Action

Now that i have convinced myself of the mechanics of what I'm doing, I need to set up an activity to correct what needs correcting. The explaination doesn't change anything, I must do something different in order to change. What I feel I am doing differently (in just one day) is practicing mentally not to align my feelings with others in my field of experience. My habit of being hypervigilant to the verbal and non-verbal cues of everyone around me keeps me in constant arousal, excitement, and anxiety. What I want to begin to practice is maintaining my own feelings and needs when dealing with others irregardless of how they are feeling or how they are acting. In the past, I believe my unconscious and automatic need to align my self with others in my experience has to do with security and safety. Irratic and upset people would upset me so much that I believe I was compelled to calm them in order to calm myself. I felt threatened (anxious) by their anxiety, and felt I must do something for them in order to calm my own adoptive feelings of anxiety. This is the beginning of the co-dependent's behavior modification, the knee-jerk training and way of responding: the feeling that they must have some control of their environment and the people in it. One idea is that it comes from childhood. If children's emotional upsets are not validated, or if they are therefore not trained how to recover back to a more peaceful state on their own, they will continue to expect someone else to do it for them. Hence, they will enlist the help of any available co-dependent person to take responsibility for their feelings and their actions. They were not taught to calm themselves, and co-dependents were trained (by themselves or the situation) to step in and calm them.  What I find dysfunctional in this scenario is that 1) the co-dependent is already in a state of constant arousal at the prospect of of reacting to another possible catastrophe created by the actions of others, and 2) the co-dependent wouldn't be in an anxious state if they did not believe it was their responsibility to fix it. What is not understood by the co-dependent is that there actions and feelings about the situation is completely volitional, it's voluntary.  What the co-dependent doesn't yet accept is that they can stop volunteering any time they want. It takes re-training to be able to accept this and do it. It is a habit/addiction that must be addressed and changed intentionally. It takes effort. It takes a willingness to accept the feelings associated with the fears about changing. You have to be able to accept that you will survive the painful emotions that will come from changing (I'm taliking to myself here, bear with me). The next idea is to explain the connection for the need to align one's self with another. This too possibly comes from chilhood. What makes all this interesting is that these are learned coping behavioirs, established by a child's mind, but were so well established with emotional content, that they were made unconscious until they could be reviewed under safer conditions, knowledge, and experience. Unfortunately, being they are unconscious, they cannot be reviewed at a later date (adulthood) without making them conscious. The idea being they may have worked to survive chilhood, but are no longer useful as an adult. For example: abandonment issues, fear that you will not be able to survive on your own. That is a real emotion for a child, it speaks directly to their survival fears in case they were not assured that there were plenty of others to love them, accept them, and take care of them if something happened to their primary care-takers. As an adult, you are probably able to take care of yourself, you can provide for yourself; but the unconscious fear may still exist in the mind's addictive habits and it still controls your unconscious behaviors and emotions as an adult. Here's why I bring it up: I suspect that I align my emotions and actions with others as a co-dependent to sacrifice my feelings and needs for safety and security. That I depend on others status to feel safe and secure, and my self-esteem. What I haven't realized until now is that I can be more safe and secure now by NOT aligning my feelings and needs with others, and by NOT trying to control what who is doing or not doing, feeling or not feeling. That I don't HAVE to control others in order to feel good, safe, and secure. The task is to stop aligning my emotions with my environment. To stabilize myself and my own feelings, and maintain them in the face of unconscious urges from the past. That the punishment is the pain of losing the comfort of previous addictive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; and the rewards are the peace of knowing I can control my own feelings and needs individually, without consent or dependence on any outside force or person's approval. That I can consciously choose to deny the unconscious influences of the feelings of others to modify my behavior. That I can claim my right to care for my own feelings and needs, and allow the others to learn to do the same, even if it causes them great emotional pain. To break the addiction to rescue others from feeling the pain they must feel in order to proceed with learning the lessons they need to learn by feeling their feelings. Yeah, right. Easy for me to say and layout. the real test is if I can implement the changes. To maintain an awareness that I must pratice learning how not to get upset when others are upset and have a problem, and not try to fix it in order to feel good about myself. In other words, to not get myself upset and try to fix MY willful, voluntary, and complicit upset-ness by fixing their problem so I can no longer be upset. MGS1 is right, I do tend to complicate things, but I also have the ability to simplify very complicated things. It's part of my nature. As a Registered Co-dependent, I have had to develop a high sensitivity to my environment over the years, in order to protect myself from the erratic behaviors of substance abusers and maybe personality disorders. It was important for my survival to attend to the slightest details and nuances of the people in my environment. I got really good at it. It's now a talent. However, as I respond to recovery, I am getting less addicted to perfectionism, and the threats of others feelings have to my self-esteem. By severing the connection of my emotions with the dictates of my environment, and by learning not to deny what I am really feeling and maintaining that feeling inspite of my environmet, I will be able to move about more easily and with less stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety are what cause addictive dysfunctional coping behaviors. Lessening stress and anxiety lessens the opportunity to develop other unconscious addictive thoughts and behaviors. Now we'll see how well I've diagnosed the problem, and how well I've prescribed the right therapy. It certainly doesn't feel like I'm Don Ricardo de la Mancha jousting at windmills. Once again, the proof will be in the change in how I feel and act. Wish me success, Rich