Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts down,
@grit. I appreciate getting feedback about what I wrote. I think you have some really good points. It gave me additional perspectives to consider. I am trying to do something about my codependency through reading, reflection, therapy and action. But as with many things related to my complex ptsd, it takes many attempts before even a little progress is made, but I do try. I wanted to address a few of your points more specifically.
You do this to people and healthy people probably feel sorry for you because they can see you are seeking that old fashion daddy love and because these people care about you they protect you and let you do it. Those who may have opposite issue to this are probably repulsed by you because they will think ooh gosh, she is giving cause she want something out of me.
Wow, that was a splash of reality. I'm pretty good about boundaries at work and with friends, but I probably do a little too much and go out of my way a little more than the average person. But with my ex husband and ex bf, yes, I was doing too much. One lapped it up; the other felt pissed actually because he saw it as me questioning his competency (which is how his own parents treated him). It might have been the best thing for me for him to react with anger because it is so opposite of my past experience. The downside is that my ex bf was too caught up in his own triggers to ever show me compassion. If I messed up, which I don't think was excessive, it was always about how my behaviors negatively affected him. We never talked about what I needed from him in working on this problem. He didn't want to go to therapy himself, so I couldn't expect him to do any more.
Being conscious of your action is good but if you do not the next step, it is like saying I am obese but will eat the full pizza, it is not helping you know the reasons. and the reason you cannot change (IMHO) is because you really think this is a good side of you and until you truly look at your child and see how they are struggling to get out of your way for helping them, you are not going to change.
How we affect our children, I think, is always hard to assess. My son is my number one priority, and any progress I've made was because I am highly motivated to be good mom to him. Something complicating the matter is that he has some special needs. I fret whether I'm doing too much or too little. For example, he has speech pragmatic issues that he sees a specialist for. If someone asks him a question, sometimes he won't even respond which gets him a negative reaction (people think he's being rude). So instead, I might answer for him, like tell the counter person which soda he wants. There have been times when I've let 3 minutes go by in silence thinking it's the right thing to do to help him learn to talk more. But so far, that hasn't worked. But listen, he's sweet, he does dishes every night and cleans his room, we get along well, he works 100% independently in terms of school work and gets mostly A's and some B's (I really mean that I let him do everything - he won't even let me double-check his work). In his 8th grade year, I felt guilty because I did not once even check in with him on his end of year history project until the night before it was due. He said he got it covered, and he ended up earning a certificate of excellence from his school. When I post here, I probably don't give a balanced view; I give a stream of consciousness of all my angst and worries. But the more balanced view is that I feel I've done a good enough, if not perfect, job. I tried really hard to make up for the things I failed at and I always tried to give him a lot of love and affection.
You need to cry and express your pain for helping your children to them every time you have that need and you recognize it before you do it, until you change automatically in a deep way; keep doing that. If you cannot do that, then that means, you are not ready yet. and that is why a lot of people change after crisis not as much before.
I go to therapy and work on myself a lot. That's one thing my ex bf kept saying - that he couldn't have asked me to do more in terms of work on every problem we discussed. Part of that work is genuine healing and working through my emotions, and I've learned a lot from my therapist and authors like van der Kolk, Heller, and now Beatte. They have some pretty well-researched methods and insights that I have tried and believe has helped me to make lasting changes.
Did I address your concerns,
@grit? I wanted to give you some additional information. Please feel free to follow up.
