December 19, 2011 It is normal to want things and to get attached to that which is important to us. People, places, and things share our existence and enrich the quality of our life, or at least they should enrich our lives. Disentangling is not about ending the good attachments we have in life. It is about shedding unhealthy and dysfunctional attachments that detract or take away from the quality of our life. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - IV (DSM-IV) indicates ...
December 6, 2011 In my last blog I introduced The Basics of disentangling. In today’s blog, I will discuss the first Basic: It’s about the experience of losing your Self. 800x600 Notice in this first Basic the word “Self” is capitalized. This is the first important concept for you to understand. Your Self is the real you, the spiritual you, deep down inside. Your Self is what is lost when you become entangled in relationships with others. This entanglement may not have been apparent ...
November 21, 2011 http://www.nmha.org/go/codependency The above article discusses codependency as a learned behavior; what is learned can be unlearned. Many people have heard of codependency as it relates to those who live with individuals addicted to things such as drugs, alcohol, sex, and gambling. However, codependency can occur in any type of relationship, even those relationships which do not involve someone else’s addictions. Codependency, which I choose to speak of as loss of self in ...
November 18, 2011 Last week I had the pleasure of participating in and presenting at the Carolinas Conference on Addiction and Recovery in Morganton, NC. Thanks to Jim Van Hecke and all those who work with him to offer this 13th Annual Conference. Much good work is being done there in the Carolinas in treating addictions. My presentation was “When You’ve Lost Your Self in Someone ...
September 9, 2011 As you know, I have been blogging about the meanings of codependence as well as its importance as a topic. I usually like to write in linear ways, one writing naturally following from the other. That is not the case as I am finding things I want to say on my blog. Maybe that’s how blogs go anyway – a burst of thought and meaning. I will be writing more about codependence as a sleeper topic, as I promised, but today I am winding back to my call for efforts by all of us to ...
Last week in my blog I referred to codependence as a sleeper topic. I have said this before and realize I want to say a bit more about what I mean by this. I call codependence a sleeper topic, because it does not receive the time and attention that many other topics related to addictions receive. When I look through the brochures and booklets listing sessions offered for addiction and mental health conferences, there are not many sessions on codependence, if any at all. There may be a few ...
Barnes & Noble on the Duke of Gloucester Street, Williamsburg, VA, 2011 I know I am not blogging very often. And I know that when I do blog, I am often writing about the importance of understanding and offering help for codependent behaviors. I am not doing this to sell books. I am doing this because as I am out in the world talking to people and as I am at home functioning as ...
Thanks to those of you who have been talking with me about your experiences with the word and concept of codependence. As you know, I am writing another book on this topic and invited such talks through my last blog. I have heard from people in person, by email, and by blog comment. So far, the responses tell me that the word and meaning of codependence are useful to you and that you don’t mind the word, are not “ashamed” of it. Several responses tell me that understanding the meaning of codependence helped ...
I am writing on a second book, as you likely know. It, too, is about codependence with new views and thoughts about it gleaned from the past 20 years of my personal and professional work. I have had the book in mind for a number of years, and it is quite wonderful to be so fully into this project now. As part of that this work, I have been looking at both self-help resources as well as academic writings on this topic. Most are supportive and knowledgeable about codependence and the importance ...
Book Exposition of America, 2011 Lucky Me I’m back again to blogging. I have been away with many things both personal and professional. My tweets have attempted to keep you updated on some of what’s been going on for me, but its time to really jot you more than a line. Today I pick telling you a bit more about being at the Book Exposition of America (BEA) in New York City, NY, ...
6. What can a mother do to prevent getting too entangled in her children’s lives? A mother can help her self to not become too entangled in her child’s life if she is able to keep in mind these circles that I speak of representing the child and her self. Healthy development overall involves each person’s circle growing strong and clear and being able then to interact with others in ways that respect both the other person and our self. Much of what I have spoken of above ...
5. What should a grown child do when Mom is too entangled in their life? The words love and limits comes to my mind here. When a grown child is feeling that their mother is too involved in their life – whether that be physically, emotionally, or financially, for example – that grown child will be helped by explaining to their mother the ways the mother can and can not be helpful to them now. This is really what we call setting boundaries. Those boundaries can include ...
4. How does “too much mothering” impact a child? The above list in Part 5 gives us a glimpse of the effects on the mother when bonding may be getting too tight and an entanglement is developing. For the child, our over-functioning on their behalf can create a wide variety of responses from them including: - A belief that they are not capable of doing things on their own. - A ...
3. What are some warning signs that the bonding has become entanglement? Entanglements have to be identified by the individual(s) within a relationship. Each relationship has its own levels of separateness and closeness that can work for the individuals in that relationship. With that said, we may be becoming entangled with our child if we: - Are very preoccupied with them. - Are ...
2. How old should a child be when a mother begins to loosen her bonds with that child? Each child and mother is an individual, and therefore, the answer to this question does not involve naming an age to start loosening bonds. I will say that this loosening of bonds is an on-going process over many years and has many different forms depending on the developmental level of the child. Even as children are very young, they may start to say things like, “I can do ...
And now to the questions posed: 1. We all know the importance of “bonding” with our children. How should a healthy mother-child relationship change over the years? To answer this, I will continue to use the circles I spoke of in On Mothering – Part 2 as a way of talking about this evolving relationship between mother and child. When the child is young, the circles of the child and of the parent are importantly very overlapping. We are protecting them, nourishing them, ...
As I said yesterday, I have been asked to elaborate on this together-and-separate dynamic as it applies to mothering and will be doing so by responding to questions on this topic starting tomorrow. First, I wish to offer this picture I use as I work with people and relationships: I like to work with circles. I think of each person as being a circle. Each person or circle represents that person’s self. Enmeshed relationships are where the two circles, representing two people, overlap ...
Being a mother is certainly one of the most wonderful experiences over our lifetime. And being a mother can be one of the most challenging experiences over our lifetime. I know this, because I am a mother. As many of us remark over the years of raising our children, no one really told us how to do this. With all the classes we have taken in school, parenting was not taught. Seldom are there classes where the knowledge and wisdom of mothering is shared in an organized and meaningful way. Often ...
Me with my Mother and my Daughter Spring Greetings! Spring brings us many gifts: green grass, warmer temperatures, singing birds, and blooming flowers. It just brought us Easter, and soon we will have Mother’s Day. As we have been marketing Disentangle, we have been looking at its many applications. One of those applications is to parenting, and even more specifically, the material ...
I love it when I am in the presence of people who are willing and wanting to look at themselves, and in this case, are trying to understand this disentangle material further and how it might relate to them. I love it when I am in the presence of people who already get this material, who are wise to their over-controllingness or tendencies to people-please, fix, or over-function in someone else’s life. I love it when someone says to me, “Oh, I bet the outcome of this work is happiness.” The ...
Okay, so yes, only an hour or so has gone by since I wrote the previous blog, and I have been blessed with more to say today. You see, I believe that my quieting my self and going to my internal places, which I just wrote about in the previous blog, moves me to more within me. To move to more is not my intention in quieting my self. It is just that as I quiet my self and connect with me, rich internal things can be accessed and/or may come forth. It is a beautiful Spring afternoon here with ...
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