I was hurried. I wanted to leave after traffic rush but before the highways closed for nighttime repairs. I ran back into the house – smack into the closed patio doors so clean I couldn’t even see them. I knew I’d hurt myself; it was the kind of trauma you know will have an impact.

After getting home, I began looking for a doctor to correctly diagnose and solve the problems my incident created. Two of my doctors had died in the past several years. Finding a new doctor, a good one, isn’t easy.  I started asking for referrals from people – including the doctor I had but whose specialty wasn’t fixing someone who ran into doors.

I got nowhere fast. Each appointment took an entire day. Either I didn’t trust the doctor or I knew immediately that his diagnosis was incorrect. My physical situation worsened the longer this fruitless search lasted. I worried. I felt alone. I worried more. I did not know how to solve this problem and couldn’t get any answers, no matter who I asked.

During this time, I went to consult another doctor for another issue I had. While I was in his reception area, I visited with one of his employees. She began telling me about a consultant from another county that came into this office but only on Fridays. As it worked out, he was an expert in the field that I needed an expert in and it was also Friday. He found time to meet with me that day.

Problem solved.

All that worrying and the answer had been planned. What a waste of energy, I thought. More than that, I felt cared about and guided — touched by my Higher Power.

2.  A few weeks later, I decided it was time to look at my goals and set some new ones. Goals bring energy into my life. They help me co-create it.

Silly, but one thing I put on the list was I wanted to see the Rolling Stones in concert four more times during my life. Less than a week later, they announced their upcoming tour. I have two tickets, fourth row seats, for May 20^th, six days before my birthday.

Coincidence? Maybe. Whatever it was or is, it made me feel good. Happy.

3. Probably from the series of surgeries I’ve been through. Or maybe it was the embezzlement. Or it could be one of the other struggles I’m going through but I began suffering from a deep, embedded feeling of being unloved and uncared for – by anyone.

I know I’m connected to every sentient being. That’s one thing. Feeling loved by any human being, especially a Mother or Father is another. The broken circle with my mother had been healed a few moments before her death. But I missed having been loved. I wondered what it would have felt like, how it might have changed my life and some of my experiences.

Both my parents have passed so chances were minimal that they’d tell me now if they had moments of caring for or loving me.

Shortly after being overwhelmed by this – and please, I don’t want to call it self-pity — someone on one of my sites asked if they could send me a personal e-mail. I don’t often give out my personal address; it’s all I can do to keep up with my forums and e-mails now. But I said yes.

The woman wrote and told me that she had met my father before his death. She said he went on and on about how much he loved me and how proud he was of me – two things he’d never told me while he was alive.

In Lessons of Love, the book about my son, Shane’s, death, I wrote about how when I was young – two or three – my father took me to bars with him. He was a musician. He’d play the piano and I’d dance for him and others.

“She learned to dance for herself,” he told this woman. “That’s an accomplishment.”

Even though we may know that our HP is real, it can become easy to start thinking that He (or She) forgot our name or address or maybe we’ve done something wrong, something that put distance between us.

It’s okay to feel however we feel. Not just okay, but essential. It’s important to accept our emotions so they don’t fester and harm our lives. But if I ever get the blues again, begin wondering if my Higher Power knows where I live or remembers my name, I give you permission to either hose me down with cold water, accuse me of having short-term memory loss, or give me a raspberry award.

We’re guided. Led. On time. We can worry, but we don’t have to. We’re right where we’re meant to be.

From the Desk of Melody Beattie

May 12, 2013

Here are some principles I’ve learned and have had to apply no matter what new undertaking I tackled. Most recently, they came into play when I attacked my longest-standing unmet goal and simultaneously, my most desired one:  screen and teleplay writing.

No matter how many courses I took, how many books I read, mentors I hired, prayers prayed – no matter what I did – I couldn’t take the needed step to go from desire to manifestation.  I couldn’t make myself write the words “FADE IN” and “FADE OUT” and all the necessary words that go between those two phrases.

To distract myself, an essential part of writing some call procrastination but I call writing, I stumbled virtually) into the world of online penny bidding otherwise known as recreational shopping.  (I thought all shopping was recreational.)

My first encounter felt like being jammed into a larger-than-life blender, getting crunched and then spat out – sans my money and with no item, product or purchase.  It felt similar to being attacked by gypsies.

Never again, I thought. But I also had that same reaction after writing my first book with a co-author, a true story that took me two years to write and which grossed me almost $900.  In retrospect, that became the glass half empty thinking that I despise. No, I don’t despise negative thinking. I despise clichés.  A glass is neither half full nor half empty.  It’s a glass.  It either has something in it or it doesn’t. Right?  Maybe.

With even more retrospect, writing that first book became the equivalent of going to college to learn to write a book and instead of owing a bank a quarter of a million dollars for a student loan, I received $900.  From that vision, one hell of a deal and definitely a full glass of water.

But back to this blog’s point.

When contemplating my tailspin and absolute, total refusal to write anything resembling a screenplay or teleplay – not one solitary word — I recently realized I felt more fearful, terrified, perplexed and inadequate about screen and teleplay writing than I had about any other undertaking in my life.

While everything is relative and some sages insist it’s always now, the one exception to the theory of relativity is emotions.  The biggest, worst and most hideous emotion is whatever feeling blocking us now. Doesn’t matter what we felt before and worked through or what emotion we may encounter tomorrow. The stopper is that feeling we have today, the one we can’t get through, around, over and the one we erroneously think has nothing to do with our success or failure and in many cases, the emotion we deny even having because we’re so terrified and numb we don’t feel it.

This blog is about new undertakings.  It’s about old dogs and young puppies learning new tricks. It’s about dogs that still hunt whether we’re vegetarians or not. It’s about static principles for success no matter what our new undertaking.

It’s also about the importance of things we may not think are important.

Everything is connected – to us – and lest you don’t believe me, some things are true whether we believe them or not. Sometimes the most insignificant activities and actions — whether it’s shopping, a hobby or in my case procrastinating on writing by engaging in online bidding — become the proverbial teacher waiting for the student (you and I) to become ready.

I’m still not certain I was ready but I’d become weary of the significant people in my life, even the most patient of them, screaming the same thing at me that I’d been yelling at myself: For the love of God and all that’s holy just write your script. It was time for me to become ready to be ready. Time to take the next step. And most often when we’re blocked, the next step is an inside job.  In this situation, taking the next step meant doing that thing writers do after sufficient procrastination: actually writing.

That’s when I realized how important my hobby, diversion and most current preferred form of procrastination – online penny bidding – really is. By looking at my growth from being a loser spat out by the money-sucking vortex I encountered on my first penny auction online site (can’t remember the site’s name) to being one of the longest-term and most successful penny bidders at DealDash.com (the only online penny bidding site I can and will vouch for because of its integrity and because when you win an auction, you actually get what you pay for unless demand has exceeded supply, in which case you get your choice of a fair and reasonable substitution.

I began to list the qualities or skills I applied that helped me go from loser to a winner at something I knew absolutely nothing about when I started.  I didn’t take me long to see that these are identical to the qualities that help me succeed at anything I want to do. While these ideas aren’t revolutionary, it’s easy to forget that each is within our power to do.

1. Realize I’m where I am on purpose, even if it’s an accident. Sometimes the most trivial things that happen to us are more important than we believe.  When I look for the big, the exciting and the momentous – I leave empty-handed.  When I surrender to the present moment, understanding the sheer magnificence of each of these in my life – even those that suck — and then follow that with gratitude, my wheelbarrow overflows.  (I use that expression because my entire life, I wanted a wheelbarrow and now I have one, a good one I won one for not much money at all at DealDash and because “cups overflowing” has become a cliché, something writers should avoid.) I really am thrilled about having a wheelbarrow and in my most far-fetched moments of self-love, couldn’t justify buying one.
2. Remember that success doesn’t mean eliminating my character defects (for the most part).  It means letting who I am work for me in a positive way.  Translated, that means “learn to let your defects become assets.” Obsession can work for us, if we use it to achieve valued goals.  Obsession translated becomes persistence.  Letting go, maybe. But not giving up.  Almost any book I’ve read about writing says something I’ve said about myself for years:  successful writers aren’t necessarily the best ones; they’re the ones who didn’t quit. Once I found an online penny auction site I trusted – which took persistence too – I continually returned to penny bidding until I succeeded. Really succeeded.  Succeeding at penny auctions doesn’t mean (to me) winning an auction but paying more than an item’s value just like success in writing doesn’t mean (to me) paying a publisher to publish my work.  Success in penny bidding means winning an item I want at auction and paying less for it (price of bids included) than I would spend at Wal-Mart.  Or Apple. Success in writing means a publisher or production company paying me for my writing, not me paying someone else to publish or produce my work. Success means other things to me, including quality of work, doing the work for the sake of the work so I don’t have to obsess about outcomes and loving the story I’m telling.  We each need to define what success means to us. That way we’ll be able to recognize it when it happens.
3. That last point leads naturally to my next: enjoy what you’re doing so much that you barely notice success when it comes because you’re having such a good time that you forgot to focus on outcomes.  In penny bidding, I gradually but with much angst went from winning a mouse and being ecstatic about it to winning the world’s largest 3-D ready television set.  I felt excited when I won it but it also felt like a natural next step. I also gradually but with much angst went from euphoria to seeing my first published by-line in a community newspaper to seeing my books in the New York Times Bestseller List. (I like activities that combine joy with angst.  Like I wrote earlier in this blog, change doesn’t necessarily mean eliminating our traits; it means making them work for us.)
4. Realize that success comes in a set of naturally progressive steps even when our last name begins with Z, as in Zuckerberg. Do the next thing, trusting your intuition if you’re a woman or your gut if you’re a guy and then combining that with intellect when it comes to deciding what that next step is. When I bid on DealDash, I don’t go from placing that first bid to paying for my won item in one step (usually, although I have won some items for a penny or three cents).   I search the auctions, find one I feel good about, place some bids and then either continue or stop if I realize I’ve made an error.  In screenwriting, I would likely not go from idea to finished script in a day. Or a month. Or a year. I carried the idea for writing Codependent No More around for over five years, moving it each New Year’s from my old goal list to my new one.  Success at anything is usually a process that includes education, research, thought, study, procrastination, distraction, more procrastination, outlining scenes, more procrastination, re-outlining scenes, fleshing out those scenes, tossing out the outline if it doesn’t work, re-evaluating structure, re-outlining if necessary and then, finally, writing the script. Then rewriting it when someone gives you notes, after thanking them for taking the time to give you notes.  But the overall process of writing a screenplay is accomplished one step, one scene, one typed word and one minute of procrastination at a time. I can’t do two things at once. I can’t take two steps – or 40 – at once.  Some days, I can barely do one thing at once.
5. Keep a beginner’s mind.  Learn.  Study. Be willing to change your mind. Be flexible. Information is power but make sure that the information you’re getting whether about how to win at penny bidding, how to write a script or how to build a birdhouse is solid information. Make sure you can trust your source. Naivety can be charming — for a second. Then it turns into victimization.  Deal with trustworthy people. Prepare properly for what you’re attempting to do. Honor this new beginning.  But do background checks on the people you’re letting teach you.  Know that you can trust the people you do business with and most of all, trust yourself. And if you haven’t read it, read the book “Who Moved My Cheese” – an excellent book about staying flexible and open to one of life’s few certainties:  change. Example.  In online bidding, my preferred and only home site for bidding, DealDash, recently encountered a huge growth spurt. That brought about changes in auctions which meant changing my strategies for winning.  When I began working on the television series I’m writing a pilot for now, I started out trying to write it as a two-hour movie. I continually encountered problems and then decided the story couldn’t be written, which it couldn’t – in the form I first attempted to write it.  Now that I changed strategies and now that television offers a banquet table of creative opportunities to skilled writers, my approach works and I can tell because I cannot remember being this excited about anything I’ve ever written.  Ever. But that doesn’t mean things won’t change again, because they will.  It’s not that the other shoe always drops; it’s that people regularly take off and put back on their shoes.
6. Remember that failure comes with success.  It’s easy to look at others and think they succeed all the time.  That’s because we usually don’t see people’s failures. Be willing to take small successes (I received $5,000 for optioning my first script years ago. Hey, why not take that as a sign that there’s a chance I may be on the right track instead of looking at my failure to perform and considering it a Stop Sign?) Still, be willing to fall on your face, pick yourself up and keep at it. I know I already mentioned persistence, but that’s different from being willing to fail.  Failure involves involuntary humility. Failure stings. But more than anything, our response to failure can break or make us.  The first place I run to when I fail is, “Oh, this must not be what I’m supposed to be doing.”  Nice try, Beattie.  No, you did exactly what you were supposed to do.  You failed.  Now see if you can learn something from it, okay?
7. On the other hand, be brutally honest with yourself.  Are you doing something you really want to do? I am still amazed at the difference it makes if I really want an item I’m bidding on in an auction.  I get focused, roll up my sleeves and more often than not, I win it. Whether or not we really want to do something is a question that each of us needs to answer. Doesn’t matter if others think we can or should do it. How do we feel, really feel, about it?  Do we want it?  How badly?  The best way to gauge our level of desire it pay attention to how we feel when we make even the smallest movement toward success.  Ambivalence isn’t a good sign. Excitement is.
8. Enjoy your success when it happens but remember that enjoying success is much like Thanksgiving dinner:  it’s only fun when shared.  I love a good win at online bidding.  I also love giving someone I care about that thing they really want and I really love the look on their face after they say, “I can’t accept that IPod” and I reply by saying “It cost me five bucks. Would you let me give you five dollars?”  I also enjoy getting things for myself I wouldn’t ordinarily get for myself because yes, codependency continues to haunt me.  Can’t afford it.  Don’t really need it. Blah, blah, blah.  And if sharing a crockpot or anything else I win with someone I care about is fun, how much more exciting when I reach “FADE OUT” knowing I’ve told a story I love to people I care so much about: you, my readers.  Eh, viewers.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  May you take steps toward turning your dreams into realities this New Year. May you find pleasure, angst, agony and joy in each step forward (and backwards). Because that’s how it goes, too.  Remember to look for those subtle, hidden lessons because rare is the time when we’re not learning – or when Life isn’t trying to show us – something. And may you remember to look inside and deal with your fear, because that usually becomes our biggest block and barrier to accomplishing anything new.

Many years ago, when I consciously began this journey of being conscious, a trusted mentor told me after I had complained about feeling afraid, “If you’re not afraid, it’s because you’re not doing anything new.” Whether I believe it or not, some things were –and still are – true.

From the desk of Melody Beattie

January 2, 2013

Note:  I know, I know.  I never use merchants’ names on my blogs but you also know what they say:  Never say never. If any of you decide to pursue recreational shopping or online penny bidding, please do so responsibly. DealDash (the only site I vouch for 100%), has a BIN, or Buy It Now option.  That means you cannot lose if you only bid on items you can afford to and intend to buy whether or not you win the auction — like gasoline cars (unless you don’t own a car).  When you Buy It Now, you get all your bids back.  You don’t lose a penny.  And no, this isn’t an advertisement and I don’t have an affiliate relationship with DealDash.  If you choose to go there, I get no payback. I make no money. Above and beyond everything else, DealDash has been and remains an honest, cherished and valuable form of procrastination.  You’ll need to type their URL in your computer yourself. Best, mlb

That’s not recovery.  It is, as I just wrote, flipping to the other side of the codependent side of the codependent coin.

When I can step out of my reactions to my past, step beyond my fear and truly do something different?  That’s recovery. Not baby steps but big steps in my life.

It’s those moments when I remember to do different that make such a difference and I’ll tell you why if you can hang in here with me. The situation was complex and felt overwhelming.  I’m in California, stuck with a condo in Minnesota that I owe more on than it’s currently worth.  To sell it would mean sitting down at a closing and writing out a $50,000 check to pay off the mortgage.  Not for me.

About a year ago, I took the condo off the market.  Waiting and I didn’t know for what.  I know from the past that it takes time for the housing market to recycle.  Recently I decided to rent out the condo.  I resisted the idea at first because:  I’m half-way across the country from the property, unable to handle the calls in the middle of night about the garbage disposal not working or the toilet running.

But studying some online sites, I found a realtor who also takes care of renting out properties and he has a property manager that takes care of garbage disposals and toilets that don’t work in the middle of the night.

But my Minnesota condo was fully furnished. I was in a quandary (whatever a quandary looks like) about what to do with the furniture.  My California condo is furnished with furniture I like.  I have a small mobile vacation home in the desert but I bought that fully furnished with furniture I like. I decided to rent the Minnesota condo furnished.  According to all the statistics, someone would get divorced and need a new place to live and furniture too.

No such luck.  Everyone who looked at the condo wanted me to take out my furniture because he or she or they had their own. But even that wasn’t a problem because nobody stepped up to the plate with an offer – until recently.  A month before I’m scheduled to go to the desert and right when I’m scheduled for an important surgery and also right when the writing I’ve been struggling with finally begins to fall into place.  Not only did I write six words on the page, I know the order in which they should go.  Progress.  Right?

I talked to a friend and we came up with a plan. We’d drive together from California to Minnesota, rent a U-Haul, donate whatever furniture I didn’t want (carrying it down three flights of stairs first), load the rest in the U-Haul and find someone to uninstall the electronics and do what with them?  Didn’t know.  It would only take … counting, counting …. two or three weeks?  And cost, hmm.  thousands of dollars?  My friend had to work.  He could take some time off.  It felt messy, complicated and most of all – wrong.

I had to do something and do it now.  But, what? The words I had to say are the hardest for me to speak: I didn’t know.

This is where the title of this blog enters the picture.  I feel comfortable when I know the answer and hate it when I don’t about what to do to solve a problem.  The gap between knowing and not knowing is radical faith – faith that what I need will be provided even if I don’t see those provisions yet and even if I don’t know what the solution is.

I made one of the better decisions I’ve made for some time.  I decided to let go and do nothing, despite the realtor pressuring me and others wanting to know what I intended to do and when I would do it.  All I could say was the truth: I don’t know.

I made a clear decision not to do anything until what I decided to do felt right.

Huge.  Cataclysmically enormous for me, putting off a decision until some solution I couldn’t see fell into place meant taking a deep breath and Living in the Mystery.  That’s what the title of this blog means and what I did was practice what I preach.

I let go.

A few days later, I thought of a friend I knew in Minnesota.  Shipping was her thing.  She had been a trained professional.  She ran a shipping store the entire time her children were growing up – a family business.  Plus I knew she had moved frequently over the past years, since her children left home.  I also knew she got a good deal on moving vans.

I took a deep breath, looked through my email addresses and found hers.  I reached out and asked her for help.

She said yes, she would be glad to assist me.

In a matter of hours I saw what had been an insolvable problem began to get solved.  Each piece – from uninstalling the electronics, to selling them on E-Bay and what to charge, to shipping my furniture out to where I am without an exorbitant charge – fell into place. Like magic.  Like a miracle.  Like an unspoken but felt prayer answered perfectly.  Blind or radical faith was the prayer.  The answer?  Getting the problem perfectly solved.

The moving van will be scheduled at an entirely reasonable price by the end of this week.  I’ll make enough money by her daughter selling the electronics (after paying her a commission) to pay for the moving van (this according to people who know what they’re talking about and triple-checked).

I don’t have to take two to three weeks out of my schedule to run around master-minding this when I can’t carry more than five pounds down three flights of steps.  My friend here won’t need to take off from work.

By letting go and doing nothing until what I did felt right, I found the perfect solution – even when that meant living with no solution at all for a while.

Sometimes living in the mystery hurts.  It means living with painful losses that I can’t explain and my Higher Power won’t. On other occasions, trusting what I don’t know yet feels good. This is one of those times.

Just a short reminder of something you probably already know but that’s easy to forget when we get stressed – a Holiday greeting of sorts. Keep breathing your way through the Season.  If what you’re doing doesn’t feel right, it’s okay to do nothing until what you do feels good to you. The answer will come; I know it will – the answer that’s perfect for you.

From the desk of Melody Beattie

We call those incidents triggers. While the current event has importance, the meaning extends beyond that.  It’s a situation Life brought to us to bring about a healing.

It’s common for people on a growth path to run into situational triggers – events that are real today, but also remind us of yesterday – a time when we lacked the skills or support to feel our emotions and deal with the dilemma.

So like Selena, we pack the feelings away and save them for a special time when we won’t need to rely on denial.  That time may be now.

Selena didn’t go into detail about the problem with her friend; she wanted to keep the focus on herself.  She said it involved her friend calling to tell Selena how she felt about something that Selena either did or neglected to do that caused her friend to feel hurt, angry and disrespected.

“But instead of listening to what my friend had to say, I went into defensive mode,” Selena said. “I didn’t feel superior. I didn’t think I was right and my friend was wrong. The truth is I wronged my friend by not listening to and being present for her.

‘When my friend became angry with me,” Selena said, “I felt attacked.

“I’ve been in recovery for a while.  I know how to take responsibility for my part instead of focusing on someone else’s behavior.   But even though I knew what to do, I didn’t do it.  And I didn’t apologize either,” Selena said.

I asked her what she did instead of listening.

“Mid-sentence, I hung up the phone,” Selena said.  “Then I didn’t call her back. For a week.”

Time can be a powerful healer but by itself, time may not heal our issues. Time can let us cool heated emotions.  We have time to let the hurt or angry moment pass.  Sometimes we become so focused on the argument that we don’t recall exactly what we argued about.  That thing that was so important becomes a secondary issue to our hurt feelings.

If we’re lucky and give the situation clear thought, we may find we can use the incident as a catalyst for change. It starts by focusing on what’s up with us instead of glaring at the other person, ranting about what he or she did wrong.

After Selena up on her friend and took some time to calm herself, she looked deeper inside herself.  She knows what it means when people say, Recovery is an inside job.

“I can see now that for the past couple months my self-esteem has been flagging — almost non-existent,” Selena said. “This insight surprised me – but I’ll take it.  It’s an unexpected but welcomed gift.”

She said her self-esteem problem now felt as big and painful as when, years ago, she first began recovery – those months when she felt so fragile.

“Back then, when I discovered I wasn’t crazy I was codependent, I couldn’t endure criticism. Again it wasn’t because I felt superior or right.  I had so little esteem that someone criticizing me felt like a threat to my life.

“I feel like such a failure and I have so little self-esteem that if I make one more mistake and someone calls me on it, or accuses me of wrongdoing and I admit it, I feel like there won’t be anything of me left.”

I know that feeling too.

Selena said that’s why instead of making amends as she knew she should, she hung up on her friend.

“I feel awful about hurting my friend and letting her down,” Selena explained. “It’s not about me not living up to someone else’s expectations. I didn’t live up to my expectations of myself.

“A week passed.  By then I’d become calm and I saw the situation more clearly.  I sent my friend an email with a sincere apology. I would have apologized directly, but she didn’t answer my calls.  In my email to her, I included some information about my issues – explanations for my behavior, but I didn’t use these reasons as justifications or excuse.  I told her how much she meant to me.  I apologized, and I meant it,” Selena said.

I’m waiting for the but, for what Selena wanted from me. Then I got it.

“So ever since I sent my amends to her I’ve been obsessively watching my emails for a response from her, “Selena admitted. “I didn’t apologize to get a response. I know we’re not supposed to be attached to outcomes.  But we’ve been close for so long.  I wanted her to tell me it’s okay.  I wanted to feel peace and closeness between us.”

Selena wanted her friend back.  She wanted closure on the event.

I know this story is closer to a meditation than a blog.  It would fit in a book of daily readings I wrote years ago — The Language of Letting Go.

That’s what Selena forgot to do:  let go. But there’s still one more thing, something important Selena needed to do as part of taking responsibility for herself.

Most of us want to be good, decent people.  We try to live by the Golden Rule, doing unto others as we want done unto us. But we’re not perfect and we’re not meant to be. That’s why they invented six short words:  I am sorry; I was wrong.

Sometimes after we cool from the heat of the moment, look inside ourselves, take responsibility for our actions and make appropriate amends – including letting go of the outcome of doing that – some circumstances require that we take one more action.

It’s why Selena called me and it’s the point of this meditative blog — that’s how important this piece can be.

If we’ve cleaned up our side of the street but we’re still not at peace because the other person didn’t give us the closure we need, then it may be  time to let ourselves off the hook.

From the Desk of Melody Beattie

November 8, 2012

You can straighten up piles of stuff, get rid of obvious dirt, vacuum, dust and do dishes, but when you open your closets or kitchen drawers, they’re stuffed with junk, clutter and crap. Lift up the carpet and you’ll find years of dust and crud.

Or if you have time and like a truly clean environment, you can start at the bottom of things, organize all the drawers and closets, throw away or find a home for what’s not utilitarian to you and end up with a home that when you look at, know is clean through and through.

To do that (deep clean), we often need to first make a bigger mess than the one we had before while we sift through stuff, organize, make decisions and then create order out of the chaos.  When we finish, it’s much easier to maintain a clean home because the old adage reigns:  there’s a place for everything and everything is where it belongs.

Many people, including me, use house-cleaning as a metaphor for personal inventories and staying current with our emotions, relationships and belief systems.  If you’re reading this blog, likely you’re someone who wants a clean, well-organized home – both the physical structure we live in and the body – emotions, mind and soul – that house us throughout our lifetime.

As we spend more time growing, we have more events to organize and deal with the impact from in our lives – divorces, breakups, loss, betrayals and other nasty goings-on that we’ve come to call “learning experiences.”  We find and share with others ways to reorganize our lives, deal with our emotions and then reframe our pasts in such a way that we’re no longer victims – of Life, other people, and especially ourselves.

The longer we’ve been consciously seeking to live decent and moral lives, lives that don’t hurt others or ourselves, the more we have a filing system for events that take place and the emotions that result from them.  We develop systems for dealing with the pain, sadness, grief and fear that come attached to life events.  We feel and release our emotions because we want to stay clear and in balance.  Doing this, we believe, allows us to make the best decisions possible now and in our future.

It sounds good on paper. But the one emotion that I’ve yet to find an adequate filing cabinet, a means of organization for or even a place to put it is the pernicious, vengeful and sometimes downright evil events that transpire and the anger I feel as a result of them.

“What have you been so edgy about,” my roommate asked recently.

“I’ve got all this anger and I have no place to go with it,” I said.  “The people I’m angry at are waltzing around far enough away from me that likely I won’t encounter them again. I don’t have an opportunity to tell them how furious I am, how their behavior impacted me and I don’t have the ability or power to insist that they make these situations right.”

My voice quavered slightly and I could tell I had slid into that place where we’re so damn angry we cry.  We’re livid, outraged and incensed and have to place to go with it.

I don’t want these emotions inside me.  I don’t want to take them out on innocent bystanders.  I also don’t want to turn the emotions inward and take them out on myself.

Now this is rhetorical, which means all of you loving and caring people don’t need to rescue me or solve this problem for me.  I know about getting an air bat or using our hands and beating a pillow.  I know about primal scream therapy.  I know that exercise helps.   But the pillow didn’t do anything wrong and I don’t want to hit it.

I don’t want to break dishes.

I don’t want to punish people who didn’t do anything to me.

I do understand why some people have the experience we label “going postal.”  The person who receives the result of all this unresolved anger had nothing to do with it; he or she was just the person  who happened to be there when all the anger we’ve stuffed into utility drawers, hid under the carpet and crammed into our closets finally emerged.

Exploded may be more like it.

We live in a society that’s now legislated anger.  If we honk our horn while driving, likely we’ll end up in anger management class, which only ticks us off more.  If we dump on the person who we know violated us, the predator – not the victim – will often be the person protected by the law.

We can journal, see a therapist, tell a friend how we’re feeling but often these attempts to find release and redemption do not equal the level of fury we feel.

“Seek and ye shall find.”

I know each of us will find an answer to the anger dilemma — a safe and legal way to deal with and organize the anger we feel.  Not the surface irritation, but the deep rage bubbling inside us that we feel on our way to forgiveness, acceptance and peace.

To forgive too soon causes cancer.

Often, the subtle awareness and consciousness of such a dilemma as this means we’re closer than we realize to finding a solution – one that works for us and doesn’t hurt other people, even the ones we may fantasize about hurting.

Those who have read my writing for any length of time know I don’t have many rules, but the ones I adhere to are:  don’t hurt yourself or others, and don’t let people harm you.  I do not advocate violence and I oppose the death penalty.  Dying isn’t punishment.

I’m deliberately leaving this blog open-ended.  Remember its title?  Living in the Mystery.

This subject fits into that category.

It’s not wrong to feel anger but harboring it can have consequences we may not prefer. I want the peace we find to be the kind that results from deep, not surface, cleaning.

If over the course of the next three days or nights you hear a strange, pulsating scream, one that shakes your home similar to the way a 3.2 earthquake would but you check online and no earthquake occurred, don’t worry.  You’ll know I found my answer.

I got my anger out.

From the desk of Melody Beattie

October 2, 2012

I’m talking about allowing people, places and things to slowly and insidiously creep in and begin sucking the soul, energy, life force – and resources – out of us.  No matter how many years ago we learned about not being codependent, it can still happen to us. Again.

Drain Pain occurs so slowly and subtly, we may not see it happening.  Following you’ll find a list of symptoms and the remedy for each:

-          We leave our bodies – disconnect from ourselves. We’re experts at fleeing the body. We hover around ourselves doing everything except feeling what we feel and valuing ourselves. When this happens, we often feel numb, confused and afraid.  We may also feel emotional (generalized) pain. The thoughts that accompany this condition include:  I CAN’T STAND THIS ANYMORE.  IT, HE, SHE OR THEY IS OR ARE DRIVING ME INSANE.  This means it’s boundary-setting time again.

-          We complain about the same thing, behavior or person or problem for days, weeks, months or years but nobody hears us.  The cure for this means listening to ourselves.

-          We know that something’s wrong but we aren’t sure what it is (because we’re not listening to ourselves).   When we mention the problem to the Drainer(s) — the people or institutions in the first symptom above — they look at us askance and reassure us that nothing is wrong except us – who we are, how we feel and what we think is going on just isn’t occurring, they insist.  Remember the story from the first Language of Letting Go, about the scene in a movie where a wife catches her husband in his pickup truck?  He’s parked at the drive-in movie theatre all cuddled up and kissing with another woman. When the wife confronts him about having this affair, he denies it vehemently while the other woman sits there kissing his neck, arm, hand and more.  “What are you going to believe?” the infidel asks his wife.  “Me or what you think you see?”  Crazy as that sounds, it can easily describe us when we’re in codependent mode.

-          We feel tired, unfocused and somewhat like a Boxer looks (the dog, not Mohammed Ali) when it’s chasing not a tail, but the remnants of one before the vet clipped or docked it.  We’re caught up in trying to do the impossible. It’s time to assess what we can and can’t change and then put energy into assessing and solving the right problem – the real issue that’s going on.

-          We feel increasingly angry at the people, places or things in our personalized list in the first symptom above, but as soon as we feel anger we also start to feel guilt. The guilt’s not real.  It’s the codependent guilt that’s followed us around for most of our life. The guilt yammers about how there must be something wrong with us because the other person wouldn’t do that — whatever that is. We wonder what’s wrong with us for feeling this angry and then decide that the problem is us. ZZZZZT.   Wrong answer. Solution?  Look in the mirror and tell ourselves that who we are is okay.

-          Of all the signals that someone’s manipulating or lying to us, feeling cruddy and confused after our interactions with this person or institution — if they’ll stand still long enough to talk to us — ranks highest and indicates that it’s time to open our eyes, shake off the denial dust and start a self-care revival.

We may walk around confused for a while, but when the school bell rings the lessons will become more painfully clear every day.  We can’t run and we can’t hide. Well, we can but the lessons will be there when we’re out of breath from running or we crawl out from under the bed. They’re waiting for us like a school marm with her pointer pointed at us.

“See!  See!  See!” she says.

“See what?” we ask.

Whatever’s going on that hurts.

It’s not ­­­­­­our fault when other people lie, cheat, steal, use us or shoot us through the proverbial grease.  Bad behavior breaks pandemic.  It used to be one out of 12 people couldn’t be trusted.  Now in any group of ten, we’re lucky to find one trustworthy and reliable soul.  But not allowing ourselves to be victimized any more after we see what’s going on?

That responsibility belongs to us.

A few hours before writing this blog, a reader/ friend asked redundantly and semi-subtly the same question I’ve heard for years:  “What are the rules I can follow to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

Some people offer an established platform for you to follow.  I don’t except for these three rules:  don’t hurt anyone else (physically), don’t hurt yourself and don’t allow anyone to hurt you.  Besides safety, a list of rules for self-care would be an oxymoron. It would mean giving up our power to think to someone else. Paraphrasing a quote I heard somewhere, “I go to church and do what my minister says so I don’t have to decide or think about what my morals should be.”

Self-care doesn’t mean doing what someone else tells us to do unless we’ve consulted a professional, such as a doctor and we’re following a protocol.  Even then, we need to be certain we trust and feel good about what someone else is telling us to do.  One of the most important behaviors we learn about self-care means we don’t give control of our will and life to anyone except our Higher Power, and we get to decide who and what that Higher Power is.

We learn to listen to and trust ourselves.

Who’s doing what to us that we don’t like?  Who’s proposing an agenda that doesn’t set right in our gut?  What institution or person ignores us when we ask for what we rightfully have coming?

When the soul-sucking, energy-draining sycophants or abusers come around draining us, shake the dust out of our head, remove our rose-colored glasses, stop making excuses for them and let go of any outdated decisions about people, places or things. Because we could trust someone ten years ago doesn’t mean we can trust them today.  People, places and things change. Instead we ask ourselves how that person or institution treats us now and how it feels to be around them.

While staying or leaving isn’t the solution, running from trouble or going around it can sometimes be the most loving thing we can do. That includes not engaging in relationships that rob our energy and leave us feeling drained, empty, used and confused.

We can set that boundary, say no or tell that person, place or thing whatever we want to say.

Getting rid of the drainers may challenge us at first.  It’s similar to removing a tic from that Boxer.  We have to pry it (the Drainer) loose. The tic may try to dig in deeper but c’mon. We’re smarter than that tic.

Instead of us feeling drained, flush it down the drain. Stretch.  Breathe.  We’ve got the keys to let ourselves out of the prison that believing lies creates. Shake off that case of the codependent crazies. It’s not us; it’s them.

When we feel cluttered, confused or crazy — remove the drain pain from our life.

From the desk of Melody Beattie

September 17, 2012

This makes the second time I’ve written about distractions, and how they can play a positive role when we’re grieving or going through any challenging situation.

Since I wrote the first blog, I’ve learned more about the subject.

Are you a creative-type?  Going through grief or loss? In constant physical pain or dealing with a chronic illness?  Distracting yourself intentionally may be exactly what the doctor ordered. (That’s a figure of speech. Please seek professional help if you need it.)

After my son died, I endured extended periods of overwhelming emotional pain, distress so profound I felt like I’d fallen into a black hole of grief.

Those periods of pain paralyzed me.

Although I felt overwhelmed and helpless, I learned eventually I could do something to help myself – often something as simple as taking a shower, going into another room or working on a crossword puzzle.

I saw that I could have a degree of mastery over my emotions without reverting to denial.

My interest in crossword puzzles became intense.  Although I didn’t understand it then, by doing puzzles I learned to flip a switch and get me out of my emotions and into the logical side of my brain.

During the years I’ve been taking as many screenwriting courses as possible, I had the privilege of studying under an excellent teacher, Corey Mandell.  But instead of focusing on writing, he stressed the importance of identifying which side of our brain we normally function from and then strengthening the weaker side.  Those who did this, he taught, had a better chance of success in their writing endeavors.

He talked about the left brain/ right brain syndrome, where one side deals with emotions and intuition and the other with conceptual, logical thought – you know, the side that even enjoys doing math.

Paraphrasing Mandel, he said most people continue functioning from their favored side of the brain while ignoring the other side of the brain and allowing it to constantly get weaker.

Some people take the stance we should live solely from intuition.  But balancing intuition with intellect makes more sense as a pathway to wisdom.

For years I understood that I can’t write a first draft or create and simultaneously edit my work.  I do one, and then later do the other, but it’s impossible to do both at the same time.  The activities are mutually exclusive, because each uses a separate, mutually exclusive side of the brain.

We have the conceptual and the intuitive, the rational and the emotional, the logical and the part that feels like we’ve been sucked into an endless black hole of emotions without a door that says “This Way Out.”

An exit exists, one that allows us to forget momentarily our pain – a road we can carve into the other side of the brain.

A few weeks before writing this,  a woman wrote to tell me that after searching the web, she appreciated finding my blog that discussed the positive side of distractions.

She had worked with a doctor until a chronic illness – and the pain that accompanies it – sent her home. The doctor suggested they write a book together about the importance of diversions and distractions.

While the doctor meant distraction from physical pain, it doesn’t matter which kind we need some distance from. Diversions and distractions work as long as we don’t use them as a path to full-time denial.

Don’t overlook the importance of playing games.

That’s why a team of us created a new section in the websites:  Distractions and Diversions.  Right now it consists of Word Seek puzzles but don’t let the simplicity of most Word Seeks deceive you. These may not be as easy as the ones you’re used to completing in three minutes.

My sister-in-law Pam Lee, created the puzzles basing them on my books.  She would read a book and then spent hours creating a Word Seek game that used words from the book.  The letters leftover at the end, when you’ve circled all the words on the list, create a mystery sentence that sums up the book.

The games will educate about recovery and help ease the pain, even if it’s similar to the relief we get from a Band-Aid. But those moments of not hurting can be worth a million dollars to someone who’s floundered in grief for years after losing a child.

This Diversions and Distractions section is located at the Grief Club site at www.MelodyBeattie.net. Follow the link to the Home Page, and then scroll down the menu on the left side of the page until you find the games.

If you can’t have fun, maybe for a few minutes you can forget how much you hurt.

Word Seek games aren’t the only way to switch sides of the brain.  Sudoku, Crossword Puzzles, Logic Games – even Scrabble or any of the new e-variations of it will get the job done.  The more challenging the game, the greater the chances that the activity will help strengthen the other side of the brain, the one where you don’t normally live.

If you’re someone who finds Sudoku, Word Seek or any logic game easy, than you may not be an emotional side brain dweller.  In that situation you may need help getting in touch with how you feel instead of distracting yourself from your emotions. Watching tear-jerker movies may help you find and flip the brain switch, strengthen the weaker side.

Take the time to carve a pathway to the other side of your brain.  Let yourself feel uncomfortable.   It can do more than give you a respite from  grief.  It can assist you in becoming more successful with your creative ventures and help you find a stronger, more balanced power.

What Popeye the Sailorman said, “I yam what I yam,”  isn’t  true — unless we believe it is.  We don’t need to stay at whatever level we’re at.  We can change and grow.

Even this old dog learns an occasional new trick. While life isn’t all fun and games, some of it is.

Best,

Melody Beattie

From being diagnosed with a serious illness to experiencing empty nest syndrome, we wake up one day and before we go to bed that night, our lives change.  Irrevocably. They’ll never be the same again.

Sometimes we lose all the important parts of our life (or almost all of them) at once.  A friend from years back woke up one morning.  That day he discovered that his wife of 15 years had been cheating on him from the first day of their marriage, that neither the son nor daughter he thought belonged to him were his, and his accountant informed him that his business had gone bankrupt.

Some people call it reorganization. Others, a new beginning.  Most of the time I hear it described this way:  “Sigh.  I’m starting over.  Again.”

I hate new beginnings, at least at first. It feels like too much, more than I can handle.  I feel weary from all the start-overs I’ve already experienced.  I don’t want to do it one more time.

When we start over, we’re walking in the dark, living in the mystery without a clue about what’s next.  Sometimes we may feel like we’re dying, and harbor a sense o imminent doom.  That’s because the change or transformation is so profound that the experience resembles a death.

If loss of a loved one triggers the starting over, it may feel like our heart has been broken but if we tell people that, they may look at us like we’re overplaying the drama queen hand.  Not true.

Recently the Mayo Clinic identified “Broken Heart Syndrome” as a legitimate physical malady.  Broken Heart Syndrome can be caused by the loss of a loved one or stress overload and it’s more than something that’s just in our head. The Syndrome presents, according to information from Mayo Clinic,  with symptoms similar to those of an actual heart attack and may include: heart pain that worsens with each beat of the heart; difficulty breathing or shortness of breath; and nausea or vomiting.

I went out to do errands.  Around lunch-time, I decided to find someplace to   eat.  I had driven out of my usual neighborhoods and didn’t recognize the mall I pulled into, at least not at first.  Then I saw it – the restaurant where we celebrated my son, Shane’s last birthday – the one two days before the date of his death.

The pain hit hard and fast – right in my chest.  I felt paralyzed.  My hands gripped the steering wheel.  I couldn’t move them to rummage around in my purse and find my cell phone.  Movement of any kind hurt too much.  I couldn’t even roll down my window and yell, “Help.”  I’d rate the pain as a ten on the pain scale from one to ten.

For just over one hour I sat in the same position, leaning forward, clutching the steering wheel, stopped in my tracks by this pain in my heart.  Then slowly the debilitating pain began to subside.  I didn’t get out of the car; I went home instead.  A week later I went to my doctor.  (This was before the identification of Broken Heart Syndrome as an actual physical illness.) The doctors made me stay overnight.

“It’s the strangest thing,” the doctors said.  “For all purposes, it looks like you had a myocardial infarction (heart attack).  But then, it also doesn’t appear as though you actually suffered from a heart attack.  It left the doctors scratching their heads but I’d known from the minute – the second – the nurse at the Emergency Room asked me if I had someone I could call after Shane’s accident that his death had broken my heart.

Don’t rely on self-diagnosis.  If your heart hurts, get a checkup. During times of transition or grief, we’re more vulnerable to any kind of illness.  See your doctor if you suspect any problems.

For a while we’ll feel like Someone pulled the rug out from under us and we’re in the air – upside down.  Disorientation has a positive side.  It leaves us open to new ideas, new people and new ways of living.

When we stabilize, which we will, we’ll get on with the business of Starting Over Again (SOA).  One idea that may be helpful:  although it feels like you’re starting over again, you’re not really starting over. Life is a continuum.  You’re either jolted or sliding into the next experience. You’re moving on.

Here are a few tips for those of you in that uncomfortable place of SOA when you thought the last time you started over would be the last.

1. Let yourself grieve your losses.  You don’t need to be so stoic.  Give yourself room to be human.  What you’re going through may be extremely difficult and it may hurt.  But you will get through it.
2. Remind yourself that what you’re going through won’t last forever.  If you have to leave post-it notes around the house, then do it. Remember other times you had to reorganize after a loss.  Recall the behaviors that helped you get through it. Draw from what you learned, including the knowledge that you did survive that devastating time.
3. Give yourself time to cocoon.  You’re not isolating.  You’re resting, giving your body a chance to adapt to the change.
4. Tell your story often. Tell it to people who will listen and care.  While some people may accuse us of obsessiveness, telling our story repeatedly is part of how we incorporate the unthinkable into our life story.
5. Set goals.  In the beginning, start by writing a list of what you want or need to accomplish just that day.  Take life in small chunks.  After some time passes, begin writing goal lists that go further into the future.  For now, while you’re in shock, a list for today is enough.
6. Be kind to yourself.  There may be days when all you accomplish is getting out of bed and taking a shower.  Instead of focusing on how little you did, tell yourself you did great – because you did.
7. Slowly, as new people and interests come into your life, be willing to say “yes” to opportunities. Often a person or an interest that I think is just a “time killer” slowly becomes a major part of the next part of my life.
8. If you need to cry or get angry, cry or get angry. You may even be furious with your Higher Power.  That’s okay.  You’ll work it out later.
9. Know there is no one right way to start over.  We have tools, not rules.  Now is the time to dig into your toolbox and use what you’ve learned:  living in the present moment; prayer; meditation; exercise (when your body can handle it); detachment (which involves feeling all your emotions); and sometimes Acting As If.  Know that if the emotions become too intense, you can shut them down for a while without going into denial. Something as simple as taking a shower, going into another room, or going to the grocery store can help you stop falling deeper into what feels like a bottomless pit of pain.
10. Beginnings are delicate, sacred events.  Even when you’re in pain, take time to acknowledge that this is a new beginning.  You’ll likely find yourself trying to recreate your old life from time to time.  That’s okay.  It’s part of the process of letting go but we can still honor the sacredness of this time. Later we’ll see how holy this junction really was.

Although I wrote earlier that there aren’t any rules, there are three hard and fast ones that have no exceptions: 1) don’t let anyone hurt you; 2) don’t hurt anyone else; and 3) don’t hurt yourself. Even if you’re someone who never tolerated abuse, you may feel that God is punishing you (not true) so you can be more prone to allowing someone to abuse you.

You will get through this, although maybe not as quickly as you want. One morning you’ll wake up and find yourself living in the next part of your life, a part that feels as comfortable and normal as your old life (in most situations). Instead of opening your eyes and feeling a blast of pain, you’ll be at peace. Your new life will be there — fully formed. You’ll be living it even if you’re still dealing with remnants of your grief.

Congratulations. You did it. You started over again, whether you wanted to or not. Now the next time you need to start over, you’ll know what to do.

From the Desk of Melody Beattie

Original article on Broken Heart System available at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/broken-heart-syndrome/DS01135

Fill in the blank with over-drink, use drugs, cheat; lie; refuse to commit; over-work; stay away from home or whatever the Other Person does that hurts us so much.

Many of us long to be nurtured, held, shown we’re cared for and about. We’re genuinely confused about why that doesn’t happen.  Your answer to the question asked by this blog’s title also answers the question: Why don’t other people do for me, after all I do for them?

Having a moderate to high Receivability Quotient (referred to as RQ in the rest of this blog) can create a major change in your life. Even if you haven’t heard of RQ until now, RQ has heard about you. It’s affected us all along and will continue to do so.

Some people say we can’t out-give God.  That may be true for most, but not for the avid codependent. Our RQ is what people cannot out-give, no matter how hard they try. Their gifts won’t work; their love won’t stick.

We say we want the Other Person to give us more.  We complain to our friends about how much we do for her or him, and how little that person does for us, that selfish son-of-an-overindulgent potential mother-in-law.

Our RQ doesn’t affect only romantic relationships. It directly dictates how much we receive from Life, our Higher Power (or God as we understand or fail to understand Him), people we do business with, our Boss, customers, and the list goes on. All our relationship fall prey to our RQ. It dictates what we will or won’t accept with open arms.

We don’t want to make it our goal to only receive. It’s important to maintain a healthy balance between giving and getting, and to have healthy boundaries about what we receive, how much, and from whom. But for most of us, the scales don’t come close to balancing.

How many of you have been taught that it’s better to give than to receive?  Show of hands, please. Do you believe that?  I do. Unquestionably, blessings pour down on those who give in a healthy, non-codependent and non-manipulative way.

So if we believe that giving is a good thing, then why do we dig in our heels and refuse to let those around us become blessed by giving to us?  Why do we deny people we say we love that pleasure by denying their gifts?

I learned much about healthy giving taking care of my Mom when Alzheimer’s disease destroyed her once razor-sharp mind.  But when I first tried to help by telling my mother what she was going to do, who was going to help her, where and when, my attitude triggered an uncontrollable rage in her.

“Get the hell out of my life.  I don’t want anything from you,” she screamed.

I left.

A year later when I returned, I treated her with respect by asking her what she wanted, and from whom.  Things transpire differently.  I made a conscious decision that before my mom died, she would experience what it felt like to be unconditionally loved.  By me.

I achieved my goal.

At her funeral, people said that my mother looked more beautiful and at peace than she ever had.

“No,” I said. “She looks dead.”

But what people said was true. My mother and I had battled all my life, each of us wanting the other to take care of and love us. Neither of us would give in.

This war ended when I decided to love her.  I understand that in a perfect world the mother should love and take care of the child, and not the other way around. But we’re talking the eleventh hour.  No time to undo a lifetime of behaviors so sick that our family became the poster-family for dysfunctional systems.

My relationship with my mother would never be what it should be. But in those remaining years of my mother’s life when I accepted and loved her as she was instead of constantly reminding myself about all I didn’t get from her, my mom:

Nurtured me for the first time in a way that truly touched my heart;

Told me how  much she loved me so cleanly it didn’t make me throw up;

Cried at my pain over me losing my son instead of trying to outdo me by saying how much more she hurt than I did;

Told me how proud of me she felt instead of pointing out my every past mistake;

Forgave me for hurting her as a result of my addiction when I was a young adult and child;

Did more than superficially forgive me and instead she forgot the pain I caused her –  well maybe the Alzheimer’s had something to do with that;

Hugged me with such love it no longer felt like a porcupine had me trapped in its grip;

Laughed, giggled and enjoyed life;

Trusted and respected me.

For the first time, my mother loved me the way I wanted her to. It felt good.

I didn’t expect anything from her.  I focused only on my goal – to give and show love to her.  She had desperately sought love all her life and we know how well desperation works when it comes to love.

She had married eight, nine or ten different men. By now, we’d all lost track (including her) of how many husbands she had.  What she didn’t lose track of, even in her dementia, was that she hadn’t found or received the love she desired and that unmet need and her refusal to receive (a no-win situation) still guided and motivated what she did.

By age 90 – well actually many decades before that — her unfulfilled desire etched itself so deeply into the furrowed lines on her forehead, the deep wrinkles around her eyes, and the downward turn of her lips, that I thought the pain had become a permanent part of her face.

Love changed even that.  Her receiving my love became a great anti-aging protocol, more effective than anything money could buy. Alzheimer’s disease had rendered Mom so vulnerable she finally let love in.

As an unexpected perk, what I gave to my mother swung around like a boomerang and blessed me.

So if it’s more blessed to give than to receive, why do we deny others the blessings they could receive if we let them give to us?  Not a redundant question, it merits a thoughtful answer. Why don’t we let people give to us?

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Nuh uh.  No.  Can’t accept that.”

“I can do it myself.”

“I will take care of myself.”

“Don’t need any help, but thanks for offering.”

Some of us don’t even use the gift cards other people give us. We let them expire.

Our RQ register reads zero.  The reading won’t change until we consciously decide to allow ourselves – to trust ourselves – to receive.

Here’s an example of how powerful that decision can be and how quickly it can create change. Soon after I went through treatment for chemical dependency but not soon enough, I tired of the bus being my only means of transportation.

Traveling by bus wasn’t a green thing; it felt like a mean thing. My arms ached from carrying those brown paper sacks of groceries from the store to the bus, and then from the bus to my little apartment-home.  I hated it when I couldn’t find an available seat on the bus, and I had to stand, juggling my bags of groceries.

Before chemical dependency treatment, I abused the State-given privilege to drive. I assumed I’d not be allowed to drive again and accepted that as my self-created fate, Just Desserts for my reckless anti-social driving.

I believed I didn’t deserve to drive again.  In the evenings, after attending my recovery meetings, I wouldn’t even allow myself to accept a ride home. When people from the meetings offered to drive me home, I always said “No, thanks.

RQ?  Zero.

One day I completely, utterly tired of riding the bus. I looked up at the sky (when I’m outside and talk to God, I always look at the sky, as if God dwells inside a cloud). “God please, could I get a driver’s license and a car?” I said, making a statement as much as asking a question.

Within six weeks, I had a car and a driver’s license (a valid one). But first I had to elevate my RQ and demonstrate that by asking for what I wanted.

That began the journey of understanding my RQ and learning the importance of written goals. If we aren’t conscious of what we want and if we don’t believe we deserve whatever we want enough to write about it, we probably won’t recognize the gift and accept it when it comes.  An opportunity will arise, and we’ll refuse, reject, or not even notice it.

By writing our goals, we’ve upped our RQ and increased the possibility of getting what we want.

Other factors make goals crucial, but that’s another blog for another time. Regarding RQ, by writing goals, we do the prep work to receive and accept what we want, when it comes. Goals aren’t to be used to interfere with another’s free will; they’re one way we manifest our own.

So often, I’m asked to define codependency.  As I’ve written before, it’s nearly impossible because codependency consists of behaviors nearly everyone does occasionally. These behaviors can be healthy or an expression of dysfunction.

Two people can do exactly the same behavior and for one, it’s a healthy choice and another, a codependent, compulsively-driven act.

Some people don’t get to the place in codependency recovery where they feel safe enough to give to people again. When I took take of my mother when she had Alzheimer’s, I wasn’t engaging in codependent caretaking. I did for her what she could not do for herself.

I didn’t take care of her out of guilt.  I wanted to love her and care for her.

Many of us may have only experienced guilt-motivated giving done out of obligation. Sacrificing for and giving to another person, when done from clean and pure motives, can forge a deep bond of love between the caregiver and the person receiving care.

It’s similar to pregnancy. We bring our baby home from the hospital.  Then we realize it will be 12 to 24 years before we ever get a good night’s sleep again. Even when a child reaches his or her majority, they like to call Mom or Dad at 1:30 a.m. to discuss things.

When our children are small, they depend on us for every need. A parent gives and gives and gives to a child.  It’s healthy, as long as healthy boundaries temper the giving and we eventually learn to say “No” to a child.

If we’re lucky, at some point we have an epiphany.  We see that by legitimately sacrificing  — and caregiving an infant exemplifies healthy caretaking because a baby can’t change its diaper until it’s four years old –  and by doing for and giving to our child, we may be exhausted but we’ve grown to love this child deeply.

Unhealthy caregiving breeds resentments and leaves us drained. Healthy giving blesses us.  We may be tired, but we experience love at its finest.

It’s more blessed to give than to receive and clean, healthy giving creates good love.

If you’re shopping for a special person or spouse, if you’re in a flagging relationship, or you’re in one where the other person wants to run (but can’t because we’ve handcuffed him or her to the television stand), maybe the problem isn’t that we haven’t given him or her enough.

Maybe it’s that we’ve given too much and haven’t let him or her give to us.  We haven’t learned how to let our special person give to us and create that deep bond of love.

See, guys and gals, being unlovable does not accurately describe our problem.  We’re loveable. You’re loveable.  So are you.  And you.  And even you, with all your quirky ways.  Not allowing people to give to us, not ceasing our endless giving and caretaking, not taking our RQ from zero to at least a two and preferably a five or six describes the problem and defines the solution

Wherever you are, no matter your situation, it’s time to evaluate your RQ and consciously learn to say, “Yes, thank you. I’ll accept that ___________.”  Fill in the blank with:  compliment, ride, gift, dinner or help when we’re ill.

For years we’ve heard that we don’t recover from codependency by changing exterior situations.  We can leave.  We can stay.  We can vacillate.  Doesn’t matter. Until we make changes inside of ourselves, things stay the same.

Recovery is an inside job.

We can take care of ourselves.  We no longer have to protect ourselves by taking care of everyone around us. It’s safe to receive. We’re free to give to others because now we know what we want to do and give, and what we don’t.

We say what we mean.  We’re what some people call authentic. It’s what author Margery Williams Bianco meant in her book The Velveteen Rabbit when she wrote about becoming real.

We are who we are. When it comes to changes, Life will guide us as to what needs to be changed and when. We don’t change by thinking or reading about it.  We change by immersing ourselves in the experiences of our lives.

It’s time to lift our Receivability Quotient until it soars.  It’s time to accept what we want. It’s time to learn to fly.

ACTIVITY:

Take the first step to raising your RQ by watching yourself – observing – and becoming aware of how you refuse or reject the gifts life offers you.  Do you allow people in your life to take and take, without giving to you?  Are you drained and exhausted – and not in a good way?

Do you resent the giving you do, or do you feel blessed by it?

Become aware of what you really want.

Let the lesson of RQ integrate, move down from our minds as intellectual knowledge, and then transform our behaviors.  We’ll get only that which we allow ourselves to receive, and not one one-hundredth of a millimeter more.

Stop with the “I couldn’t,” “You shouldn’t,” and the “I can’t.”  Just … say… yes.  Give the people around you the opportunity to be blessed by giving to you.

From the desk of:

Melody Beattie

No comment.

However, I did receive an intelligent question today, forwarded to me by “Admin.”  One more person wanted to be the exception to the rule that I absolutely do not have the time to reply personally to emails sent to the site.  I just don’t.  I have three sites going, and I reply to all the questions myself (unless it’s a technical one – in which case I forward it to Chip).

Besides, there is magic in a group – even if the group meets online.  Sharing the question and the answer on the forum means others get to learn from the answer too.  It means that the person asking the question will likely learn he or she isn’t as alone with his or her problem as that person thought.  It also opens the question up for other comments, too, bringing us back to the magic of the group.

This post is solely to answer the question:  “Do you have to have alcoholism involved to become codependent?”  Group, what do you think?  No, what do you know?  One issue that surprised me the most after the release of my first book on codependency was the huge number of people who lived in families without any alcoholism or addiction, but codependency had still set in.

This isn’t to “sell books,” (mine are available at libraries for free)  but in one of my more recent releases – The New Codependency – I define codependency more by “which of these issues is causing a problem, and how much does it hurt?”

Let’s look deeper.  Codependency is a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances.  That’s what I wrote way back when.  I still stand behind those words.  Everything written is true.  It works.  But like others, I’ve learned more and seen more with the passing of time. More has been revealed.

Initially I thought that loss comprised about ten percent of codependency.  Now, I’m coming to believe that codependency is often people stuck in one or more stages of grief.  The loss may be living with an ongoing illness for which there isn’t a cure; not receiving something we needed to become full human beings as a child (like love and protection); or losing an important relationship now – as adults.

If you add obsession and guilt to the five stages of grief, as outlined by Elizabeth Kubler Ross – you have what we’ve come to define as codependency.  Denial; anger (lots of that); negotiation (a/k/a manipulation); sadness; and finally acceptance or surrender to what is.

Listen, guys and gals – people young and old – obsessing isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  We need to tell our story, sometimes over and over, to integrate it into our life experiences.  And the guilt we feel?  It’s not authentic (most of the time). It’s a symptom of other losses that have cut into our heart.

Recently the Mayo clinic labeled Broken Heart Syndrome as a true medical condition that occurs when we suffer a deep loss.  A deep loss isn’t limited to having someone we love die.  It could be, say, having our child develop an incurable illness that he or she will live with likely as long as the person is alive.  Control sets in when we do our best to make the problem go away, otherwise known as denial, and sometimes called resistance.

Sometimes natural and normal situations can imitate codependency, such as when we have a newborn baby and we need to center our lives around the child and forgo what we need.  The difference there is that the behaviors that resemble codependency are temporary responses to a temporary situation in our life.  It’s when codependent behaviors become a way of life that it’s likely codependency has set in.

We think who we are isn’t okay.  We don’t trust what we feel.  Usually in homes where codependency has set in, feelings aren’t discussed much or at all.  People dig a rut, move furniture in, and call it home.  They’re miserable but they’re okay with that – at least they know what to expect:  not much at all, and surely not a full life.

While none of us are promised the proverbial bed of roses, some of us get unnecessarily enmeshed in other people’s problems.  Their problems control our lives.  Our emotions control their lives.  It’s an ugly dance of quietly or loudly pulling the other person’s strings.

See – this is the deal.  It’s not what we do that makes it codependent.  It’s how what we do makes us feel.  It’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.  Are we acting out of obligation, fear, and guilt?  Or are our actions motivated by clean choice?  Are we doing what we do because it’s what we choose to do, no matter the outcome?

You can have two people doing exactly the same behaviors and one person is making healthy choices. The other is doing the codependency dysfunctional dance feeling victimized, separate from life, likely unloved and unlovable, and perpetually not good enough.

So many people are suffering from chronic depression.  It takes two weeks of feeling terribly sad to receive this label.  After my son died, I’m certain 99 percent of the doctors around would have labeled me depressed. I wasn’t.  I was going through that heart-healing process called grief.  Feeling extremely sad when a son you love with all your heart dies qualifies as a normal response to an abnormal situation.

We live in a time where more and more people resist feeling uncomfortable.  We expect all problems to be immediately and easily solved.  When that doesn’t occur, we may consider our lives a hopeless waste.

Not so.  We’ve been dealt a challenging hand.  How we’re going to play that hand is up to us.  Recovery isn’t about rules (except for two).  It’s about tools – accessing them, using them, and freely making our choices.  The only rules I have are don’t hurt yourself (which includes don’t let anyone else physically hurt you.)  And don’t hurt (physically) anyone else.

It’s not unhealthy to love people, to care about them, and sometimes to sacrifice for them.  That’s what can bond us to others and create that feeling called “love.”  Again, it all goes back to our motivation.

I cannot judge another’s heart.  Can there be codependency without alcoholism?  Can there be loss without alcoholism?  I’m coming to believe that many if not most cases of chemical dependency began as a survival behavior to self-medicate emotional pain that became too much – more than we could handle without support.  Then the “cure” became an illness of its own.

Something else not publicly discussed much are the benefits from growing up in a dysfunctional home.  Studies quoted in an article in the New York Times show that in later life situation, such as at work, people who survived heavy dysfunction and then learned to administer self-care and began to thrive make the best employees – and not because they’re codependent and never say, “No.”  It’s because they can withstand stress, chaos, problems, and situations that others find overwhelming.

They know how to deal with less than ideal situations in life and they don’t need to live in a bubble to survive.  (I’m not doing footnotes in my blogs but if you want more info on this see The New Codependency.)

I now believe that too much loss and grief can cause the beginning of alcoholism and chemical dependency in a family.  It can also create codependent responses – responses made out of obligation, guilt, and fear whether alcoholism and addiction are present or not.

The reason we call recovery “an inside job” is because it’s true. We don’t change the circumstances around us to feel better.  We deal with what’s inside us, usually the things we most don’t want to look at, expose to the light, or feel. People don’t like to feel pain.  They don’t like confusion, not being able to make sense of life, or feeling like life is random — a disorderly, chaotic thing.

We also don’t like it when we realize how vulnerable we really are to all the problems, pain, and situations we used to believe we had immunity from.

While Life is chaotic and often makes no sense at all, many of us have experienced Dnana – a word that means learning or knowing that’s inseparable from an experience.  We aren’t what we eat but we are what we’ve been through.  We aren’t our problems, but our problems are ours to solve, live with, let go of, or endure.

Underneath the chaos an underlying order exists.  The world we live in?  A vital universe.  One that’s truly alive and will guide us to what we need, if we listen to that still, small voice within.

Another statement in Codependent No More I stand behind one hundred percent:  There is no situation that can’t be made worse by severe self-neglect, and it’s opposite, “Self-love and self-care will benefit any situation we need to get through, go around, or endure.”

Self-love isn’t narcissism, over-indulgence, or extreme pampering.  In his book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle defines love for others (paraphrased) as not being something we get and need desperately to fill up the big empty hole within.  Loving someone means being present for and aware of another in each moment.  To that I add that love means giving what we want to give, and what the other person wants to receive.

That would mean, if accepted as truth, that self-love means being present for and aware of ourselves.  Living a “Day at a Time” doesn’t mean waiting to get through today so tomorrow can come.  It means, being present for and aware of who we are, how we feel, and what’s taking place within and around us right now.

I hope my reactions to and thoughts about your question help.  But remember – I’m a writer not an expert, guru, psychiatrist or spiritual adviser.  I’m stumbling my way through life too, just like anyone else. But if I shared all the stories with you (the person who asked the question about codependency) about family situations where codependency ruled but no alcohol or drugs caused the pain, it would take about five more books to write about them all.

To engage in codependent behaviors isn’t a bad thing. In most cases, it means we really care but aren’t sure what to do.  Somewhere along the line, we forgot we could trust ourselves.

“Don’t force it,” my friend said, when I tried to open a container.  “You’ll break it.”  He summed up the effects of control.  The other behaviors – taking care of others and neglecting ourselves, repressing and denying important feelings, resisting reality, feeling separate from people and things in the world we live in – and many other traits connected with codependency – are on a continuum.  They’re normal reactions that anyone would do, given a similar situation.

Codependency occurs when we cross a line. We’re stuck.  We can’t stop doing what we’re doing, even though what we’re doing hurts the other person and us.  So now I have a question for you:  How much do you hurt?  How much does what you do hurt?  Or have you become so numb you’re not sure how you really feel?

Not to worry.  Most of us step across that line at times.  You don’t need to have hope for a better tomorrow.  Instead, trust where you are today because that’s what true faith is.

While I’m at it, I’ll answer another question I’m often asked too.  “Can you become codependent on another codependent?”  Answer:  Yes.

It’s the worst.

Good luck,
Melody Beattie