We can ask for information and use words to forge a closer connection, but we don’t have to take people around the block with our conversations. We d… - Melody Beattie

We can discuss our feelings and problems without expecting people to rescue us too. We can settle for being listened to. That’s probably all we ever wanted anyway.

I worked with people who thought they were going crazy because they had believed so many lies they didn’t know what reality was. I saw people who had gotten so absorbed in other people’s problems they didn’t have time to identify or solve their own. These were people who had cared so deeply, and often destructively, about other people that they had forgotten how to care about themselves. The codependents felt responsible for so much because the people around them felt responsible for so little; they were just taking up the slack.

Even recovery brings losses, more changes we must struggle to accept.