God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
My dad and I do not have a good relationship. I understand people by understanding their pasts and I understand why my dad is the way he is. The wonderful man that I know to be my grandpa to be is not the person my dad grew up with and that has very much influenced the man my dad is today. Nevertheless, the less than loving relationship that my father and I shared as a teenager is now plaguing my life as an adult. It comes up at weird times.
My little sister got married recently and I had to do some scripture readings during the ceremony. Which included this phrase…
“Forgive others as I have forgiven you
Snap. I instantly start crying because my father is sitting on the front row. Everybody thinks I am so sweet for being upset over my sister getting married and all I can think of is not right now God. Not a good time to talk about this. The question remains, why am I so upset about my dad?
I am beginning to understand how much a father’s relationship with his daughter will affect her self esteem and her tendency to be co-dependent which is where my self assessment has arrived at after a week off of work alone with my thoughts.
What does co-dependency look like?
- My good feelings about who I am stem from being loved by you
- My mental attention is focused on protecting you.
- My self-esteem is bolstered by solving your problems.
- I am not aware of how I feel.
- I am aware of how you feel.
- The dreams I have for my future are linked to you.
- My fear of rejection determines what I say or do.
- My social circle diminishes as I involve myself with you.
- I put my values aside in order to connect with you.
- The quality of my life is in direct relation to the quality of yours.
I can pretty much insert my ex-boy friend’s name into every you listed above and really I guess my dad as well. This where you end up when you don’t deal with you daddy issues until you are almost 30.
So what is next? Something called celebrate recovery at my church. It is a step program set up like AA. Hopefully it will help but I am worried about what I might dig up. Anyway, here I go. Maybe this will be a year of healing for me after all.
“Hi my name is Nichole and I struggle with co-dependency and low self-esteem”
My little sister got married recently and I had to do some scripture readings during the ceremony. Which included this phrase…
“Forgive others as I have forgiven you
Snap. I instantly start crying because my father is sitting on the front row. Everybody thinks I am so sweet for being upset over my sister getting married and all I can think of is not right now God. Not a good time to talk about this. The question remains, why am I so upset about my dad?
I am beginning to understand how much a father’s relationship with his daughter will affect her self esteem and her tendency to be co-dependent which is where my self assessment has arrived at after a week off of work alone with my thoughts.
What does co-dependency look like?
- My good feelings about who I am stem from being loved by you
- My mental attention is focused on protecting you.
- My self-esteem is bolstered by solving your problems.
- I am not aware of how I feel.
- I am aware of how you feel.
- The dreams I have for my future are linked to you.
- My fear of rejection determines what I say or do.
- My social circle diminishes as I involve myself with you.
- I put my values aside in order to connect with you.
- The quality of my life is in direct relation to the quality of yours.
I can pretty much insert my ex-boy friend’s name into every you listed above and really I guess my dad as well. This where you end up when you don’t deal with you daddy issues until you are almost 30.
So what is next? Something called celebrate recovery at my church. It is a step program set up like AA. Hopefully it will help but I am worried about what I might dig up. Anyway, here I go. Maybe this will be a year of healing for me after all.
“Hi my name is Nichole and I struggle with co-dependency and low self-esteem”
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