Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

“HOW”: Honesty, Openness, and Willingness to try.7

We need to invite emotions into our lives. Then make a commitment to take gentle, loving care of them. Feel our feelings. Trust our feelings and trust ourselves. We are wiser than we think.

Many codependents have been taught other ways to be caretakers. Maybe someone taught us these lies, and we believed them: don’t be selfish, always be kind and help people, never hurt other people’s feelings because we “make them feel,” never say no, and don’t mention personal wants and needs because it’s not polite.

… If I can accept that I am who I am, that I feel what I feel, that I have done what I have done—if I can accept it whether I like all of it or not—then I can accept myself.

“a healthy neutrality.”

First, we stop blaming and hating ourselves.

Make other people do what you want them to.

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

The only difference between codependents and the rest of the world is that the other people don’t pick on themselves for being who they are.