Quotes about Codependency

A codependent person is one who has let another person's behavior affect him or her and who is obsessed with controlling that person's behavior.

A codependent person is one who has let another person's behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person's behavior.

I want to thank each person who has the courage to push through and past the set of coping behaviors we've come to label as codependency—who learn what it means to take care of themselves. "Nobody taught me how to take care of myself," a fifty-year-old woman told me recently. "I didn't have enough money to go to therapy, but I had enough to buy a book.

Don't give up hope. It took many of us twenty years or more to acquire these protective behaviors we umbrella with the word codependency. It may take as much time as that to let go of them.

Codependency is normal behavior, plus. There are times we do too much, care too much, feel too little, or overly engage. We forget where the other person's responsibilities begin and our responsibilities stop. Or we get busy and have so much to do that we neglect ourselves.

We're learning, through trial and error, to separate our will from God's will. We're learning that God's will is not offensive. We've learned that sometimes there's a difference between what others want us to do and God's will. We're also learning that God did not intend for us to be codependent, to be martyrs, to control or caretake. We're learning to trust ourselves. . . . and the power to carry that through.

When a codependent discontinued his or her relationship with a troubled person, the codependent frequently sought another troubled person and repeated the codependent behaviors with that new person. These behaviors, or coping mechanisms, seemed to prevail throughout the codependent's life—if that person didn't change these behaviors.

We frequently react to people who are destroying themselves; we react by learning to destroy ourselves.

Maybe we don't need to go deeper into our codependency. We can, instead, march forward into our destinies. We can remember and practice all we've learned about addictions, codependency, and abuse. With compassion and boundaries, we need to commit fully to loving God, ourselves, and others. We need to commit fully to trusting God, ourselves, and our process.

Codependents aren't crazier or sicker than alcoholics. But, they hurt as much or more.

Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act.

Godly accountability is never codependency.