In this week’s Cafe Book Club, host Robin Masiewicz and co-host Amy Frost and Amy’s friend Joan discuss chapters 1 – 4 of  Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself and the companion Codependent No More Workbook by Melody Beattie.

Quote from Chapter 3:

Relationships are like a dance, with visible energy racing back and forth between the partners. Some relationships are the slow, dark dance of death.

— Colette Dowling

What is Codependency?

In an article from the book Co-Dependency, An Emerging Issue, Robert Subby wrote codependency is “an emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules–rules which prevent the open expression of feeling as well as the direct discussion of personal and interpersonal problems.”

Melody Beattie defines codependent as: “A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.”

“The other person might be a child, an adult, a lover, a spouse, a brother, a sister, a grandparent, a parent, a client, or a best friend. He or she can be a drug addict, a mentally or physically ill person, a normal person who occasionally has sad feelings, or one of the people mentioned earlier.”

“But, the heart of the definition and recovery lies not in the other person–no matter how much we believe it does. It lies in ourselves, in the ways we have let other people’s behavior affect us and in the ways we try to affect them: the obsessing, the controlling, the obsessive “helping”, caretaking, low self-worth bordering on self-hatred, self-repression, abundance of anger and guilt. . . attraction to and tolerance for the bizarre, other-centeredness that results in abandonment of self, communication problems, intimacy problems, and on ongoing whirlwind trip through the five-stage grief process.”

Click the images below to order your copy of the book and workbook.

 

Cafe Book Club Schedule

You can join us live Tuesdays at 8 PM PST by calling 646-727-3206.

December 6: Part 1 : What’s Codependency, and Who’s Got It?  which covers chapters 1 – 4 of Codependent No More. Workbook Lesson 3 chap 3; Workbook Lesson 5 chap 4

December 13: Part 2: Chapters 5-9; Workbook Lesson 4 chap 7; Workbook Lesson 10 chap 8

December 20: Part 2 – Chapters 10-14; Workbook Lesson 3 chap 12; Workbook Lesson 6 chap 10

December 27: Dark – no show this week

January 2: Part 2 Chapters 15-20; Workbook Lesson 7 chap 17; Workbook Lesson 8 chap 20; Workbook Lesson 9 chap 18

Information about Melody:

Melody Beattie is one of America’s most beloved self-help authors and a household name in addiction and recovery circles.  Her international bestselling book, Codependent No More,