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Codependency Quotes

Browse 179 quotes about Codependency.

Codependency Quotes

“Detachment also involves accepting reality—the facts. It requires faith—in ourselves, in God, in other people, and in the natural order and destiny of things in this world. We believe in the rightness and appropriateness of each moment. We release our burdens and cares, and give ourselves the freedom to enjoy life in spite of our unsolved problems. We trust that all is well in spite of the conflicts. We trust that Someone greater than ourselves knows, has ordained, and cares about what is happening. We understand that this Someone can do much more to solve the problem than we can. So we try to stay out of His way and let Him do it. In time, we know that all is well because we see how the strangest (and sometimes most painful) things work out for the best and for the benefit of everyone.”

TrustLetting GoCodependency
Book:Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
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“To be gentle with ourselves requires a willingness to be exposed and perhaps be hurt. As I have already suggested, there is nothing weak or ‘cowardly’ about gentleness, especially when we are relearning to live in this world by minimizing our ‘numbing strategies’ so that we can practise super self-care. When we face our fears, we are acting courageously. Courage happens in the mundane. If we observe people in our local community, we can see courage being practised all around us. Just turning up for life every day requires courage, especially when we are prepared to be present.”

CourageShameGuiltAddictionRecoverySelf CareCodependencyChristopher DinesSuper Self Care
Book:Super Self Care: How to Find Lasting Freedom from Addiction, Toxic Relationships and Dysfunctional Lifestyles
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“Guilt is imperative if we are to create and sustain a decent code of ethics and a sound moral compass. Guilt can help us to listen to our conscience, enhance empathy, and therefore have fulfilling relationships. Without guilt, we would live in an extremely dark world. However, misplaced guilt often triggers us to be over-apologetic and people-please. Many people repeat the word ‘sorry’ without needing to, while still others feel guilty for their very own existence. Emotionally wounded, shame-based people often feel that they are constantly ‘getting in the way’. This stems from a sense of feeling unlovable. To ask for one’s own needs to be met often results in a feeling of guilt. I call this misplaced guilt. Similarly, a person may feel guilty even if they have been abused or harmed by others. Misplaced guilt or excessive guilt stifles people’s chances to live happily and peacefully.”

CourageShameGuiltAddictionRecoverySelf CareCodependencyChristopher DinesSuper Self Care
Book:Super Self Care: How to Find Lasting Freedom from Addiction, Toxic Relationships and Dysfunctional Lifestyles
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“Have you heard the saying by the actor Lily Tomlin, ‘The road to success is always under construction’? I like this concept. My spiritual journey has certainly been messy and uncomfortable at times. I had several emotional breakdowns before experiencing an emotional breakthrough. In essence, layers of deep denial and negative thought-patterns had to be unravelled and replaced with new and greater self-awareness.”

CourageShameGuiltAddictionRecoverySelf CareCodependencyChristopher DinesSuper Self Care
Book:Super Self Care: How to Find Lasting Freedom from Addiction, Toxic Relationships and Dysfunctional Lifestyles
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“I don't know how to walk away from love. Even the kind that hurts. Even the kind that barely sees me. If someone loves me, even a little, I will turn it into a reason to stay. I will hold on too tightly. I will soften every wound. I will rewrite every red flag as a test of my patience. Because I've always believed that love was the prize. That being loved, even poorly, was still something sacred. So I settle. Not because I don't know better, but because I still think love will save me. And maybe that's the saddest part. Not the settling, but the fact that I keep calling it home.”

HealingHeartbreakCodependency
Book:I carried me here
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“A POCKET-SIZED GIRL He keeps me in his pocket for a rainy day; he swears I'm not an object as he yo-yo's me away. A friend is what we'll call it, but my friend, he does not know, each time it rains I love him— so to his pocket, I must go. He thinks he's being clever, but I am not a fool; his love ain't worth a penny, so to my heart I must be cruel.”

LoveWritingHappinessPassionHopeFriendshipPlayerMissingPoetLoversLetting GoHeartbreakAddictionWorthyLove StoryMoving ForwardMoving OnBreakupWriterUnconditional LoveUnrequited LoveI Love YouI Hate YouLove AffairBreakupsUnrequitedI Love HimCodependencyPeter PanPassionsHeartwarmingLove And RomanceForgetting The PastCodependentHeartbreakerHard To GetCoco J GingerThe Chase
Author:Coco J. Ginger
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“MY MOON I'll always wonder what time it is there; if you're dreaming, or awake. My moon is your sun; my darkness, your light. I'm in the future, you'd jokingly say. And I know where you are, because I'm watching you from the past.”

LoveWritingPassionFriendshipMissingPoetLoversLetting GoHeartbreakAddictionWorthyLove StoryMoving ForwardMoving OnBreakupWriterUnconditional LoveUnrequited LoveI Love YouI Hate YouLove AffairBreakupsUnrequitedI Love HimCodependencyPeter PanPassionsHeartwarmingLove And RomanceForgetting The PastCodependentHeartbreakerHard To GetCoco J Ginger
Author:Coco J. Ginger
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“WORTHY If you ever decide to feel— feel this: I love you. I always have. I always will. Not because you're charming, beautiful or lovable. But because I choose you. Everyday I wake up and I choose you— again, and again, and again. But if you cannot feel, and if you never feel this, then know: I do not love you. I never have. I never will. Because you're not worth my love. (Come back my love, I am drowning.)”

LovePassionFriendshipMissingLoversHeartbreakAddictionWorthyLove StoryBreakupUnconditional LoveI Love YouI Hate YouLove AffairBreakupsI Love HimCodependencyPassionsHeartwarmingLove And RomanceCodependentHeartbreakerCoco J Ginger
Author:Coco J. Ginger
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“7am They said that I’d forget you, and I knew it wasn’t true. But sometimes I wake up now, and my heart’s no longer blue. I press the Keurig button, dancing across the room— Sometimes it’s nearly seven, before I’ve thought of you. And though we sleep together, all night side by side, one day I’ll have my coffee without you in my mind.”

LoveInspirationalPassionFriendshipMissingLoversLetting GoHeartbreakAddictionWorthyCoffeeLove StoryMoving OnBreakupUnconditional LoveI Love YouI Hate YouLove AffairBreakupsI Love HimCodependencyPassionsHeartwarmingLove And RomanceCodependentHeartbreakerCoco J GingerKeurig
Author:Coco J. Ginger
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“Don’t you see," she would explain, "that when I see anything or do anything there is no joy in keeping it to myself? I want to give everything to you. If I am alone and I see a picture that I love, or I read some passage from a book, I think to myself there is no meaning in this unless he knows it too. You are such a part of me that to stand alone leaves me dumb, without speech, without eyes. A tree with hatched branches, like someone with no hands. Life is valueless unless I can share everything with you – beauty, ugliness, pain. There must be no shadows between us, no quiet corners in our hearts.”

LoveHonestyCodependencyCodependence
Book:The Doll: The Lost Short Stories
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“Concerning the narcissist- after having been so seemingly incredibly loving and gentle, compassionate and caring- it would be like a light switch had suddenly been turned off and “all of a sudden” they simply did not care. They turned into a cold person, someone without love, compassion, empathy or regard for the subject’s feelings what so ever. It’s like they suddenly and literally stopped being human.”

PsychologySelf HelpAbuseDatingCodependencyNpdCheatersNarcissistsSpiritual AbuseCon Men
Book:The Other Woman: Based On A True Story • Helping To Protect Young Women From Narcissist Married Men
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“Detachment is not a cold, hostile withdrawal; a resigned, despairing acceptance of anything life and people throw our way; a robotical walk through life oblivious to, and totally unaffected by people and problems; a Pollyanna-like ignorant bliss; a shirking of our true responsibilities to ourselves and others; a severing of our relationships. Nor is it a removal of our love and concern... Detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for himself, that we can't solve problems that aren't ours to solve, and that worrying doesn't help. We adopt a policy of keeping our hands off other people's responsibilities and tend to our own instead. If people have created some disasters for themselves, we allow them to face their own proverbial music. We allow people to be who they are. We give them the freedom to be responsible and to grow. And we give ourselves that same freedom. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We strive to ascertain what it is we can change and what we cannot change. Then we stop trying to change things we can't. We do what we can to solve a problem, and then we stop fretting and stewing. If we cannot solve a problem and we have done what we could, we learn to live with, or in spite of, that problem. And we try to live happily — focusing heroically on what is good in our lives today, and feeling grateful for that. We learn the magical lesson that making the most of what we have turns it into more. Detachment involves "present moment living" — living in the here and now. We allow life to happen instead of forcing and trying to control it. We relinquish regrets over the past and fears about the future. We make the most of each day.”

RelationshipsFreedomResponsibilityWorryControlPresenceDetachmentCodependencyCodependentFreewill
Book:Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
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“I was mad that I was so sensitive in the first place, trained in an empathy so granular and heartbreaking and Jewish, that my view on the family was so robust that I couldn't just be plain angry like a regular teenager. So inclined was I toward empathy and understanding that I didn't even know how I really felt about anything, whatever that even meant. I saw everything from everyone else's perspective and I felt bad and sad for us all.”

FamilyEmpathyCodependency
Author:Nina Renata Aron
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“When I consider the men (like my father) I have treated in psychotherapy, I recognize the challenge I face as a counselor. These men are in counseling due to an insistent wife, troubled child or their own addiction. They suffer a lack of connection with the people they say they love most. Chronically accused of being over controlling or emotionally absent, they feel at sea when their wives and children claim to be lonely in their presence. How can these people feel “un-loved” when (from his perspective) he has dedicated his life to their welfare? Some of these men will express their lack of vitality and emotional engagement though endless service. They are hyperaware of the moods, needs and prefer-ences of loved ones, yet their self-neglect can be profound. This text examines how a lack of secure early attachment with caregivers can result in the tendency to self-abandon while managing connections with significant others. Their anxiety and distrust of the connection of others will manifest in anxious monitoring, over-giving, passive aggressive approaches to anger and chronic worry. For them, failure to anticipate and meet the needs of others equals abandonment.”

MenAttachmentFathersCodependencyLonlinessPassive AggressiveInitimacy
Book:Codependency & Men
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“Few men realize how much of their lives are lived in pursuit of the values our culture has traditionally associated with masculinity. These values – a primary focus on work, logical thinking and always being in emotional control – have many benefits to men and their families. When taken to extremes, the pursuit of traditional masculine values becomes a cage for feelings, a stranglehold on life itself.”

MenAnxietyMasculinityCodependencyGender RoleMale Values
Book:Codependency & Men
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“She would be the victor, she would never be possessed. Nothing could hurt her now. In her life she would go out and do as she pleased and take the things that waited for her, She and Papa were two branches on a tree, and he had tried to see if he was stronger than she. He thought he had won. He thought he had beaten her down and she would let him go on thinking this as long as it suited her. She would keep him by her side and draw upon his strength; his life was her life, his flesh and blood were her flesh and blood, but it would never be he who was master. She held him between her hands and he did not know. When two forces came against each other and struggled and battled for supremacy one of the two must suffer and be hurt.”

Growing UpCodependencyControlling WomenParent And ChildToxic Parents
Book:Julius
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“It also strikes me that male-to-male bonding can create a gender role conflict, as it challenges the myth of full independence. Heroism is an exception. In fact, heroism has a long tradition as part of manhood. Bonds formed through natural disaster or war are exceptions to the typical “self-reliance” rules. These are op-portunities for men to experience a type of connection with each other that is ordinarily prohibited by the “rules” of manhood.”

IndependenceHeroismManhoodCodependencyMale BondingMale Gender Role
Book:Codependency & Men
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“An example of making this delineation of responsibility, outside the realm of codependency, is when a person witnesses for Christ and shares the Gospel with an unbeliever. While the Christian is responsible to the Lord, he is not responsible for the unbeliever's response to the gospel. That is between God and the unbeliever. If the Christian who testifies for the Lord without apparent results thinks it's his fault the listener is not converted, he is limiting the sovereignty of God and taking responsibility beyond his capability. Likewise if a spouse or friend assumes responsibility beyond what God has given, he is operating outside his own area of obedience to the Lord. When that happens, he may tend to discontinue obeying God, since he is unsuccessful in accomplishing the responsibility given to others.”

ResponsibilityFamilyChristianityObedienceEvangelismCodependency
Book:12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies
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“Jealousy and possessiveness in romantic relationships often destroy trust and mutual respect. Very often a jealous partner is re-enacting his pain from childhood. If he was emotionally and physically abandoned in childhood, he may be prone to jealousy in a romantic relationship. If a teenage girl was betrayed by her first love, and consequently was emotionally scarred, she may develop jealousy regarding future romantic relationships. Jealousy in a romantic relationship is based on control and possessiveness. A person suffering from jealousy unconsciously believes she is going to lose something or someone she does not own. The partner is afraid of losing her partner. She views him as an object, a possession. No one is a possession of another. The idea that we own or partly own our lovers, even if the sense of ‘ownership’ is purely emotional, is a delusion which brings suffering in its wake.”

ShameGuiltAddictionRecoveryJealousySelf CareCodependencyChristopher DinesSuper Self Care
Book:Super Self Care: How to Find Lasting Freedom from Addiction, Toxic Relationships and Dysfunctional Lifestyles
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“Indeed, many relationships identified as “codependent” do involve pride, not low self-worth or a deficiency of selflove. An underlying lie of people married to drunks and other “losers” may be their own sense of mastery and self-confidence in being able to change others through their own wonderful goodness and love. They may have excessive belief in their own ability to help another person, or they may think that others will change just because of being married to them. They may also have high expectations of the spouse being forever grateful for being rescued by such an excellent partner. Then when their heroic efforts fail, they may cast blame onto themselves as well as their spouses, parents, or whomever else might be in the picture. They may then experience feelings of hopelessness about themselves and their circumstances. They may be filled with self-pity and be dissatisfied with themselves. But that is not true self-hatred. That is self-love that does not want to suffer.”

RelationshipsSelf EsteemCodependencySelf Hatred
Book:12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies
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“People that can’t control their behavior have a problem with discipline. But lack of discipline over the body originates in a restless mind. The restless mind does not stop because it is not at peace. The mind cannot be at peace if the heart is in distress. A heart in distress is in search for love. The less love is in the heart, the more thoughts are in the mind, and as a consequence, the more troubled is life. We then look at what reflects back at us in the form of lack of love but it is just and always a reflection of what is and has been within us. Nevertheless, we can’t love the reflection expecting it to vanish into love; And, we can’t love ourselves when we are constantly vanishing into our reflection. We can only understand that both are the same; and, in loving both, none will remain as it was. In doing so, we lose our ego and our reputation but win love.”

LoveSpiritualityRelationshipsPsychologyLaw Of AttractionDecisionsAlchemyLaw Of Attraction QuotesCodependencyLoa
Author:Robin Sacredfire
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“Ever since people first existed, they have been doing all the things we label "codependent." They have worried themselves sick about other people. They have tried to help in ways that didn't help. They have said yes when they meant no. They have tried to make other people see things their way. They have bent over backwards avoiding hurting people's feelings and, in so doing, have hurt themselves. They have been afraid to trust their feelings. They have believed lies and then felt betrayed. They have wanted to get even and punish others. They have felt so angry they wanted to kill. They have struggled for their rights while other people said they didn't have any. They have worn sackcloth because they didn't believe they deserved silk.”

EmotionsCodependencyPeople Pleasing
Book:Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
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“The more we try to disassociate from our shame, relying solely on our own reasoning and will power in an attempt to get some emotional relief, the stronger the hold shame has over us. Our shame-based behaviour will find ways to reveal itself if we remain in denial about our pain. Shame can be very subtle and often operates at a subconscious level of awareness. However, when we accept we are carrying unresolved shame, we can heal and make peace with ourselves.”

ShameGuiltAddictionRecoverySelf CareCodependencyChristopher DinesDisassociationSuper Self Care
Book:Super Self Care: How to Find Lasting Freedom from Addiction, Toxic Relationships and Dysfunctional Lifestyles
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