April 18, 2015
The polish expression “Not my circus, not my monkeys” has
finally made it to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where I live and work. I
have a client who has been telling me about their use of it in her home. This
week another client brought me a copy of the expression off of the internet.
The reason these clients are showing me this expression is
because this is very much what Disentangle,
When You’ve Lost Your Self in Someone Else is all about! They know that we
talk about and work on boundaries often. We work on letting go of things and
people not in our control. We work on learning to develop and manage our own
circus.
I am glad that this old expression has made it to our
popular culture. I am glad people are noticing that sometimes we are trying to
manage someone else’s monkeys, that we are in the arena of a circus that is not
ours to be in. And behind the fondness for this expression I believe is the
realization of the craziness that can come from chasing someone else’s monkeys.
This is what can happen when we lose our self in someone
else, when we are over-functioning in someone else’s life and under-functioning
in our own. These are the ways I describe codependent behaviors. I still find
that people are reluctant to look at their codependent behaviors. They steer
away from the codependent word; they have reasons to justify their involvement
in the lives of others. So I am very happy that a colloquial expression helps
people to identify the importance of noticing if they are dealing with someone
else’s circus and monkeys, and I am glad we can all laugh at this image.
Disentangle, When
You’ve Lost Your Self in Someone Else offers four areas of skill
development to help with learning to work with the monkeys in your own circus
and to really practice “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
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