Co-Dependence and Boundaries

This is a posting from Jenn Z. that almost got left behind in our move - it is a wonderful commentary on boundaries and should be required reading for all of us struggling with co-dependency...

For me my co dependency revolves around my lack of boundaries. Without my boundaries I don’t know what I need or what I want and therefore cannot ask for what I need or want and set boundaries. If I had boundaries to begin with, perhaps I would have more clarity about what I need and what I want. I have always allowed the environment, outcomes, other people and anticipated reactions of other people dictate my boundaries and to dictate what I need and what I want. Ultimately what I needed was a safe, secure, predictable environment. I have always looked outside of myself for this security, rather than looking inward to give it to myself. It has only since getting into recovery that I have discovered my security does not lie outside of myself. Rather, it lies within me through my relationship with my higher power. I have to establish, build, and maintain my own security by looking inward.

My disease gets out of whack when I am not working on my boundaries and thinking about them. When I am looking into other people’s lives and what they are doing or should be doing as I see it, I am clearly lacking boundaries because I have entered, uninvited into someone else’s life. I loose sight of where I end and another person begins. This was my starting my place: where I start and where another person begins. It has been only through visualization have I been able to be successful in determining my boundaries. I had to visualize physical space, spiritual space, mental/emotional space to determine exactly where I ended and another person began. Sometimes it gets complicated with some intricacies within my primary relationships to visualize the boundaries. When I begin to feel anxious, frustrated, scared, lost, or physically unwell and am able to recognize it, that’s when I know I need to spend sometime looking inward at myself and analyzing my boundaries to determine what I need and what I want to take care of myself. It’s all in me. It’s not in the environment. It’s not in another person. It’s not in the possible outcomes I have contrived in my head. It’s in me and it’s in God because God is in me.