Shalom Place

Codependency Recovery Guidelines

- by Philip St. Romain; all rights reserved

1. See how you have allowed other people to determine your happiness and unhappiness. See how you are trying to control and manipulate them in various ways. Give up this behavior, and discourage all thinking which conduces toward this behavior.

2. Set realistic boundaries in your relationships and in your work. What are you comfortable with? What are you uncomfortable with? Share these boundaries with those who need to hear them.

3. Turn your will and your life over to the care of Christ. Make doing the will of God your true center of meaning and value.

4. Take time each day for prayer and meditation. Allow yourself to rest in the awareness of God’s unconditional love for you. This is the basis for unconditional self-acceptance.

5. Get in touch with your true feelings. Ask not, "What should I feel?” but "What do I feel?” Give yourself permission to have all your feelings--even the unpleasant ones. There is nothing moral or immoral about having feelings. It is we express our feelings that Is moral or immoral.

6. Do not judge others or impute motives about their behavior. Confront their behavior, if you must, but leave judgment of the person in the hands of God.

7. Do not be party to any triangulating communication. Do not gossip about others. If someone comes to talk to you about someone else, tell them to go and talk with that person, not you.

8. Mind your own business. Do your own work. Enjoy your relationships and your fun times. Do not meddle in the affairs of others.

9. Give yourself plenty of room to make mistakes. It is not a sin to make a mistake--only human. Even Jesus made mistakes.

10. Be as willing to meet your own needs as you are those of others. Take time for yourself. Be good to yourself. Do to yourself as you would have done to another in need.

11. Do not do for others what they can and should do for’ themselves. (But. . .do for others what they cannot do for themselves--until they are capable of doing so). Let others have their own lives, even their own pain.

12. Learn the difference between working for God and doing God’s work. Too many ministers are working for God. Consequently, they become upset when they are not in the limelight, or appreciated, or thanked. If you become upset because you are not noticed you are probably working for God, and not doing God’s work. No external affirmation is needed when we do God’s work. The serenity of God’s Spirit suffices.