Codependency: Working with What We’ve Got

Oriole Field at Camden Yards,  Baltimore, MD, USA

Here’s another quick blog from the road. This time literally from the road, as Grace, my daughter and traveling companion, is driving and I am writing on a legal pad here in the passenger seat.

I was part of a charming book reading Friday night at Breathe Books in Baltimore, MD. Hosted by Susan Weis-Bohlen, owner, we had an intimate gathering on the second floor of her bookstore located in an historic townhouse on “The Avenue” in the Hampden district. As the event started, a weather front swept through bringing winds and heavy rain outside our windows and increasing the coziness within of my reading and our discussions which followed.

Guests included people who know codependency and people who know and love dogs: talk of dog behaviors, talk of what we can learn from them, and talk about useful tools for our self-development as we keep learning how to not let our strengths become our weaknesses.

Toward the end of our discussion, Susan, the owner, explained in an understanding way that “we have to work with what we’ve got.” Each breed of dogs has its own traits and temperaments, and as dog owners we have to both accept and train the dog with its nature in mind.

Similarly with codependent behaviors “we have to work with what we’ve got.” If we are, by nature, devoted, hard-working, and sensitive there is nothing wrong with that. It’s just that we want to learn to pay attention to our own traits and temperaments and work with them so as to increase ease within our relationships and peace within our self.