I had a few years of physical sobriety and was the facilitator of an LDS 12-step meeting. I knew it all and “helped” and “saved” everyone I spoke to. The pride I had in my length of sobriety and in my facilitating position started to blind me to the lust that I was quietly allowing to creep back into my life. I had to start telling myself and others lies to maintain my status as facilitator and to keep my long sobriety that I was so proud of. That pride and the lust that crept in over those years cost me my family for a few months during separation once I came clean about the lies I had told myself and others. I had to drop the pride – I had to surrender everything. Anything I held onto slowly became a millstone around my neck dragging me down. God and Christ were the only things I could safely hold onto.
In the context of my main addictions, pride can blind me to my weakness, and like the addiction itself, can numb me to the point that I don’t think I need God’s help. The only way I have found to keep from falling to pride is through contact with group members through phone calls or at meetings. I am, through that contact, constantly reminded of the truth about my weaknesses and strengths and am kept on track.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
I like to think of step 6 as a way for me to gather up a bunch of my underlying addictions (character defects) and figure out what each one of them is giving me that makes me want to keep holding onto it. I can’t really become ready to have them removed if I’m holding onto them for some reason.
So, I went through my 4th step and gathered up all of my own character defects from the experiences I had documented into one big list. Impatience, anger, grumpiness, hatred, pride, denial, yelling at my kids, shame, codependency, selfishness, etc. Then I wrote next to each one what it gives me. For example, denial gives me a false sense of righteousness and safety from consequences. Yelling at my kids gives me a sense of them being obedient and me being a good parent.
It seems that a lot of these have to do with impatience. I don’t want to wait to do things the hard way, the right way, the way that actually lasts. So I go for a quick and easy way that doesn’t work in the long run.
As I inventory all of these defects and realize that they give me stuff that’s temporary and just makes things worse, in the long run, it helps me to surrender them, let them go, and become willing to have God work with me to get rid of them. A lot of that work to get rid of them happens in step 10, but I have to want to let them go before we can work on getting rid of them.
I share the list of defects and what they give me with my sponsor and let him know whether I feel like I’m ready to let them all go or if I need more surrender first. Once I surrender them, I’m ready to move to step 7.
In LDS Addiction Recovery Groups, there’s usually a facilitator at each meeting who shares first. (In other recovery groups, they’re called co-chairs.) They’re just like any other member of the group. They are recovering from addiction and have worked all 12 steps and have sponsored others so that they can share their experience instead of their opinion. They also should have a decent length of sobriety. They make sure the sharing portion of the meeting goes smoothly and that each person gets a chance to share if they want to. Sometimes in bigger meetings, that can mean running a timer to help people remember to finish up their share in time so that all have time to share.
In my addiction and in recovery, I had a lot of shame and isolation around what I was thinking and doing. This shame caused me to hide the truth about my thoughts and actions from others (wife, God, etc.) and, more importantly, from myself. I couldn’t stand the fact that I was engaging in my addictions, and so I started subtly lying to myself. This is where denial came in. Before we go any further, let’s define some terms:
One of the relationship dynamics that I learned about in counseling is the drama triangle. I get into the drama triangle when I start playing one of three roles in my relationships with others or myself: the persecutor, the victim, or the rescuer. I use these roles to manipulate and coerce myself or others to get what I want.
Codependency is a universal underlying addiction that I found out about around a year after giving up the addiction (as do many others I have talked to). Just as removing the primary surface addiction reveals resentments and fears, removing some of those things then reveals codependent behaviors. I’ve found codependent behaviors in marriage, parenting, facilitating, sponsoring, or any human relationship I’ve been involved with.
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