Codependency Support Group
Codependency is defined as someone who exhibits too much, and often inappropriate, caring for another person's struggles. A codependent person may try to change, or feel shame about their most private thoughts and feelings if they conflict with the other person's struggles. If you are on a journey towards self-love, this support group is for you. Join us and find others...
I try to avoid old friends and aquaintances.It is like I am carrying a lot of shame from the past,even though I have led a normal life. Is it anyway related to me being codependent?? How do you get rid of that shame??
Shame is a big part of codependency, and so we have to learn how to tell the difference between healthy shame and unhealthy shame and then there is the toxic shame too.
Shame is the feeling but how we internalize it or how we express it is often the only difference between healthy or unhealthy shame.
You say you lived a normal life and yet you carry a lot of shame and that is usually a sign that the shame is not healthy.
In the codependency then we are made to feel toxic shame for normal things, as like ashamed to speak, or ashamed to laugh or to cry, and ashamed of our hair or clothing or weight or anything.
Those are unhealthy and toxic shame which make life hard to live and makes it hard to have any relationship with any other person.
Healthy shame is like ashamed of getting a DWI or DUI, and rightly ashamed of our lies, or just rightfully ashamed of anything.
We do some thing wrong or something stupid then yes we feel shame but that is life and we learn not to do wrong through the prompting of our healthy shame.
It is unhealthy (or toxic) shame when we have to hide it, and have to be afraid of it, and it is toxic when the shame stops us from living a normal life.
Some person goes to jail and become horribly ashamed of it, while some other person goes to jail for the same thing and they act proud of it and tells everyone their story - and so in very many cases our shame is just a matter of opinion and of perspective.
This is why in recovery the way to heal from toxic shame is to talk about our shame and tell it to other people and do not hide the shame.
In the 12 Step groups it is intended to be a safe place to tell our shame because the other people are more sympathetic and very often other people will have a far worse story to tell then our own.
The best part for me is that the treatment of codependency is just so powerful and liberating that I find the treatment to be great fun and an enlightening adventure, so you already recognize your own feeling of shame and that puts you way ahead of myself when I was a beginner to the process.
Just my own perspective here - trying to be helpful.
shame is I am a mistake