And the wheel goes round...

Wheel Spinning

“If you find yourself spinning your wheels, be gentle with yourself.  Slow down, get a nice rocking motion going, one that’s rhythmic yet powerful enough to free you, then put the car in gear, step on the gas, and gently drive out of the muck.”

                                  Melody Beattie (Journey to the Heart)

Melody Beattie writes about wheel-spinning in codependency because it’s what we do best.  When there’s something we need to do to free ourselves from the claws of codependency, we tend to spin our wheels while we say, “But, he/she/they/it needs me.  How can I be so selfish as to {get a job, get an education, take a trip, have a friend—you fill in the blank} when he/she/they/it needs me so much?”  We keep ourselves stuck in the muck by repeating our patterns of behavior endlessly.  Codependency could also be referred to as control-dependency, because we control others by being all-caring, all-sacrificing, and by making ourselves seem indispensable.  Call it soft-control.  It is our addiction.

Notice, she says, “be gentle with yourself.”  Those of us who name and claim our codependent ways have been bred from the cradle to be that way.  Sometimes for whole lifetimes, we are not able to break free.  We can be perfectly aware that co-dependency is not healthy, and we may be working assiduously at breaking the cycle only to realize, “Oh my gosh; I’m doing it again!”  Stuck in the mud and spinning.  Entrenched behaviors take time and due-diligence to change. 

Honda just recalled a bunch of cars from the snow-belt for defective transmissions.  People stuck in snow tend to think that rocking the car is the way to break it loose, so they shift back and forth from drive to reverse to get the momentum to un-stick themselves.  Honda says that is not a good idea.  It destroys the transmission.  In the case of codependency, ‘backing and forthing’ is not the way to go either.  Get someone to help you push forward.  Staying on the right track takes a village…and a good set of tires.

                          Keeping it real,

                          Jane