Codependency is about normal behaviours taken too far. It’s about crossing lines. – Melody Beattie

We all started out life being codependent on our parent, caregivers, society and peers. Codependency is not necessarily bad, there is a place and time for it. The danger is becoming codependent beyond the normal point. It is not the same thing as care for a loved one who needs your help, it becomes codependence when you begin to enable self-destructive behaviours. Codependency shows up in our relationships through enabling and indulging people to abuse substances such as drugs and alcohol, enabling chemically dependent siblings, enmeshed and dysfunctional family units and toxic entaglements with our friends and peers.

Here are 30 top quotes on codependency:

• 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. –  Melody Beattie, Codependent No More
• Codependence is a disease that deteriorates the souls.  It affects our personal lives; our families, children, friends, and relatives; our businesses and careers; our health; and our spiritual growth.  It is debilitating and, if left untreated, causes us to become more destructive to ourselves and others. – CoDependent Anonymous
• Codependency involves an unhealthy enmeshment that occurs between two people. It usually happens in relationships where one person enables the other individual to make poor choices. – Shannon Thomas, Healing from hidden abuse
• Codependent behaviors could be described quite similarly to those that Caretakers use. However, most Caretakers take on this role almost exclusively inside the family and primarily only with the borderline or narcissist. – Margalis Fjelstad, Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist
• Being codependent means you have lost yourself while trying to enable, fix and control those around you. – Jeanette Elisabeth Menter, You’re Not Crazy- You’re Codependent
• Enmeshment may feel like intimacy, but it is not. Intimacy comes from knowing each other very well, accepting shortcomings and differences, and loving each other anyway. Enmeshment is attempting to feel and think as if you were the same person. – Anne Katherine, Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin
• It’s not your job to manage the emotions of others. It’s an exhausting role that may offer temporary bursts of self-worth, but ultimately will drain the life out of you. – Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse
• Codependency pertains to any relationship where people become emotionally entangled with the feelings and outcomes of others. In codependent relationships, it’s challenging to separate what we feel from what others think and feel. – Nedra Tawwab, Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A guide to reclaiming yourself
• The caretaker typically comes from codependent dynamics. Gains a sense of identity and self-worth through neglecting their own needs. Believes that the only way to receive love is to cater to others and ignore their own needs. –  Dr. Nicole LePer, How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self 
• Codependency is about normal behaviors taken too far. It’s about crossing lines. – Melody Beattie, The New CoDependency

• Many of us live in denial of who we truly are because we fear losing someone or something-and there are times that if we don’t rock the boat, too often the one we lose is ourselves…It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay. –  Dennis Merritt Jones,Your Redefining Moments: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be
• Allowing others to suffer the consequences of their own actions, without enabling them, is the best motivation for them to undertake the difficult task of change. – Darlene Lancer, Codependency For Dummies
• Enmeshment creates almost total dependence on approval and validation from outside yourself. Lovers, bosses, friends, even strangers become the stand-in for parents. Adults raised in families where there was no permission to be an individual frequently become approval junkies, constantly seeking their next fix. – Susan Forward, Toxic Parents
• If you live your life to please everyone else, you will continue to feel frustrated and powerless. This is because what others want may not be good for you. You are not being mean when you say NO to unreasonable demands or when you express your ideas, feelings, and opinions, even if they differ from those of others. – Beverly Engel, The Nice Girl Syndrome
• it’s a mistake to expect loyalty from someone who won’t even give you honesty. – Dana Morningstar, Out of the Fog

Our compliance rewards the blackmailer, and every time we reward someone for a particular action, whether we realize it or not, we’re letting them know in the strongest possible terms that they can do it again. – Susan Forward, Emotional Blackmail

•  The surest way to make ourselves crazy is to get involved in other people’s business, and the quickest way to become sane and happy is to tend to our own affairs. – Melody Beattie, Codependent No More
• In all codependent relationships, the rescuer needs the victim as much as the victim needs the rescuer. – Barbara De Angelis
• I learned again and again in my life, until you get your own act together, you’re not ready for Big Love. What you’re ready for is one of those codependent relationships where you desperately need a partner. – Bruce H.Lipton, The Honeymoon Effect: The Science of Creating Heaven on Earth.
• Your whole being is involved in taking care of someone else, worrying about what they think of you, how they treat you, how you can make them treat you better. Right now everyone in the world seems to think that they are codependent and that they come from dysfunctional families. They call it codependency. I call it the human condition. – Cynthia Heimel, If You Can`t Live Without Me, Why Aren`t You Dead Yet?!’
• If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change. – David W. Earle LPC, Love is Not Enough
• Codependency : Those self-defeating learned behaviors or character defects that result in a diminished capacity to initiate, or participate in, loving relationships. – Earnie Larsen

All the Best in your quest to get Better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.

Optimism is an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome. Optimism is from French optimisme, from Latin optimum  whuch means ‘best thing’. It is the abilty to see the best in every situation and making the best of the moment. An optimist sees the cup as half full while the pessimist sees the cup as half empty. Life can be tough and challenging, it is easy to stay optimistic when things are going right, the real test of your optimism is to stay strong when things are not going right.

Perseverance is the act of continuing in a course of action even though it is difficult, without regard for opposition, discouragement or previous failure. When times get tough like they sometime would, it is always tempting to throw in the towel and give up. Whether it is learning a foreign language, starting a business, running a marathon or learning a programming language, the tough times don’t last but the tough people do. I have tried to learn a foreign language, start multiple businesses, run multiple marathons (11+) and learn various programming languages (Python, Javascript, Java). The common denominator with hard concepts or activities is that, you have to persevere the tough times through deliberate practice, seeing the end in mind and continuously show up daily.

Here are some great quotes on perseverance:

• Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. – Walter Elliot
• Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. – Newt Gingrich
• If four things are followed – having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance – then anything can be achieved. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
• No one succeeds without effort… Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance. – Ramana Maharshi
• It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. – Confucius
• Failure is often that early morning hour of darkness which precedes the dawning of the day of success. -Leigh Mitchell Hodges

The best way out is always through. -Robert Frost

• Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. -George Edward Woodberry
• Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength. -Theodore Roosevelt
• Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t. – Henry Ward Beecher

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. – Albert Einstein

• A failure is not always a mistake. It may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying. – B.F. Skinner
• Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. – John Quincy Adams
• The most essential factor is persistence – the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come. – James Whitcomb Riley
• Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained. – Marie Curie
• If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius. – Joseph Addison

• Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. – Calvin Coolidge
• Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure. – Benjamin Disraeli
• In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure. – George Eliot
• If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T. S. Eliot
• Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. – Dale Carnegie
• Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacle s, discouragement s, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak. – Thomas Carlyle
• Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas A. Edison
• Success depends upon staying power. The reason for failure in most cases is lack of perseverance. – J.R. Miller

• Let me tell you the secret that has led to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. -Louis Pasteur
• Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. – Winston Churchill
• Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there. – Josh Billings
• What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Winning isn’t everything, but the will to prepare to win is everything. —Vince Lombardi

All the Best in your quest to get Better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.

The Blame Game started at the garden of Eden, Adam blamed Eve for eating the apple, Eve blamed the snake and the snake had no legs. It is human nature to blame: we blame the government, parents, childhood trauma, education system, siblings, spouse, and everybody else except ourselves. As J.K.Rowlings, author of the Harry Potter series once quipped: “There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, the responsibility lies with you.”

There is an expiry date for blaming everything except ourselves. Life is tough and it happens to us all; hence we have to take personal responsibility for our life at some point. We all play the blame game: we blame our spouse for the divorce, our boss for the job loss, the government for the bad economy, our parents for unresolved childhood trauma, ourselves for our mistakes.

Here are some great quotes on Blaming:

• There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. – J.K.Rowling
• All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.- Wayne Dyer
• Blame is the demonstrated lack of self-respect choosing to deposit one’s negative actions onto others to reinforce one’s view of being of good, fair, and approved. – Byron R. Pulsifer

• Don’t argue for other people’s weaknesses. Don’t argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it- immediately. – Stephen Covey
•  Blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. – Robin Sharma
• It’s always easy to blame others. You can spend your entire life blaming the world, but your success and failures are entirely your own responsibility. – Paulo Coelho

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.George Bernard Shaw

• Blaming is so much easier than taking responsibility, because if you take responsibility, then you might be to blame. -Jennifer O’Neill
• If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month. – Theodore Roosevelt
• You are not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes. – John Wooden
• Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. – Erica Jong

• To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult. – Plutarch
• The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. – Robert Bloch
• Your failures won’t hurt you until you start blaming them on others.– Zig Ziglar
• He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived. – Chinese Proverb
• When you blame and criticize others, you are avoiding some truth about yourself. – Deepak Chopra
• The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions. – Dwight Eisenhower
• Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame. – Bertrand Russell,
• The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.— Albert Ellis
• People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.— Oscar Wilde
• We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.— Swami Vivekananda

Fix the problem, not the blame.— Japanese Proverbs

• Blame no one, Expect nothing, Do Something – Bill Parcells
• Blaming something else makes that something else cause; and as that cause takes on power, the individual in the same act loses control and becomes effect.– L. Ron Hubbard

• You can get discouraged many times, but you are not a failure until you begin to blame somebody else and stop trying. – John Burroughs
• Stop blaming other people and circumstances for killing your dreams. The truth is; we tend to talk ourselves out of acting upon our dreams. Most dreams die of suicide, not murder. — Steve Maraboli
• Concern yourself more with accepting responsibility than with assigning blame. Let the possibilities inspire you more than the obstacles discourage you. – Ralph Marston
• You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstance, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of. – Jim Rohn
• An irresponsible person is a person who makes vague promises, then breaks his word, blames it on circumstances, and expects other people to forgive it. – Ayn Rand
• An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.  – Epictetus

“Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important. Capture the good times. And if things don’t work out, just take another shot.”.

• The search for someone to blame is always successful. – Robert Half
• Blaming things on the past does not make them better. – Nelson Mandela

All the Best in your quest to get Better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.

Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self; withdrawal motivations; and feelings of distress, exposure, mistrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Shame is a deeply troubling emotion that lead people to lie, manipulate, project, and even shame kill.

“Healthy shame is the psychological foundation of humility. It is the source of spirituality.” – John Bradshaw

Top Quotes on Shame

• Shame is the emotion which gives us permission to be human. Shame tells us of our limits. Shame keeps us in our human boundaries, letting us know we can and will make mistakes, and that we need help. – John Bradshaw, Healing the shame that bind you
• Guilt, of course, is feeling bad about one’s actions, but shame is feeling bad about oneself. – Greg Boyle

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” – Carl Jung

• Humans have long used shaming as a weapon to preserve social order and cohesion; indeed our brains are hardwired to register shame. – Shaili Jain
• Those events that once made me feel ashamed and disgraced now allow me to share with others how to become a useful member of the human race. – Bill Wilson
• The difference between guilt and shame is very clear–in theory. We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are. – Lewis B. Smedes

Shame is a particularly acute risk for mental illness. – Nicola Gates

• Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee! – William Shakespeare
• Shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture. – Salman Rushdie
• The way out of shame is to own it, and go on being your best, showing up rather than hiding because of it. Don’t let shame own you and keep you small. – Debra Campbell
• Shame regulates differences, creates secrets, builds up a charge. The counterforce and antithesis of shame is desire, which with all its being seeks to eliminate differences, to do away with secrets, release tensions. – Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself. – Anais Nin
• Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. – Benjamin Franklin
• Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough. – Brene Brown

Shame is an ornament of the young; a disgrace of the old. – Aristotle

• Shame is always easier to handle if you have someone to share it with.-Craig Thompson
• Shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us.– Ann Patchett
• It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal wounds that have not healed.-Horace
• You cannot really shame a man who sincerely does not care what others think of him.-Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.-Brene Brown

• Shame is an attachment to negative self-perception that has been fostered by the perceptions and opinions of others. Shame is a wasted sensibility. – Devon St. Claire
• Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame. – Benjamin Franklin
• Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.– Rumi
• Guilt is “I made a mistake, I did something wrong.” Shame is “I’m a mistake, something is wrong with me.” At the core of our wounding is the unbearable emotional pain resulting from having internalized the false message that we are not loved because we are personally defective and shameful.— Robert Burney

The problem with shame is that we have absorbed incorrect conclusions about ourselves, based on the past actions or reactions of a trusted loved one. These conclusions tend to be quite intense and persistent, with a nagging voice that they are the ultimate truth, and anything else we tell ourselves is just a lie to make ourselves feel better. – Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again

• Therapy is one of the safest of all places to bring your shame. But faced with lying by omission or confronting their shame, they may duck out altogether. Which, of course, solves nothing. – Lori Gottlieb,  Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Mindfulness is the practice of purposely bringing one’s attention to the present moment without judgment, a skill one develops through meditation or other training. The need to stay mindful and present can not be over-emphasized in our present age of always-on, tweet, sharing, and clicking world. We are busy doing nothing, running, chasing fame, the thrill and dopamine rush of vanity metrics such as likes, retweets, reshares, material things and we forget to stay in the moment, focus on the here and now. Mindfulness enables us to stay on the focused on what really matter.