Being Valuable

Being Valuable
From Letting Go by Melody Beattie



Part of recovery means learning to share ourselves with other people. We learn to admit our mistakes and expose our imperfections – not so that others can fix us, rescue us, or feel sorry for us, but so we can love and accept ourselves. This sharing is a catalyst in healing and changing.

Many of us are fearful of sharing our imperfections because that makes us
vulnerable. Some of us have tried being vulnerable in the past, and people tried to control, manipulate, or exploit us, or they made us feel ashamed.

Some of us in recovery have hurt ourselves by being vulnerable. We may have shared things with people who didn’t respect our confidence. Or we may have told the wrong people at an inappropriate time, and scared them away.

We learn from our mistakes – and despite our mistakes, it is a good thing to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and honest. We can learn to choose safe people with whom to share ourselves. We can learn to share appropriately, so we don’t scare or push people away. We can also learn to let others be vulnerable with us.



Today, God, help me learn to be appropriately vulnerable. I will not let others exploit or shame me for being vulnerable, and I will not exploit myself.

Boundaries Are Containers For Self Esteem

Boundaries and Self Esteem
You don't have to be codependent to be concerned about Self Esteem. Everyone knows self esteem is important, most of us know our self esteem could use some boosting.

Codependents ARE codependent because their boundaries are damaged. Problem is almost no one (therapists included) are in agreement with a functional definition of exactly what boundaries are or what they look like.

The only people concerned with functional boundaries are those on the "shi*y end of the stick"

If you find your self constantly being "walked on" or if you have a pattern of repeatedly setting yourself up to be taken advantage of... you have less than functional boundaries. We can't call them "good boundaries" or "bad boundaries" because it's a subjective thing, who is to say what is "good" or "bad"?

I prefer to refer to boundaries as either functional or less than functional.

Why To Is More Important Then How To


What does having functional boundaries do for you?
They are the "container" for your sense of self, boundaries are where you end and other people begin.
If you have less than functional boundaries, you think it's normal for other peoples problems or issues affect you. In actuality, you don't have a "nickle in it". Non codependent people don't allow themselves to be manipulated or get caught up in "drama".
We do unfortunately, for some reason, we think this is normal.
We don't even notice that it isn't normal....

fold your arms
now fold them the other way
... feels funny doesn't it?

That's what it feels like to "train yourself" to rethink what normal is and doesn't have to be.

Self Esteem


No boundaries, no self esteem.
boundaries are the container for self esteem, without boundaries we don't have a "box" to put boundaries in!