Twelve Steps Before the Program
This is as good a definition of co-dependency as any:
- We admitted we were powerless over nothing—that we could manage our lives perfectly and those of anyone else who would allow us to.
- Came to believe there was no power greater than ourselves and the rest of the world was insane.
- Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and lives over to our care, even though they couldn't understand us at all.
- Made a searching and fearless moral and immoral inventory of everyone we knew.
- Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of everyone else's wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.
- Demanded others to either shape up or ship out.
- Made a list of all persons who had harmed us, and became willing to go to any lengths to get even with them all.
- Got direct revenge on such people wherever possible, except when to do so would cost us our own lives or at the very least a jail sentence.
- Continued to take personal inventory of others and when they were wrong, promptly and repeatedly told them about it.
- Sought through bitching and nagging to improve our relations with others as we couldn't understand them, asking only that they knuckle under and DO IT MY WAY.
- Having had a complete physical, emotional and spiritual breakdown as a result of THESE STEPS, we tried to blame it on others and to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.
Author Unknown
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APA Reference
Staff, H.
(2009, January 9). Twelve Steps Before the Program, HealthyPlace. Retrieved
on 2024, November 23 from https://www.healthyplace.com/relationships/serendipity/twelve-steps-before-the-program
Last Updated: August 8, 2014