Recovery from codependency involves treating the primary symptoms and treating the cause. The cause is child abuse and neglect, which creates stress that persists into adulthood. You need to go back into your mind and look at what happened. Explore how you felt about it as a child and as an adult today. You need to look at the consequences of those traumatic experiences and how they reappear in your adult life today.
Through a 12-step group and counseling, you will learn to do two things, which are 1) claim the feelings about that happen in childhood and accept the feelings about them as an adult and as a child; and 2) identify and change current immature thinking and behaviors.
One way to frame your experience is to state, "This is what happened to me, and today as an adult I have these adult feelings about it. When I was a child, I had these child feelings." The willingness to reexperience the old feelings of reality and stay conscious, you release the effects of that old trauma. Afterward, you enter a grieving process for the loss and pain of your childhood.
As you process the trauma, you will go through different stages of healing. Next month, I'll list the stages of healing.
