Re: childhood abuse

Basically, codependency is an identity crisis (not knowing yourself and feeling that happiness is only for other people). My Depression was from an identity crisis not just from a dysfunctional family, but because I realized when I was very young that my parents should never have been married (that left me without a solid heritage and unable to firmly establish that I should exist). This is mainly a SUBCONSCIOUS knowledge that children of divorce have, but even if there is no divorce, as soon as a child realizes that their parents were "not made for each other", there will be a feeling of insecurity in the child because they no longer have the ability to firmly establish a heritage/identity in the same way that most people can. They become very dependent on being "of use" to other people in order to establish a "self-worth".

When I was 46, I heard someone talking about their job search and they said "I would never take a job that I didn't want or like". I was immediately fascinated with the word "I", but didn't know why (I also liked the words "want" and "like"). Because I couldn't get those words out of my mind, the next day, I started thinking about them again and realized that the word "I" doesn't just REFER to yourself, it DECLARES YOUR EXISTENCE (whenever someone would ask me why I did something a certain way, I would say "well, that's just ME", but the word "I" doesn't just REFER to yourself). I no longer would simply REFER to myself, I would declare that "I" did things a certain way because "I" chose to. I became bold and discovered that "I" do have the right to "want" and "like". That was the most important step in being able to establish a self-worth that didn't depend on other people's approval and that they didn't have the right to use me for their schemes. I became a human being. Words are very powerful because they are actually CONCEPTS/ideas that we use to express every thought in our lives, we don't just say them, we LIVE them.

The next step in my recovery was that I learned to ACCEPT myself for who I am. What the world (society) condescendingly thinks of as "undesirable qualities" in me, are simply my idiosyncracies (quirks) that make me "mySELF" (a unique person). When I first came to Curezone, I learned that I am not alone in my experiences, but I also learned that I could relate to almost all emotional adversity in each post (I was saying to myself..."been there"..."done that" in just about every post, hence, my username). I became a unique human being that did have something of my own to offer and it wasn't dependent on other people's approval.

If you're still not convinced of how important "I"/SELF is, the name of the creator is "I am who I am", Exodus 3:14. We are His offspring/children and the only way we can enjoy life is to know who we are (SELF).

So, recovery from codependency means
1) establishing "I"/self.
2) ACCEPTING "self".

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A person's past will never disappear, it must be realized that it made them who they are and that they have unique qualities that can be useful to themselves and shared with others in a way that only they could share. Other people can offer clinical and scientific explanations of the situation and insist that therapy is the only cure, but not so, human beings are not SCIENCE. She is a truly righteous person (but right now, she doesn't know it), an extremely warm and loving person (but right now, she doesn't know it) and a very insightful person (but right now, she doesn't know it).