Codependence vs. Interdependence
By Robert Burney M.A.
"In order to stop giving our power away, to stop reacting out of our inner children, to stop setting ourselves up to be victims, so that we can start learning to trust and Love ourselves, we need to begin to practice discernment. Discernment is having the eyes to see, and the ears to hear - and the ability to feel the emotional energy that is Truth.

We cannot become clear on what we are seeing or hearing if we are reacting to emotional wounds that we have not been willing/able to feel and subconscious attitudes that we have not been willing/able to look at. We cannot learn to trust ourselves as long as we are still setting ourselves up to be victimized by untrustworthy people."

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"Not only were we taught to be victims of people, places, and things, we were taught to be victims of ourselves, of our own humanity. We were taught to take our ego-strength, our self-definition from external manifestations of our being. . . Looks, talent, intelligence external manifestations of our being are gifts to be celebrated. They are temporary gifts. They are not our total being. They do not define us or dictate if we have worth. We were taught to do it backwards. To take our self-definition and self-worth from temporary illusions outside of, or external to our beings. It does not work. It is dysfunctional."
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

For more on this subject please visit http://www.joy2meu.com/Codependence2.htm

Thank you changes I love this!

If I may add Robert Burney is very wise. He has a website and he has written a book on this called "The Dance of Wounded Souls" .. taps into spirituality a bit (which I like!) but he has some exellent and helpful ideas on struggling with codependency and unhappiness generally