My dominant codependent behaviors include being devoted, helping/fixing, people-pleasing, over-reacting, and controlling. I prefer to think of codependency from a behavioral perspective, because this gives me the opportunity to become aware of my behaviors and to moderate them according to what is healthy for me and my relationships. If I simply think of my self as a codependent, then I may get attached to that label and not as readily see the avenues for change.

Daisy’s devotion to me is what helped me to start looking at my devotion to others. Devotion is one thing; unhealthy, obsessive attachment is another. I could not write these things without knowing them my self. I can be obsessively preoccupied with someone else. Over the many years of my recovery and life with Daisy, I have learned many lessons that move me toward a healthy self. There are over 140 of these “Lessons Learned” in My Life as a Border Collie for twelve examined traits. In my next several posts, I will be sharing some of these lessons about devotion, pleasing, and letting go. And then I will move on to additional lessons from this last year of Daisy’s life.

As I begin to write about my recent lessons learned from my life with Daisy, I am first going back one year to share some writing I did last November about me and Daisy's declining health. These writings will freshen us all up on the ways I think about codependency/loss of self in someone else, and I will be offering them in small pieces in the spirit of the 19th century serialized novels: 

Give me the least bit of stress and my character defects start showing up. Even after 25 years in my recovery program, my “weak links” present themselves and can take over if I am not working my program. Today I am aware of my impatience. I can be so stubborn and self-willed that I completely forget the spirituality that I love and value. My controllingness and desire to have the outcomes I want come fully into play as my stress increases and I lose my self in that stress.

The stress I speak of now is the declining health of Daisy, my Border Collie mix, who is 17 ½ years old. I am not good at letting go of most anything. I can hold on too long to too many things. So when I bring the letting go of an important being in my life into play, I can be sorely challenged. And I am being challenged.

I want to fix this situation. I want Daisy to be well. I want her to live forever. I worry, fret, and obsess. I try to feed Daisy this. I try to make her feel better by doing that. I call home from work to get reports from my husband about what Daisy is doing right now, about how many times she has gotten up, and how she acted when she got up. I could drive us all crazy with my obsessive thinking and efforts to manage and control what I can’t.

Daisy, the Border Collie heroine of My Life as a Border Collie, passed away on September 12, 2014. She was 18 and 1/2 years old. As you know from our book, Daisy taught me many lessons about life and love. During this last year of her life, I wrote a few essays about the lessons that continued to emerge after the publication of our book and as we traveled this ending-of-life path together. Soon I will offer those writings here.

April 25, 2014

Daisy turned 18 years old on April 15th. Daisy is the Border Collie mix who has been my loyal companion for those 18 years and who was the inspiration for My Life as a Border Collie: Freedom from Codependency. It was through my observations and experiences with Daisy that I was able to look closely at my codependent behaviors and learn valuable lessons about where my assets of giving, caring, and serving become codependent. It is wonderful to be a hard-working, people-pleasing human being until those behaviors cause problems for our self and/or others.

Daisy helped me to learn all of that - in addition to many years in my twelve-step program, counseling, reading, and talking with others on this path of codependency recovery.

And so we were blessed with another full year with Daisy and a birthday celebration on the 15th with treats and a gold ribbon tied to her collar.

Daisy is amazingly well except that she has great trouble using her hind legs. She is not in pain and is still quite herself except that her movement is limited. Walks are short. Meals are often eaten lying down. And her efforts to herd Eddie, the 11 year-old black lab, are still focused and intentional but very brief.

This additional year with Daisy has taught me many more things, and in the spirit and structure of My Life as a Border Collie, I offer these additional lessons:

I can not single-handedly keep any person, creature, or thing alive. I can and will do my part to contribute to the health and safety of someone/something else, but I am not in control of the big picture of life and death. Let go and let God.

Every day is a gift. Yes, every day is a gift and not to be taken for granted. Life is precious here and now. Each morning when I wake I want to remember this. And each day that Daisy wakes, I want to remember this. As Daisy’s veterinarian has repeatedly suggested, “Enjoy her.”

Daisy is not my higher power. Each day that she wakes and we walk, I hold her leash in my left hand and then take the hand of my higher power in my right hand and move into my day. My higher power is larger than Daisy and I and the life we live together.

Walking an old dog promotes mindful walking. Practically speaking, Daisy’s slow moving style has helped me greatly to practice my mindful walking and to learn how to shed hurry and busyness and replace it with presence and peace.

Sugar cookie dough and vanilla ice cream really do help the medicine to go down. Why force a solution when I can notice and follow a sweeter, easier, and effective path that is there all along if I will get out of my own way full of fears and control and allow life to flow.

It is fun to sit together in the shade and feel the breeze on our faces.

It is fun to walk together in the dark with me noticing the stars and lightening bugs while Daisy enjoys some night sniffing.

Thank you, Daisy, and my recovery program for this abundance of lessons that just keep coming.

October 14, 2013

For every person who has a substance or process addiction – such as alcohol, other drugs, sex, pornography, shopping, or gambling – there are many people in their lives directly affected by the addiction of this important person. Certainly parents and siblings are affected along with other relatives. Partners and friends are affected as are co-workers, teachers, employers, and neighbors. Even strangers may have an interaction with the addict that has a powerful and lasting affect on them.

I can not provide an exact number of persons affected by the addictive use of an individual. That would vary case-to-case. But suffice it to say there are a number of people who experience the ripple effects of the addiction. Years ago in my clinical practice, I was explaining Al-Anon to a client. “Al-Anon is for family and friends of alcoholics,” I stated. To which she responded, “Then everyone should be in Al-Anon.”

Her comments spoke of the prevalence of knowing and/or living with someone with an addiction. I appreciate her wise understanding and honesty.

The addiction of someone else can easily draw our focus away from our own center. The excitement, drama, and concern brought into our lives by the addiction of someone else can disconnect us from our very self. What we needed to do for our self today was dropped. What we had set as a clear and healthy boundary for our self was disregarded by either the other person and/or by our self. What we had told our self would never happen again happened.

Care for our self as we live with addiction and recovery from addiction is imperative. To be able to bring and maintain that healthy focus on our self is the cornerstone of our recovery from the codependency that can have us, as the subtitle of Disentangle describes, losing our self in someone else. Disentangle is designed to help in this process of healthy self connection and growth offering ideas and skills in Facing Illusions, Detaching, Setting Healthy Boundaries, and Developing Spirituality.

Making this change to balanced care for self as we care for others is a major shift in our way of being and a necessary one for the healthy recovery of both the addict and those of us affected by the addiction of someone else.

Daisy, my Border Collie and heroine of My Life as a Border Collie: Freedom from Codependency, turned 17 years-old this past April 15th. We don’t really know her birth date as she was a stray dog, but working with the best estimates of her age when we found her, she is at least 17 years old now. All of our dogs have been strays, so for years we have made April 15th the dogs’ birth day.

Being 17 years in human years, Daisy is anywhere from 84 to 90 years old in dog years. Her veterinarian describes her as a “ninety year-old dog.” Daisy continues to do well for her ninety years. 

I have wondered what I wanted to say to you about her birthday in addition to announcing this wonderful achievement of age to those of you have been readers of My Life as a Border Collie.And it has come to me to say that she and I both have reached this landmark by living one day at a time.

Over this past year as I finished writing My Life as a Border Collie and as we released the book and went on tour with it, I constantly found my self worrying about whether Daisy would live long enough for me to accomplish each of these goals: “Will Daisy die before I finish this book?” “Will Daisy die before I get back from the book tour?”  And then as I returned home, “Will Daisy die before Christmas?” “Will Daisy die before she turns 17?”

This is not a healthy way for me to think or to live, and I know it. To be preoccupied with things so out of my control is a waste and a bother. It is unnecessary worry. It is not living in the present. I do my part to keep Daisy alive and then I have to let go to the natural flow of life.

So each time that worry about Daisy making it to the next milestone came up for me, I did my best to quiet my thoughts, let go of what I could not control, and as Daisy’s veterinarian has said to me a number of times recently, “Enjoy her, Nancy.”

Yes, I am enjoying Daisy one day at a time when I am living in my recovery.

There I was, lying on the floor of the veterinarian’s treatment room. Not Daisy. She was doing quite well with the procedure Dr. Keating was performing on her. Iwas the one overcome by it all and dysfunctional at that moment: a codependent in relapse.

As you know from reading My Life as a Border Collie: Freedom from Codependency, Daisy is a very important creature in my life, a long-time, loyal companion and a teacher of mine. She will be seventeen years-old on April 15th and she is doing well for her age.

Sometimes I am doing well for my age in recovery and sometimes I am doing not as well.

Daisy has warts of some sort which grow in various places on her body. The procedure Dr. Keating was performing was shaving some of Daisy’s fur from around one of these growths on the side of her face close to her ear. There was no emergency about any of this, and both Dr. Keating and Daisy were doing well with this slow, tedious process.

It was I who slowly and surely became overwhelmed by it.

One could say that of course a novice to medical procedures involving blood and bad smells and possible pain might be overcome by such close involvement as I had there. Dr. Keating had asked me to be the one to hold Daisy on the examining table, and I did have my face and eyes right on what she was doing.

But I also had my heart and soul right on what she was doing as well. I don’t like to take Daisy to the veterinarian in the first place, not because of the care she receives – which is excellent – but because I am so afraid that something is going to be wrong with her that I didn’t know about or because I don’t want to stress her.

I said to my husband about it all, I just didn’t know if Daisy, at her old age, could handle a procedure that would contain her in ways she doesn’t like to be contained and that might frighten her. Monty and I laughed as he said back to me, “And you were the one who couldn’t handle it.”

Yes, that is correct. Halfway through the procedure I was overcome by heat and felt like I was going to faint. Dr. Keating called in her assistant immediately to take over my job and had me sit in the chair. I held my head down low. She wondered if I was having a heart attack, and I reassured her I was not. She wondered if I should get down on the floor to be completely safe, and I did as the floor had much appeal at that time.

And so there I was lying on the floor of the treatment room looking back up at Daisy on the examining table doing well as Dr. Keating and Trisha completed their work.

My level of over-concern for Daisy had taken me over. I had moved from being helpful to being a distraction and a problem in this process. As I had allowed my heart and soul to worry about how Daisy was going to do with all of this, I failed to simultaneously pay attention to my self. I had not taken off my coat as we started, adding to my getting hot. I watched what Dr. Keating was doing way more than I know is good for me to do. I kept feeling impatient and restless for Daisy who I imagined felt that way but did not show it. I wanted this to be over with – I thought for Daisy’s sake but really for mine.

At the end of My Life as a Border Collie I tell a final tale about Daisy and I that highlights there being a fine and important line between us, that fine line that us codependents can be challenged by in our relationships: the line between where I end and you begin; the line between where you end and I begin.

There in the veterinarian’s treatment room I blurred that line so thoroughly that my body acted out my enmeshment and took me to the floor.

A lot of help I was!