In Codependent Behavior – Part 1, http://ow.ly/5gx6W I gave you a brief summary of my personal challenge with codependent behavior.
I now list the five main areas of codependent behavior.
1. Inability to recognize our needs.
2. Lack of taking care of ourselves, fulfilling our own needs.
3. Inability to know how we feel.
4. Lack of skill or fear of expressing our feelings.
5. Poor personal boundaries. Fear of standing up and saying “No.”
I will soon talk about the behavior of some Indian men known as “Mama’s Boy. I address this in reference to Indian women and how they might better handle it to achieve better emotional health for themselves. This understanding of men’s behavior, however, can assist women of any culture.
First I will clarify my relationship with my own mother. My father staggered through life drunk much of the time, angry and shouting at my mother. I retreated inwardly and kept my mouth to protect myself. Since my father chose to be absent a lot of the time, both physically and emotionally, I unconsciously as a child took on the role of my father to protect and look after my mother.
You can see the roots of my codependent behavior. Rather than taking care of my own needs I felt I needed to care take for the women in my life. I numbed my feelings and had no skill in expressing them. Last of all seeing the behavior of my parents I had no idea of good personal boundaries.
Let’s come back to the “Mama’s Boy” concept. This is an adult man still unhealthily connected to his mother. His mother is over involved in her adult son’s life, emotionally needy, and demanding her son’s attention. The mother makes financial, career, and relationship decisions for her son. She provides the emotional support that a girlfriend or wife naturally would fulfill. The son continues remaining a boy emotionally. Why would such a man need any other woman?
Healthy Relationship
In the above codependent relationship the son looks after the mother’s needs and feelings to the detriment of his own. He probably fears expressing his own feelings and of course we can see the unhealthy boundary issue.
This son places his mother’s happiness above that of any other woman.
As a woman would you want your boyfriend or husband to treat you like a piece of furniture rather respecting and loving you? Would you like to feel invisible or be treated like a doormat? Would you like to constantly compete for your partner’s attention and have your needs ignored while his mother controls and dominants him and receives all his love?
Will you let your codependency or that of your partner run or ruin your life?
Here is a simple test to recognize your own degree of codependency. When you find yourself attracted to or involved with a man who has a codependent relationship with his mother will you stay and struggle as a three class citizen or will you say I deserve respect and love and leave that relationship?
Michael David Lawrience is a certified Residential Coach III with over 13 years’ experience teaching teen’s self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-reliance. He has over 35 years’ experience as a holistic health practitioner with a B.A in Sacred Healing and has been a certified Bowenwork Practitioner since 2005. His niche is emotional health with extensive personal experience related to codependency recovery, strengthening self-esteem, healing the inner child, stress management, and meditation which he has practiced for over 40 years.
Check out Michael’s softcover book The Secret for Freedom from Drama, Trauma, & Pain http://ow.ly/5dlS9 on Amazon for an owner’s manual describing practical methods to release your physical and emotional chronic pain, suffering, and emotional stress
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