Love the post truly….

Hi Dot – LOL I’m not very fast these days. You go on ahead and I’ll hold up the sign of the cross!

I just love working in a team that has the flow. Great post
.-= Patricia´s last blog ..Making Valentines: 3 Hearts Swan =-.

Yes, the amazing journey, but only the beginning.

Hi Hilary – Thank you! It was a fun learning curve to be sure. I don’t know about expanding on the pieces of it. Maybe down the road. It’s fun to think about though, thanks.

Hi Jannie – I’m glad you understood what I meant with the conduit image. It seems to me that I have to get out of the way of the best stuff and let it flow. I’ve heard other people describe it as a rush, or as output coming tumbling out. I bet you get that when you’re deep in the groove of creating with your music and lyrics.

I’m glad you found useful insights in the book. It’s not so much about labeling a person but labeling behavior, isn’t it? And it’s about deciding for yourself what is acceptable, and in the case of parents, guiding a child in asserting a confident outlook. We really appreciate your feedback, thank you!

Hi Dot – I know you’ve done a lot of personal work on this subject so I was looking forward to your thoughts. I’m so appreciative that you recognized we’re not in the diagnostics business – the disclaimer makes that clear – but rather the behavior identification business here. It really doesn’t matter whether that’s an alligator or a crocodile if we’re on the lunch menu, right? What we need to know is that it will try to bite, how to avoid it, and what to do to treat a wound.

And I appreciate your comments about the process and decisions to have little or nothing to do with people who engage in the behaviors. I’m not certain that full closure is realistic even when those boundaries are well set. I think for most people, it’s a variable, as you say it is for yourself. Moi aussi.

You’re even more right that the process of growing away from the dependency has to start with responsibility for ourselves once the realization is made. There is great comfort in licking our wounds and fussing over how we’ve been victimized, and unfortunately, it is tempting to stay in that place. Lots of people do. We felt it was more important that the book focus on what you can do as opposed to things that can’t be changed.

It is much more difficult taking the steps, one after the other, day after day, to move on knowing that your buttons are still there to be pushed, or that something may trigger a reaction after which you need to work hard to stay on the better path. So if someone wants to stay stuck in a role, whether it’s victim or predator, and not take responsibility for themselves, this book is not for them.

I won’t speak for Lori, or anyone for that matter except for myself, on the subject of anger. But I’m glad you brought it up. People don’t want to talk about being angry, and the big thing is always, “You have to let it go.” I think a more realistic approach is acknowledgment and acceptance. Yes, I’m angry. More so on some days than others. Much less now than I used to be. When I say hello to my own anger, it tends to subside. On the other hand, when I allow it the upper hand or deny it, it escalates. I believe the anger will always be, to whatever degree. It just is. And that has to be okay.

So then the question becomes, what to do with anger? Deny it or unleash it for destructive purposes against others or myself? No, of course not. Vengeance? Well, perhaps, but only in the sense that awareness can filter the availability of narcissistic supply to some extent. Ensuring we aren’t vulnerable to codependency ultimately strengthens us. So wrassling with the anger that is there, with all of its variable intensity, and harnessing it toward an outcome such as this one is the best choice in the field of choices I might not wish to find myself to begin with.

Thank you, Dot, for your thoughtful response. (I can also appreciate the comments on design. I find most e-books much easier to read from printed copies.) Your comments made me think and reflect, and that’s how we get to greater understanding. xo

There is a person I’ve experienced peripherally who fits the description of narcissist to a T, and fortunately I figured out that I could never make a dent in their crazy worldview and stopped trying.

There is a lot of anger in this book — for one of you, it seems to me, this is all very fresh, and I feel very sad about that. Just the fact of focusing on the narcissist, instead of on the codependent, tells me the process is still ongoing. Being a codependent, which I was for many years, is a very crippled way to live, but I had always defined the other person as the cripple. By devoting my time to “taking care of” someone else’s craziness and the problems that resulted from it, I gave up living my own life and failed to take care of my own problems.

It’s been 22 years since my divorce, and I now have a life, friends of my own, and those years seem far way. I still struggle at times with codependency, which I see as the real danger. I think the book is great in following the progression from setting limits to whether to leave (how can you stay and survive?), and how to get the focus on your own life. Great job!

I haven’t read the book word for word, because when I enlarged the text enough to read it (to 100% or 125%), it was so wide it went past the edges of my screen, and I had to scroll over to read the end of each line. That was even without the sidebar. So perhaps your designers would want to take that into consideration in future work. (My experience has been that designers rarely care about function if it interferes with the “coolness” of their design, but it sounds like your designers listen!)
.-= Dot´s last blog ..Comment on Weather Update by Momisodes =-.