BPDFamily.com

Hi, folks,

Has anyone here on the detaching board found any help/solace/good information by attending CODA (Co-Dependents Anonymous?)  I'm considering going to the group meeting near my home this evening, and don't really know what to think.  My T doesn't see me as "codependent" per se, just "overly nice and empathic" (at least where my EX is concerned), and as a psychologist myself, I'm not even sure if "co-dependent" is a real thing.  Still, I find myself attracted to the idea and am also a bit attracted to the spiritual (12-step) nature of CODA.  I have a number of friends who have freed themselves from various addictions with the help of such meetings, and I frankly see my ongoing battle with dEXBPD/npdbf to be strongly indicative of an addiction as well.

For those of you who might have attended or still are attending, did you find it worthwhile?  Thanks so much for any feedback!

I went to a few meetings.

My take is that "co-dependent" is for many a catch-all term for "victim"--and the meetings were full of people talking about how they'd been put upon by various people in their lives. The 12-step infrastructure provided a brake on that, since the meetings are organized around readings, and I do enjoy hearing about people's troubles, but in the end I felt like that's all it was: unstructured and largely unreflective testimony surrounded by affirmations. Kind of incoherent.

A lot of the people who spoke seemed to me to have many problems unrelated to codependence.

Thanks for the response, Steelwork.  I was kinda thinking it might be the same way.  Many years ago I went to an OA group (before I figured out how to lose weight by gritting my teeth) and it was mostly focused on issues that had nothing to do with food.  I'm all for letting people vent, but I was hoping to find something more focused on relationships, which this is SUPPOSED to be.  I think my T and the wonderful folks here will be my mainstays.

Here's a handy definition of codependency that some find helpful:

Putting someone else's needs ahead of our own, not a deal-breaker in itself, kind, caring people do that all the time, just not full time, but taking it further and putting someone else's needs ahead of our own to the point we forget, deny and/or ignore we have them, to the exclusion of our own needs, and even further, derive an identity from meeting someone else's needs, as the "meeter" of those needs, a backhanded way of meeting our own, that's codependency.  And a handy byproduct of that, when someone isn't considering our needs because neither are we, is that we get to play victim, the upside of which is we don't need to accept responsibility, legitimate victims are never responsible.  Well now that feels kinda good, poor me, after all I do for them... .!

So realizing that, if we're in it, the way out is with the right questions: what are my needs?  How was I getting them met as a codependent?  How can I get them met, or meet them myself, in a more empowering way?  What is putting someone else's needs ahead of my own full time costing me?  What is playing victim costing me?  How many ways will taking responsibility benefit me?  It's a brand new world.

I've gone to 2 CODA meetings now. I find the reading and sharing helpful. I'm hoping to find a sponsor. I don't think I'm codependent but I definitely am with uBPDh (Caretaking) and it is the same thing to get over. Plus I'm sure my mom is codependent and I can use it as a preventative against starting it in other relationships as I detach from H. Look on coda.org and maybe you can try a few different groups to see if you fit. Fwiw, I found that everyone seemed to gave codependent issues in the one I'm going to and we don't discuss it if there's a lot of other issues.