What is Physical Emotional Abuse
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) or is unlawful or wrongful....
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12 steps of CODA
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Has anyone worked these steps ? Do you know of these steps and of CODA? I've posted the 12 steps below....I'm also in AA, which this is derived from, but applied to codependents. I love the 12 steps. You can apply them in all you do, parenting, spousing, working, playing, living, hurting, financial problems...I am blessed to have gotten sober 4 years before my
kids were born. I applied the 12 steps and the 12 traditions to how I parent, not knowing how to because of my abusive childhood. I call it, my recipe for a sane and joyous life. For years I detached and let go of my PA, until we had nothing left. Now, I just want to be and not work so hard...it is a recent revelation for me that I'm a victim of abuse because he is so covert. I knew he was PA and I felt abused but to hear myself or write that I'm a victim of abuse !....I'm glad I finally realized which is good, but I hate it. Anyway, as promised: The Twelve Steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous We admitted we were powerless over others - that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood God. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other codependents, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. The Twelve Steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous is reprinted from the websiteCoDA.org" title="http://www.CoDA.org" target="_blank">CoDA.org" title="http://www.CoDA.org" target="_blank"> www.CoDA.org with permission of Co-Dependents Anonymous, Inc. (CoDA, Inc). Permission to reprint this material does not mean that CoDA, Inc. has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, or that CoDA, Inc. agrees with the views expressed herein. Co-Dependents Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women whose common purpose is to develop healthy relationships and is not affiliated with any other 12 step program. Copyright © 1998 Co-Dependents Anonymous, Incorporated and its licensors - All Rights Reserved The Twelve Steps reprinted and adapted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Posted on 01/14/09, 01:01 am |
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Many of the men in my CoDA group are also in AA. they have told me if they had known about their codependent behavior earlier they probably would not have become alcoholics. 
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I'm not codependent OR an alcoholic, but I've thought for years now that the 12 steps were a basic spiritual guide for life.
I'm familiar with the steps because about 15 years ago I was a member of a different 12 step group. Its been a lifelong struggle to learn to let go of trying to control myself. In recovering from N/S abuse, I've been incredibly impatient. Recovery is full of things, and times that are almost intolerable, and yet tolerate them is what we do. I've gotten angry with the process and with myself that its been 3 years and while so much better than I was, I am not where I had planned to be. What I've come to realize is, I am not "entirely ready" for my defects to be removed, or leave. Part of me is deathly afraid that if I am not hypervigilant, if I am not always judging every person, every environment, every situation if I do not keep watch like some armed guard at the door to my psyche if I do not stay in my head thinking, assessing, evaluating, doing cost-benefit analysis, finding escape routes, talking me out of my rage, my anxiety, my fear enough to be effective at living then I just might be conned again, and I fear I wont be able to survive it another time. Seriously, I almost didnt survive it this last time. and thats when the Serenity Prayer is a tool that can ease some of that need to have such a controlled tight death-grip in my own pulse. Am I alone in that?
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No, I can relate pheonix...whatever prayer, mediation, etc it takes to help, I'm all for.
I am not codependent either, if you're a victim of pathological abuse, you are likely not...as I've said before, they are predators, we are their targets. I too, am much more hypervigilant that I ever was. I've promised myself as well NEVER to become a victim again, and in that, there is a fear to veer away from a 'safe, guarded' place. I don't think this is unhealthy, I know I'll eventually loosen up, but just a bit. As long as I can work on trusting myself from now on, I think things will fall into place.
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I wonder sometimes if the women I've met in my lifetime who were snobs, aloof, cool, or detached had earlier experienced something like have. Because thats how I feel most of the time...like the warm, vivacious, carefree, spontaneous big hearted soul I was before has been shipped off to a nice internal island somewhere, and all thats blowing on the surface that I can feel is a cold wind going through an empty chest.
I had an interesting therapy session a year or two ago, where the hole in my chest spoke for me and talked about how much safer it is to have this gaping wound where my internal organs used to be, because if theyre all obliterated and havent been replaced, then at least they cant be obliterated again. I was told thats daemonium (sp?), the minds own abusive way of twisting things --> depriving me of life in order to keep me from experiencing death. Maybe thats what the crux is of every addiction too now that I think about it.
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