Detachment and Boundaries
About nine years ago, I was at a therapy appointment discussing the challenges in my marriage. As I reluctantly described my woes, the therapist listened for a while and then said, “I think your husband might be an alcoholic.” I was shocked as she handed me a copy of Codependent No More and an Al-Anon brochure and suggested I go to a meeting.
I cried all the way home, unable to comprehend the possibility of having an alcoholic husband and confident there was no way I was going to a program for HIS problem. I did, however, start reading the book because if I could find an answer to the problem, I could solve it.
The pages, however, didn’t provide any answers about how to solve my husband’s desire to drink. Instead, I read pages and pages of descriptions that reflected the person I’d become.
These are a few that resonated:
- Feeling compelled to help another person solve their problem
- Anticipating other people’s needs
- Saying yes when I wanted to say no
- Overcommitting myself
- Feeling safest when giving
- Taking things personally
- Expecting perfection from myself
- Get artificial feelings of self-worth from helping others
- Appearing rigid or controlled
- Telling myself things would be better tomorrow
- Pretending circumstances aren’t as bad as they are
- Trying to prove I was good enough to be loved
- Finding it difficult to have fun and be spontaneous
And the list went on…
Tears rolled down my face. How had I, a confident and ambitious college student, turned into an insecure, people-pleasing codependent that looked to others for my worth?
Perhaps living with an alcoholic for almost 19 years, but not seeing it for most of that time, helped shape those behaviors.
Fast forward to today. The updated version of Codependent No More is out, and as I am reading through the pages, I’m so grateful for the growth and freedom I’ve learned through Al-Anon and codependency recovery work. It has transformed my life.
So, I’d like to share a few things:
What is a codependent?
Melody Beattie, author of Codependent No More, says a codependent is a “person who has let another person’s behavior affect them and who is obsessed with controlling that other person’s behavior.”
How widespread is codependency?
There is no way to pinpoint specific numbers since it’s up to each person to decide for themselves. But a 2019 Gallup poll found that 40% of adults in the United States dealt with substance abuse in their families.
These numbers are staggering.
And when you think about the others who love, care about, or work with people who struggle or have trouble in general, the numbers must be substantially higher.
Is there a solution?
Yes, because we always have the opportunity to improve. We just have to accept that we’re responsible for our actions, and others are responsible for theirs, including our partners, kids, and colleagues.
Two primary components of recovery—detachment and boundaries
Detaching doesn’t mean we don’t care. It means we learn to love, care, and be involved without allowing others’ actions to take over our lives.
Beattie said, “Detachment involves accepting reality and requires faith, in ourselves, in a Higher Power, in other people, and in the natural order and destiny of things in this world. We trust that someone or something greater than ourselves knows, has ordained, and cares about what is happening.”
Another component of recovery is setting physical and emotional limits to establish healthy boundaries of what we are willing to accept and tolerate. For many codependents, recognizing feelings is the first step to establishing boundaries. Then they can determine what is acceptable and not acceptable.
These are some questions to ask when learning to set boundaries:
- What am I feeling?
- Are my time, resources, and emotions respected and valued?
- Do I want to help, or do I feel guilty not helping?
- Does this behavior compromise my integrity and ethics?
- Am I feeling pressured?
Setting boundaries is like opening and closing a door. Only you have the key and can choose to open and close it. If you give away the key, you lose control of what works for you. While it’s important to set firm boundaries and be consistent, you can change your mind anytime. You can set a limit for the day, a week, a month, or a year, but it doesn’t have to be forever unless you choose to handle it that way.
There’s so much more that could be said about boundaries, but I’ll stop there in the interest of brevity. If you want help with boundaries or detaching with love, I highly recommend picking up Codependent No More and checking out Al-Anon. There are thousands of meetings around the world at any time, some in person and some by Zoom. Find out more here.
What’s New
Each month provides new opportunities to learn, share, and grow. In October, I was thrilled to have a piece published by NAMI, and that the podcast episode of Confessions of a Crappy Christian dropped (and it has nearly 25,000 followers!)
Articles
NAMI: Surviving-Motherhood and Mental Health: What I Wish I Knew When Life Went Off-Script
Manage Expectations So They Don’t Manage You
How to Talk to Co-Workers (and Have Meaningful Conversations)
How To Manage Cultural Differences in Workplace Communication
Podcasts
