Codependency Sucks [Paperback]

Linda Meyerholz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1998

Codependency is the disease that destroys relationships, friendships, and the workplace. But what is it? Everything written so far will tell you what codependency looks like, what the symptoms of codependency are. This book tells you exactly what codependency is and how to end this killer in a direct, healthy, careful, caring way.

How do you know if you're in a codependent situation? It's easy. You feel as though you're getting the less than you're giving. You may feel as though the life is being sucked out of you. You feel physically, mentally, emotionally drained. In the beginning you may only have a feeling of vague dissatisfaction. Eventually the dissatisfaction becomes deep unhappiness, maybe even depression. If you're in a codependent relationship you may do all of the work for that relationship, especially the emotional work. You may do all the giving and none of the receiving. Or perhaps you're being smothered with gifts, advice, and suggestions. Someon!e may be manipulating you to get their needs met. You may do all the emoting and feeling, especially the anger emoting, while the other person looks at you as though you've gone over the edge. You may be the lightening rod for releasing anger for your spouse and children, lover, friends, co-workers, etc. Everyone hates you for your angry outbursts, but they stay with you because you are their only connection to the world of emotions. They need the emotional release your angry outbursts provide. When one person does all the work of a relationship, there is no relationship, just the illusion of a relationship. When you quit doing all the work, the truth comes out and the illusion ends. Many people die in these codependent relationships, hating each other but needing each other desperately for reasons they don't even remotely understand. CODEPENDENCY SUCKS will give you understanding of the navigational system Mother Nature has given to each of us and what happens when people are crippled by loss of some or all of the spirit senses. Bear! with me...the physical senses are: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Life is enormously more difficult if we lose one or more of these senses. There are laws to protect those of us who have physical disabilities. Our intellectual senses are: reasoning, deducting, analyzing, remembering, and organizing information. Again, life can be very difficult if we don't have use of any or all of these faculties. They have laws to protect people with these kinds of deficiencies. The unconscious part of a human being also has senses. These senses are emoting (of the emotions we are experiencing), sensing (observing and understanding the emotions of others), dreaming, imagining, and intuiting. Codependents decide somewhere in their early lives to stop feeling, emoting, dreaming, imagining and/or intuiting. Deadening the spirit senses becomes habitual. Being cut off from the unconscious, spirit self is extremely painful. Because they are only attached to the physical and intellectual parts of their beings, they don't feel alive. In order to feel alive they MUST connect to something outside of self. Alcoholics and addicts generally are codependent with their drug of choice...it's what makes them feel o.k., alive and well. They will chase the original feelings of wellness they got from alcohol and drugs to their deaths. Workaholics only feel alive when working. Food addicts, gamblers, sex and love addicts experience the same feelings of aliveness from their anesthesia. There are people who only feel alive through their religion, through sports, through makeup, clothing, cars and houses. And there are people who only feel alive when they are glommed onto other people. This brand of codependent takes their identity from who they are attached to. It can be a husband, wife, child(ren), friend, wealthy patron...you name it. People who are detached from the spirit self can and will attach to anyone who gets too near. The solution is relatively simple. But it takes some hard work and rigorous honesty. Sometimes the codepe! ndent has to lose everyone they've ever loved before they will confront their own issues. Read Codependency Sucks and you'll understand why today's world is so wildly dysfunctional. You'll also understand how easily we can step out of the chaos we and others have created. And you'll develop relationships that are solid, healthy, and very, very real. No more illusions. No more games playing.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Codependency is everywhere in our society. It is not a dysfunction that is limited to substance abusers and their families and friends. Anyone can become codependent. When human beings shut down any of the spirit senses (emoting, sensing, imagining, dreaming, intuiting), they limit access to the unconscious/spirit part of self. If we are blind and deaf, it is extremely difficult to communicate with the minds and spirits of others. It's also true that if we are unable to emote or sense the feelings of others we are cut off from most of life. Being cut off from our own spirit selves is excruciatingly painful for us and totally frustrating to the people around us. We have to do something to stop the pain. Often we turn to work, television, reading, exercise, sports, food, sex, obsessive caretaking, and, of course, alcohol or drugs to stop the pain. A huge number of people stop of the pain of separation from spirit self with work, the Internet, computer gaems...you get the idea. We can connect with anything and get a temporary but artificial feeling of connectedness to the outside world. I grew up with people who were brutalized as children. My father was extremely attached to my mother and totally insecure in their relationship. He went into jealous rages if she so much as said hello to the mailman. My mother was very shut down emotionally. They yelled and screamed at each other daily but never, never connected on the spirit level. Their arguments were physical and intellectual. (You should do this...If only you would do this, etc.) My mother died at forty-eight years of age because her religion told her that was the only way you could get out of a marriage. My father could not live without her and he died six months later at age fifty-two. My mother was codependent with her religion; my father was codependent with her. Neither of them took responsibility for their own happiness or well being. They believed their source of happiness was outside of their selves and this belief gave them miserable lives and premature deaths. I was on that same path until I put myself into a treatment center in 1982. I was in a marriage with an emotionally unavailable person for twenty-five years. After eleven years in that marriage, I began medicating myself with alcohol and legally prescribed tranquillizers. By 1982 I was nearly dead. It was in the treatment center that I began this book. It was in alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers that codependency began to be understood. Codependency, the abnormal attachment of a person to people or things outside of self, was first observed in families, friends, and/or co-workers and employers of substance abusers.

It became clear to mental health professionals that the people surrounding alcoholics and addicts were often in greater distress than were the people in treatment. In the early eighties when I first began my addictions education, these people were called co-alcoholics or co-addicts. When alcoholics or addicts stop using chemicals to alter their consciousness and get into a recovery program, they generally experience rapid returns to sanity. The exact opposite often happens with the co-alcoholics and co-addicts. When the substance abusers begin to heal and develop healthier living patterns, their new lifestyles often trigger anger, depression, even violence in the people closest to them. Today we know that getting the drug abuser well was the reason for being for many of co-alcoholics/co-addicts. The substance abuser needed the drugs/alcohol to feel alive, to feel connected to the world. Many of the people attached to the substance abusers needed someone to fix, complete, and take care of in order to feel alive and connected to the world. In Codependency Sucks you will learn to observe codependent behaviors in yourself and others. You will come to understand how wildly codependent our society has become through centuries of struggle for power and control among individuals, between states, and between countries. You will understand the insanity that brings children to kill people they don't like, and drives adults to kill their mates, co-workers and employers. You will understand that terrorism is only the last resort of all-encompassing societal codependence. But there is a solution. It's within each of us and it's within this book.

From the Back Cover

The struggle for power and control over others is what human existence has been all about. Today, humanity's age old struggle has come full circle. Reportedly, God preferred Abel's gift, so Cain did what codependents are wont to do. He killed the competition. He killed his brother. Today children are murdering children in our schools, homes, and streets. Lovers kill lovers and parents are torturing and murdering family members in unprecedented numbers. What makes us believe we have the right to kill or batter those who displease us?

As you read "Codependency Sucks," you'll come to understand how the science/religion split of the sixteenth century put western civilization on a path of destruction that has brought us to the brink of disaster in the twentieth century. Codependent relationships are the natural result of distorted teachings that have been handed down to us generation after generation. But there is a solution. It is within this book and it is within you.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Love 'n' Support Publishing (1998)
• ISBN-10: 1570874344
• ISBN-13: 978-1570874345
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,739,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The author, Linda Meyerholz, practices what she preaches, 24/7!!, October 2, 2005

By 

Carol Stewart-high (Asheboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Codependency Sucks (Paperback)

Not only have I read CODEPENDENCY SUCKS, several times: I have also given copies of it to numerous friends and had the special priviledge of working in therapy with the author. Linda Meyerholz has not written a word in this book that she has not lived herself. She has helped thousands of us (hundreds of whom I know personally) who have used her insight and ideas to take our own lives from deeply frustrating to highly gratifying - free from the interference of "those people"whom we allowed to sap our freedom and self-esteem. If you want a tool to help you start eliminating from your life those interferences you don't wany any more, this is definitely it. If you want more mediocre, don't take this recommendation.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing, thought-provoking with a healthy sense of humor., October 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Codependency Sucks (Paperback)

It was refreshing to look at and think about societal issues influencing codependency versus personal family related analysis.

Linda Meyerholz presents her thoughts related to behavior influences within various aspects of daily life and industries in an interesting thought provoking manner with a sense of humor interwined.

Food for thought for a balanced codependency diet.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No more victims, only voluteers, June 11, 2001

By 

Sharon F. (Miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Codependency Sucks (Paperback)

Codependency Sucks is an eye-opening revelation re the history of co-dependency in the modern world, as well as a practical guide to recovery from this disease. In true recovery fashion, Linda advocates the 12-Steps for healing from this disease - I don't know anything better for people who have been as scarred as we are from it. It is NOT a book that "blames the victim" - it is a compassionate guide on how to NOT allow the same unhealthy, insane, abusive men and women into my life as before, by focusing on my recovery, and thus, being more in touch with the feelings I'm having when I see them coming - I simply do not engage with them anymore. The humor is wonderful - another sign for me of the recovery process: having laughter and joy in my life again. Thank you, Linda, for an enlightening book, written from the heart - and from your own experience.