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Excerpts from Bev's Book:When do you now if you’ve met Mr. Wrong? Experiencing codependency in relationships is very common and should not be seen as totally pathological or problematic. It all depends on how serious and 'obsessive' the codependency is with in the relationships. To say it nicely, co-dependent relationships are BAD!!! If you are in one, GET OUT of it! When one or both partners live only for the other person and cannot exist without them, then intense codependency in relationships is being exhibited. This is where the suffocation process occurs.
Love By: Bruce Fisher, ED.D ou are your own best friend, and worst enemy. As you think, so shall it be. All the events in your life are there because you drew them there; what you choose to do with them is up to you. Argue for your limitations and sure enough – they’re yours. You are beautiful – inside and out!! Give to yourself what you give to others. When you stop needing to be loved so much, and it dawns on you that you are the only person who can fill the void, perhaps true freedom will prevail. It doesn’t matter what other people think about you, it only matters what you think about you. And as you think, so it is!
Letting Go Author Unknown
Letting go does not mean to stop caring, it means I can’t do it for
someone else. Letting go is not to cut myself off, it’s the
realization I can’t control another. Letting go is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences.
Letting go is to admit powerlessness which means the outcome is
not in my hands.
Letting go is not to try to change or blame another, it’s to
make the most of myself. Letting go is not to care for, but to care
about. Letting go is not to fix, but to be supportive. It’s not to
judge, but to allow another to be a human being. Letting
go is not to be in the middle arranging to outcome, but to allow
others to affect their own destinies.
Letting go is not to be protective, it’s to permit another to
face reality. Letting go is not to deny, but to accept.
Letting go is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search
out my own shortcomings and correct them.
Letting go is not to adjust everything to my own desires, but
to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
Letting go is not to criticize and regulate anybody, but to try
to become what I dream I can be.
Letting go is not to regret the past but to grow and live for
the future. Letting go is to fear less and live more. Words
of Wisdom to “Rescuers”
By: Bruce Fisher, ED.D.
A
rescuer is a person who creates relationships with someone who needs
rescuing. It feels so
good for the rescuer to find someone to rescue, and it feels so good
for the person needing rescuing, that often the two people end up
being in a committed relationship with each other; an over-responsible
person in relationship with an under-responsible person. I taught
about 2,000 people ending a relationship in the Rebuilding class and
the majority of them described their last relationship as an
over-and-under-responsible relationship.
You rescuers can easily believe you are “superior” to those
who need rescuing. You believe you are doing all of these wonderful
things that will get you brownie points in Heaven.
It’s true the things you get done are impressive.
You are doing many kind deeds to and for others.
Many times you provided an environment that allowed the other
person to make tremendous personal growth.
However, it is helpful to realize that your rescuing is often
controlling others, keeping them smaller, weaker, dependent, and
unable to do things for themselves.
Your need to rescue someone means you will have to keep then in
a need of rescuing. How did you become a rescuer?
During your formative years, your emotional development became
stunted. You stopped getting all of your needs met. You compensated by
finding another little child in someone else who had also stopped
growing. You began to
give to them the things you were wishing someone would give to you.
It made you feel better but it set up a dangerous precedent.
You began being so involved in helping another that you were
able to avoid looking at how much you needed to take care of yourself.
You began the development of an adaptive-survivor part in order
to feel better and get more of your needs met. There are a wide variety of situations that could
have encouraged your to develop a rescuer pattern of behavior.
Sometimes you felt frustrated because you weren’t getting
enough attention or love. Sometimes
you learned you could manipulate your environment be developing
adaptive behaviors. Sometimes
you felt very criticized and became adaptive to feel better instead of
feeling not okay. Sometimes
you suffered from a lack of parenting because your parents were not
around or were especially weak in parenting skills.
Sometimes everyone around you were under-responsible, perhaps
even in an altered state due to drugs of some sort.
You learned to be an over-responsible, rescuer in order to deep
your family functioning. If you were to make a list of the many
adaptive/survivor behaviors you could have chosen being a rescuer was
probably the best choice you could have made.
It helped you make the most of your situation. It not only
helped you to get more needs met, it often was very helpful to the
people around you. It
worded well in your formative years.
It doesn’t work as well in your adult relationships. Relationships that are over/under often become
stressful and sometimes end. Rescuers
often become emotionally drained.
The last stage of the relationship usually includes anger
because you have given so much and received so little.
You aren’t able to see you contribution to the problem.
You have difficulty taking so even if they tried to give to
you, you would have trouble receiving.
For you, it is easier to give that to receive. The system of interaction between the two people can
become upset. Here are
some examples. The couple have a baby and the rescuer is too busy with
the baby to continue rescuing the partner.
The rescuer finds a stronger identity by doing self-care. (This
always feels selfish to rescuers when they start becoming responsible
to self instead of over-responsible.) The person who is
under-responsible becomes tired of being controlled and either
leaves the relationship. Any
one of these “upsetting-the-system behaviors” can contribute to
the ending of the relationship. If
asked, you can usually identify when the system began to change.
This can be the beginning of the end of your relationship.
It is possible to change within the relationship without it
ending, but both parties have to have awareness plus good
communication to do this. Leaving the relationship will not help rescuers to
change. Instead you will
probably find another person needing rescuing and create another
over/under relationship. The
challenge is to change the relationship with yourself be learning to
become responsible for self instead of being either over-or
under-responsible. It usually includes learning to take emotionally,
instead of always emotionally giving to another.
It means giving to yourself the things that you didn’t get
enough of in your formative years. Think of the wonderful things that could happen if you transformed your well-developed “giving to others part” into a “giving to yourself part.” You might find the happiness, contentment, and inner peace that you deserve. Good luck on your journey.
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The Bev Knox Consulting Firm 1-866-346-1469 Mailing Address: P.O. Box 531, West Haven, CT 06516 www.bevknox.com email: Bev@BevKnox.com All Rights Reserved This is the official Bev Knox website. We are not affiliated with any other site or blog on the net.
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