Hi, I am Guus and I am codependent.
I was reading a document called “Boundaries for Codependents“. And I recognized an awful lot of my struggle, of my behavior, or whatever, in it.
And I have been bothered by emotional pain for a long time, and the last months, years, it seemed to get stronger, seemed to get worse. And I did not understand, as I was working so hard in the program of Codependents Anonymous and, after admitting I am depressed, very depressed, even decided to look for professional help, counseling, something I abhorred after kind of having decided quite a while ago to never ever see a psychologist again.
But somehow I must have made the right decision as my counselor sent me this document yesterday, and the document made perfect sense to me.
And while reading I suddenly realized that my body was, and probably is or will, telling me something by increasing the pain level I felt or will probably still feel. As there is definitely something wrong with me, definitely something, or actually a lot, that is wrong in my life that needs to be dealt with.
And while reading the document, that is about something like distorted reactions or feelings or emotions in ‘normal’ situations, it suddenly occurred to me that this pain, this intense, terrible, emotional pain, was just a signal, my body telling me there is something wrong that needs to be dealt with. Nothing more, nothing less.
So suddenly the pain was not something I just wanted to go away. Suddenly it became a warning signal, an alarm that tried to get my attention by getting slowly stronger and stronger, until I got the message.
As the message seems to be important.
And yes, the pain still lures in the background. And I am scared of it. But the weird thing was that after I acknowledged the warning and decided to do something, like deciding to write this post, this article, the pain suddenly went away. As I just acknowledged it, instead of trying to push it away.
So yes, today I can be grateful for that pain, that slowly increasing, terror like feeling pain. As it was and is just my body telling me there was, and is, something terribly wrong. And looking back the process has been even gentle, as the pain just gradually increased, trying to get noticed, until it got the attention it needed. So the Universe is gentle, can be gentle. We just need to listen.