I read this as a headline to a course workshop last week and it struck me deeply. Same with a very strong avalanche metaphor I poured over with others in a recent Alanon meeting. Hi, I’m Breanne and I’m a recovering codependent.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term codependent there is a vast and current collection of writers and experts on the topic as well as 12 step meetings for codependents. I personally find hope in the 12step rooms of Alanon which is full of codependents like me because a lot of us get there with the concern of trying to stop somebody else’s drinking. If you substitute the word ‘thinking’ for ‘drinking’ in a reading of the 12 steps you will get what I’m trying to describe here.

I am a chronic Overthinker for YOUR life, I have big ideas, visionary goals, can scheme up any number of ways out of a predicament, and it’s made me very adaptable person and a person not afraid to dream big dreams. But I spend entirely too much time trying to overthink these things in YOUR life or co-dependently with YOU, and that often leaves me with very little energy to dream or think of what I actually want for MY life and I lose sight of what goals I want to achieve.

Thankfully, I haven’t spent a lot of time in the last five years around active alcoholism. However, the cunning baffling and confusing part of recovery even if I’m not around alcoholics or the behavior of disordered drinking is that I can still fall into codependent states of being and overthinking.

Now, don’t get me wrong, co-creating something with a partner or as a family can be a beautiful thing as our first year in this pandemic demonstrated. Maybe you sit down with your partner or family every year and track out a five-year plan or future cast together, and that is great if everyone gets a voice and has provisions to make those dreams a reality.

We haven’t done that kind of long term planning as a family since leaving Denver mid-2020 and survival mode kicked in for me quite some time ago. We also don’t live in an echo chamber of a single family unit, so extended family needs took center stage. When I’m in survival mode, my defects of character re-surface and my executive functions quickly diminish. Now we’re back to my avalanche analogy. What would you do if faced with an avalanche of someone else’s creation? You’d get the fu*k out of the way! But in my disease of overthinking, I think I can come up with a better plan and often jump right into that cascading snow. Right now I’m sitting or suffocating under the pile of snow that I helped create. It’s unbearable, it’s dark, and it’s freezing, and creative as I am, I can’t think my way out of it.

My only way out is to surrender to it. My next step is to accept. This is essentially steps one and two in the 12 Steps, admitting I’m powerless and coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.

Today I’m at a step three place, made a decision to turn my life over to the power of God as I see God. She looks like a lot of women surrounding me with comfort and encouragement today. Because after a decade + in recovery, a pandemic, zoom meetings, and a nomadic life can’t take away the power of getting together and sharing these things in a roomful (or virtual roomful) of people who overthink like me. I’m diving back into working the steps with a sponsor and to attending more meetings. This is how I find my way back to me. (Also, antidepressants and therapy, but that’s coming later and the timing is beyond my control.)

A very insidious part of codependency is a lack of boundaries between myself and the people surrounding me. Living in a 20’ travel trailer for 18 months really eroded my boundaries and sense of self.

The people often most offended by carving out new boundaries for oneself are the ones who benefitted most from my lack of them before. I will not make decisions for the rest of my family beyond what constitutes their immediate safety and security (and that really only applies for my own two kids). I will not future plan until I can firmly stand back on the foundation of my own recovery so that I can dream things that I want for MY future. Does this sound selfish? I know it does to me for various reasons including societal conditioning saying women have to do it all and be it all for others, so I take it several dysfunctional steps too far to the benefit of those around me who don’t have to think for themselves. I had a mother who martyred herself because of similar conditioning and because of her own disease of codependency. Maybe you too are suffering from the effects of codependency, just know there is help and that you are not alone.

I write these things as part of my process, it’s the same reason I share in rooms of recovery. If it serves you or resonates, great! I’d love to hear about it. If not, you can always take what you like and leave the rest.