Welch, Beattie, & A Codependent Church Retreat
This weekend on our church retreat, we'll be exploring what it means to put God first and people second. Ed Welch's When People are Big and God is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man is an excellent resource on the subject. Here are 15 symptoms of co-dependency (or valuing the approval of people over the approval of God).
You may be codependent if you:
- think and feel responsibility for other people
- feel compelled to help people solve their problems.
- get tired of feeling like you always give to others but no one gives to you.
- blame, blame, blame.
- feel unappreciated.
- fear rejection.
- feel ashamed of who you are.
- worry whether other people like you or not.
- focus all your energy on other people and problems.
- threaten, bribe, beg.
- try to say what you think will please, provoke, or get what you need.
- let others keep hurting you and never say anything.
- feel angry
- feel like a martyr
- are extremely responsible or extremely irresponsible.
If you're like me, these signs of codependency seem to describe us all! That tells me that we all struggle with it in one way or another.
Interestingly, these signs were not compiled by Welch. They appear in Melody Beattie's book, Codependent No More, about which Welch states, "[offers] atrocious solutions for the fear of man, but [does] a fine job describing it." So, read Welch, not Beattie, and quit worrying about what everybody else thinks!
