TEN EXERCISES FOR CODEPENDENTS

Codependency is the hardest addiction for maintaining “sobriety”. The type of sobriety discussed here is behavioral, not chemical. So what is the drug that codependents “fix” on? It is the drug of DRAMA – the drug of being involved in other people’s problems. (For more information on this dynamic, check out the essay called “Am I Codependent?” located on this website.)
Why is codependency a dysfunction? The answer is because co-dependency is the LACK of a nurturing relationship with SELF. Every codependent person I have ever met has had a compulsive need to distract herself/ himself from what’s going in inside. This is where becoming emotionally over-involved in other people’s DRAMA is extremely handy because it is very distracting and affords little time, opportunity, peace and quiet to develop an inner life for a human being.
Therefore, the last thing that the codependent feels comfortable doing is to feel his/her feelings. However, codependents have no difficulty feeling emotions about another person’s DRAMA.
In other words, codependents are rarely alone in their OWN head about their OWN thoughts about their OWN life!
These are the reasons I have created this list of activities that are difficult for codependents to do. However, they are excellent activities for codependents to discover the Sacred Person who lives inside their own skin.
These activities range in difficulty and are NOT ranked in order of importance. Plus, you don’t have to do them in order. Also, you don’t have to do more than one. It is progress if you even do just one and really do it!
If you have any questions, you are welcome to email me.

1. Journaling. Record the feelings of your life. It provides a carpet of evidence about YOU when you go back in its pages over the weeks and years. The journal will become like a mirror in which you can see how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown.
If you continue to be pulled back into codependent patterns, you will be able to see more clearly how you fool yourself into repeating your own history and these insights may help you to make new choices!
One more tip: If you are scared that somebody might find your journal, hide it in a safe place, even if it is in a hidden lock box. This is a very common fear.

2. Practice not answering the phone when it rings. Don’t worry: they’ve invented answering machines and voice mail by this time of history! You won’t miss an urgent call. You can call them back in thirty seconds!
What is the purpose of this? This activity will help you to have greater self-control over automatic behaviors and not feel like you have to jump every time someone says “boo”.
Break the tyranny of the urgent. One of the most tyrannical things in our world is the ringing of the phone. Rarely is it urgent.
The next time you go to the grocery store or other public place where you can easily overhear what people are saying on their cell phones, listen to how inconsequential their conversations are. The last time I did this, I listened to a man walking up and down an aisle talking to somebody about making a can of soup!

3. Do what you can to break Trance in your life. Start to be aware of how often your eyes are blinking when you are in a difficult and conflict situation, or feeling pressured to do something. When we are in trance, we don’t blink as much and we have more of a fixed gaze.
Humans go in and out of trance all day long. So what is trance? It is an altered state of consciousness that occurs when we are either relaxed or ultra focusing on a specific object. In trance, we block out whatever else is going on around us and only focus on the object or idea that we are fixed on. (For more information about trance and its importance in conflict relationships, read the article that is posted on this website!)
We make our worst and most codependent decisions when we are actually in trance. We also fail to protect ourselves and allow others to invade our personal boundaries when we are in trance.
Most domestic violence situations happen when we are in trance. We also tend to hurt and abuse others and invade their boundaries the most when we are in trance!
Being in trance is the opposite of fully consciousness and aware living. There is a profound place for trance in spiritual meditation and development. Some of the most mystical and powerful prayer experiences have occurred in trance. However, for routine daily living when we need to be fully aware of our environment and what is going on, trance is not helpful.


4. Go get a therapeutic massage for at least ninety minutes and don’t hassle yourself about it once. If you have NEVER had a massage, you need to go and experience it. Go to a LICENSED massage therapist – for this activity, don’t go to a student, and don’t get a 15-minute “massage” in a chair sitting up. Go get a real massage! You can request a male or female.
Another word of advice: A GOOD MASSAGE IS NOT SUPPOSE TO CAUSE PAIN. You have a right to tell the therapist what you want and what does and does not feel good. In the massage room, you are the most important person in the room!
Codependents, by doing this activity, develop assertiveness and body-awareness. Many codependents are not fully aware of their bodies. Massage educates our minds to become aware of our whole body and pay attention to our feelings!

5. Put away $10.00 in a secret fund nobody knows about every time you get paid. Money is simply a unit of power that we have designated in our society. Otherwise, it is just a cheap piece of metal or a piece of paper.
The majority of codependents have no money that is purely theirs. This does not mean a credit card. This does not mean a joint account or the family account. This means a literal “It’s mine alone and nobody can have it” account. What is the purpose of this? Simply this: to practice holding and protecting your own power. Do not tell anybody about this fund. See if you can do it. See how long you can simply accrue each ten dollars and not feel the compulsion to either spend it on a compulsive buy or spend it on other people. If you are truly codependent, it will be hard for you to do this and not want to tell someone!

6. Give yourself a Sabbath day every week. This means give yourself one day of true rest. If you have small children or elderly adults you have to take care of, try to arrange for your spouse, mate or someone else to do what you do for everyone else all week long.
If you feel compelled to fix the family’s breakfast, resist it. They can fix their own breakfast – they will survive. Don’t vacuum, don’t clean, don’t pay bills, and don’t drive anyone anywhere. Plus, taking a day off for you doesn’t mean taking all the kids to the movies at the mall!
Special Note: For many reading this list, this activity will be the hardest to do. There will probably be many mental arguments against truly giving you a full day off. That is why I have asked my clients who do this list as an assignment to only pick one item at a time to practice for each week. This item will probably be chosen last because codependents burden themselves with so many responsibilities.

7. Once a day, tell someone exactly how you feel without altering it to be NICE enough. Just give somebody your frank, unvarnished opinion.
Then, after you practice this, make this “someone” a person you have a regular LOCAL relationship with.
Then, after practicing this, make the “someone” a person you actually LIVE with and who is an ADULT.
Sound risky? Codependents have a problem speaking their mind on a regular basis. It is easy to speak our mind in an angry way after we have “saved up our anger” for an explosion after we are fed up with “taking it”.
One of the symptoms of growing a richer and more self-loving relationship as a codependent is when we can speak our mind in an assertive way and not call ourselves a bitch or a mean person for doing so.
If you are confused about the difference between aggressiveness (hurting people) and assertiveness (asserting your rights in a respectful way to others) then check out the books on my reading list on this site. Challenge yourself to read one of them. If you don’t like to read, then get it anyway (libraries might have one of these books) – and read it one page at a time every night!



8. Listen to your voice on a recording. When is the last time you did this? And NO, listening to yourself on a greeting message on your cell phone or answering machine doesn’t count. Drag out your old cassette recorder or else your IC digital recorder and sit down alone, in private, and record out loud (don’t whisper!) at least three minutes of your name, why you are doing this, what your day has been like, how you feel about doing this exercise, and one thing you hope to change in your life that week.
After doing this, wait awhile – like, a couple weeks, and then listen to the recording. Jot down in your journal your first impressions of the person you hear talking as if you were hearing a new friend for the first time.

9. Take your smile off autopilot. This activity has to do with self-awareness. It will be quick and simply requires you to take a few moments every day to think: am I smiling because I really mean it? Many codependents are people pleasers. Therefore, this activity can bring awareness of how genuine and authentic we are when we smile.
More women in our society smile than men. Have you ever noticed this? The act of not smiling connotes strength and commands more respect in our traditionally male-dominated western society.
Helen Mirren, the actress, was informed that she was smiling too much by the female British Detective who coached her for her role in the hit TV mystery series Prime Suspect. She was told that if a detective smiles too much, it is interpreted as a sign of weakness.
On the other hand, women in our western society are taught that if they do not smile they might be seen in a bad mood or not nice. They might be asked “What’s wrong?” more frequently than men who do not smile, who are more often seen as tougher.
Often, the individual in social interactions who smiles first is the person who is seen as weaker or more subservient since they are seen as more willing to please the other.
Women tend to be seen like this and are often socialized to please others and not make anyone angry or upset. Therefore, many women will learn to put their smile on auto-pilot – or over-use their smile -- in many social or professional situations.
When you notice that perhaps you are over-using your smile, gently lower the corners of your mouth and allow your facial muscles to relax. You can even try to massage the facial muscles involved as a gift to your face. It is okay to allow our faces to compose themselves into a relaxed, non-smiling manner. We are not obligated to arrange our faces into an expression that pleases other people.
If we learn to be careful with our smile, it will be all that much more of a treat when we do take it out and flash it at a part of life we are really delighted at!


10. Learn to do real breathing. After many years in counseling and observing people for long periods of time in sessions while they are expressing many emotions, I have come to the conclusion that many of us do not breathe properly.
Why is the way we breathe important? Just this: many of us breathe while our stomach muscles are tight and tense. As a result, we start to take shorter, shallower gasps in our lungs and begin to raise and lower our shoulders while breathing. This contributes to our tension and stress and general sense of anxiety due to possibly not getting enough air. If this were not enough, I have also observed that there are those who also wear extremely tight pants and restrictive belts!
When all else fails, I always say: ask your body how it’s feeling. To bring this back to codependency, many of us grow up out of contact with our bodies. We are more aware of our thoughts from the neck up and NOT aware of our emotions and body sensation from the neck down. The only time awareness more penetrates our consciousness is when we get into pain somewhere in our body.
Therefore, many codependents go through much stress and tension and even abuse – remaining all the while unaware of the fact that there body may be in pain or discomfort – and even that they are asking their body to run every day without the proper breathing bringing enough oxygen to their muscles! Stress and tension and anxiety will be produced and we can wonder where such feelings are coming from.
What is something helpful we can do? It is called diaphragmatic breathing or, what I call, belly breathing.
It is very simple and yet I have noticed that women are quite resistant to doing it and practicing it.
I am guessing that one of the reasons for this stems from living in our society that gives lifelong messages to women that it is NOT OKAY to allow our stomachs to relax and protrude, if need be. Instead, we are exposed to a drumbeat of media messages telling us that we need to have a flat stomach and we are fat if our stomachs have a natural curve or roundness. As a result, many of us go around every day holding in our stomach muscles and wondering why we are anxious and tense.
There are many articles and directions on the internet that explain how to do this kind of breathing. You can practice a form of if almost anywhere. You can lay down flat or sit down with both feet on the floor. Simply put both hands over your navel and gently press down. Then slowly inhale, making your stomach deliberately press its muscles against your hands. (If you are tense, this should ache a little, showing that your muscles have been tense and are relaxing.)
Then, simply exhale slowly through pursed lips, and allow your stomach to relax back down – your hands will fall with your stomach.
For both your inhale and exhale, deliberately make your stomach muscles relaxed.
If you have trouble with this, lay down flat and place a book on your stomach. If you are breathing properly, the book will slowly rise and fall in correspondence with your breathing. In addition, your chest and shoulders won’t feel like moving that much.
Practice this several times in the day – and especially when you are in bed.
Another tip: If you feel anxious, or panicky, start to do this breathing and you can actually bring yourself out of it by this technique. It is extremely relaxing and may even make you a little sleepy! that is usually a sign that you are needing to relax a lot more in your life!

Here’s an external link you can read to get more information of the kind of breathing for relaxation and bodily awareness discussed here in this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaphragmatic_breathing