← We Can Do Hard Things
We Can Do Hard Things
Codependence: How to Stop Controlling Others with Melody Beattie (Best Of)
01:04:02
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- [00:00]
Glennon Doyle
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- [02:08]
Abby Wambach
High Pod Squad as someone whose entire adult life has been about trying to learn to relinquish control to get more peace and freedom, Melody Beatty has been an incredibly important guide to me in my life, personally and to millions. A few days ago we read this message from Nicole Beatty, who is melody's daughter. On February 27th at 10pm, just as the new moon fell into Pisces, my beautiful mother, Melody Beatty passed away. She died peacefully at home, surrounded by family and loved ones. My mother was never afraid to die. Why should I be? I'm going to see God. I'll be reunited with your brother and I'll finally get to meet my favorite person, Moses. Her fearlessness was a great comfort to me in her final weeks. During one of our last conversations, I leaned in close to her and asked, where are you going, Mom? She turned toward me and smiled. I'm going on a miraculous new adventure. I'll miss you. Godspeed, Mel. Oh, Nicole. It's fascinating and fitting that Melody Beatty's favorite person was Moses. She led a hell of a lot of people out of the wilderness. Today we are honoring the life and legacy of Melody Beatty by revisiting a life changing for me conversation that we had with her that really helped us untangle the difference between healthy and unhealthy helping and just was like one hour of absolute life saving freedom. We are forever transformed by Melody's work. Work that will continue to guide and heal generations to come. Nicole, we love you. We are with you. We are so grateful for your mom and your family.
- [04:12]
Amanda Doyle
Okay, I'll take over there. When I was in my early twenties, Codependent no More was probably the most transformative and important book. Melody, we love you and we hope you are on your journey.
- [04:28]
Abby Wambach
We love you, Pod Squad. Hope you enjoy this conversation. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Delighted to tell you today that with us is the Melody Beatty, a pioneering voice in self help literature. Melody is the author of many best selling books including Do Do Do Codependent no more, a number one New York Times bestseller which has sold over 7 million copies, as well as the Language of Letting Go, Playing it by Heart, the Grief Club and Beyond Codependency, an updated edition of the best selling modern classic which really screwed us up. Okay, Codependent no More is available now. Melody lives in Southern California. Melody, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.
- [05:28]
Melody Beattie
Thank you for doing this wonderful show.
- [05:30]
Abby Wambach
Oh, we're so excited. I have to tell you, I have read your book a long time ago because I'm a recovering addict, so that was part of my whole shebang. But then recently we all got it. All three of us got it because our friend Jen Hatmaker was on the show and reminded us of it in talking to us about how important it was for her. The book sat on our coffee table. We just stared at it for about a week and then I said, are you gonna read it? And Abby goes, I'm not reading it unless you read it. Which I felt like was very codependent of us. But then I read It. And what I need you to understand, Melody, is that I read the entire book as my sister. I pretended I was her reading, and I had all of the arguments and the epiphanies that I imagined she would have as I was reading. And I want you to know that I truly let your words sink in and change her deep, you know, through my reading.
- [06:33]
Melody Beattie
The comedian Louis Anderson once said that I haven't really sold 7 million copies of that book. It's just been sold to one really, really codependent woman who went out and bought all those copies for someone else. So somewhere between the two, I think there's truth.
- [06:51]
Abby Wambach
Yes. One of our beloved team members five minutes ago, before this interview, said, what does it say if four different people in different parts of your life and times of your life have gifted you that book over and over and over again?
- [07:06]
Melody Beattie
Either they're really codependent, or you are.
- [07:09]
Abby Wambach
I think so. Because that's a little codependent, right?
- [07:12]
Amanda Doyle
That's right.
- [07:12]
Melody Beattie
It is. But on the plus side, and I'm hoping this rings true, if we identify as codependent, we're in pretty good company. Yeah, we are.
- [07:25]
Amanda Doyle
Oh, that makes me feel better, sister.
- [07:28]
Abby Wambach
Tell. Tell Melody about your experience with this.
- [07:31]
Glennon Doyle
Well, I have always just assumed that among the many things that I have to worry about, codependency was not one of them, because I was like, oh, codependent? That can't be me. I'm the one that everyone is dependent on. So codependency has nothing to do with me. And I just never revisited it. Hatmaker came on the pod, and she had just read your book and was talking about how it is not letting others around you that you care about feel and experience the consequences of their own actions. And I was like, damn it. Damn it. And so I newly understand myself also in this. In this area.
- [08:26]
Abby Wambach
Can you tell us about how this human condition of codependency came into consciousness, like the beginning of this idea?
- [08:38]
Melody Beattie
Very painfully in my life, I found myself, and I was in the program then, the recovery program, aa. And I was going to meetings, and there was a fire going on and a fire among young people that this program and the recovery in it extended to us as well. And my sponsor introduced me to a guy, look at me. Blaming. I'm not blaming. I married him. And then I began to learn what it meant to be truly codependent. The research from this book was heartfelt, and yet it was also an exciting time because there was so much passion for recovery back then in the 70s in Minnesota. We were on fire. We were steaming. And when I started bugging everyone in aa, like, because my marriage didn't feel right, nothing felt right about it, but nothing had really felt right my entire life. So I started bugging my sponsor and bugging people in the program and say, you know, this is it. There's something going on here. It's like, shh, just go to your meetings and don't make a problem. And. But I couldn't. I became obsessed with finding out what was going on with me, what I could be doing that didn't involve putting a substance in me that could be causing and creating this kind of havoc inside of my entire being.
- [10:07]
Abby Wambach
Because you weren't using.
- [10:09]
Melody Beattie
No. I was your partner, clean and sober for two or three years by then, and, you know, working a program, but you wouldn't know it by the way I felt. And I thought, oh, my God, here I am, clean and sober and, you know, hard pressed to find a true reason to live other than caring for other people. And so I kept up this obsessive search, which began, I would say, 1976 until 1985, when I wrote the book.
- [10:42]
Glennon Doyle
Can we go to that havoc piece? Because one of the most revolutionary parts of your work to me is how codependence makes us feel crazy and leads us to this kind of ultimate self harm which is distrusting ourselves. So when you talk about feeling crazy, you say we feel crazy because we're lying to ourselves, because we are believing other people's lies. And that disrupts this core of our being, that deep, instinctive part of ourselves that knows the truth. We push that away, and then we begin to not trust ourselves. Is that what you mean when you say that havoc in your life, that. That kind of crazy making peace?
- [11:32]
Melody Beattie
We go off. We go off. We're not tuned in. We become misaligned. When we're misaligned with ourselves, we really can't tune in to much else. And that's what happened. You know, there's so much talk now about people gaslighting other people. No one can gaslight me as well as I can gaslight myself, tell myself my feelings don't matter, what I want doesn't matter. I'm overreacting. All the things we do to invalidate our natural, normal human responses to life.
- [12:03]
Abby Wambach
And that happens a lot. Because the kind of codependency you're talking about right now is the. Is the. The definition that. That this began with the someone who loves or is in relationship with an addict?
- [12:15]
Melody Beattie
Well, that. That wasn't really the first definition it was. Has let ourselves become obsessed or controlled by another person's behavior. And that can be like. From little things like not picking up your socks to, you know, drinking away the family's finances. Everything is on a scale, isn't it, of what we're doing and why we're doing it. We all have different impulses that motivate us. But when it comes to codependency, luckily we're in this lovely boat together and learning to do something that is meant to, for the most part, feel good. Although all things we do that are good are somewhat hard, aren't they? Sometimes really hard. But we're learning what it means to really love ourselves. I mean, I mouthed those words for so many years, but if you look someone in the eye and say, what does that really mean? I'm not sure we can talk about love from the head. I think we need to talk about it from the heart. Love yourself, take care of yourself. But what does that really mean? So the next 20, 40 years became dedicated to learning what that really meant to going back, to going forward, to staying stuck, and to all the other journeys in between that we go through on the way.
- [13:33]
Abby Wambach
So it wasn't the original definition of codependency, but it was kind of popularized within the groups, the wives. Right. Of the addicts, that there's a whole chapter in the big book about the wives. And they just noticed that their behavior, their lives, had become unmanageable.
- [13:51]
Melody Beattie
But they weren't using, they weren't substance abusing. No, they were just ticking off the addict or the alcoholic and reflecting their instability. And I'm. I'm going to, you know, be partial to genders, but I, I don't think that many women knew how not to be codependent. Back in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, we had been trained, we had been embedded in it, starting with the days that being married to a man was inherent to our survival as a species on this planet. So we're talking about overcoming a lot of past karma. Yeah.
- [14:28]
Abby Wambach
Your book, this is. Lays out so well at it. You know, it kind of began in these rooms where people were like, no, I'm. My life is. Why is my life wild? I'm not even drinking. I'm just married to a drinker. And their behavior has made me out of control. Then it expanded to people who maybe were loved in somebody who was mentally ill or loved somebody. Those types of people can be codependent. But as I'm reading your stuff, I'm like, but aren't all women in a patriarchy absolutely conditioned to be codependent.
- [15:01]
Melody Beattie
Of course they are.
- [15:02]
Abby Wambach
Right? So like, if the highest definition of a woman is to be selfless, isn't that literally the definition of codependency, selflessness, and only obsession with someone else's pleasing or controlling someone else?
- [15:18]
Melody Beattie
It's a little frightening if you think about it, but I really believe we've come a long way. We've come a long way to nurturing and growing that soul within each of us. I've heard this. I can't document it because my mother sometimes had a hard time with the truth, God bless her soul, but I believe she was the first woman in Minnesota that was allowed to get a mortgage and a property in her own name as a female.
- [15:46]
Glennon Doyle
Wow, that's a big deal.
- [15:48]
Melody Beattie
Yeah, it is. It is. So, I mean, while it's important to stay in now, it's important to not forget how we got here. And not much is guaranteed, is it?
- [16:01]
Abby Wambach
No.
- [16:02]
Glennon Doyle
Since I'm relatively new to this, I will represent the people who are listening right now and thinking, this is so fascinating, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Let's just do a little. You might be codependent, if gay. So as Melody said, the her definition in her pioneering work was one who is affected by someone else's behavior and is obsessed with controlling that behavior. So this is people who, they're always reacting, they're never acting. They are caretaking, they're in denial, repression, anger. They have low self esteem. And they also are folks who might feel more safe giving than you are secure in receiving. You feel responsible for someone else's wellbeing. You have a habit of saying yes when you mean no, these kinds of things. And recently I have become aware of this high functioning codependence, which is the one that I am in tune with. And I heard it on Terry Cole's podcast. But it's this idea of like, if you are the I got it person you are, I got it. I'm the one that everyone goes to. I am the one who, if something is urgent to someone else, it automatically becomes urgent to me. And you're doing that to the detriment of your self and your responsibility to yourself. So if any of those things ring.
- [17:36]
Melody Beattie
True to you, add one thing to that and do you often become passively angry at all these people?
- [17:45]
Glennon Doyle
Do you resent them if you become actively angry at these people?
- [17:49]
Melody Beattie
Slide right on down that scale, huh?
- [17:52]
Abby Wambach
Yeah, that's so true, Melody. So you're doing all the things, but then you're secretly seething that you have to do all the things.
- [17:59]
Melody Beattie
Yeah, we're constantly angry about what we're doing instead of realizing that, yes, there is a connection between us and what we do and then trying to intercept that connection and figure out what we're doing that we don't like. Who is the hardest person to control?
- [18:13]
Glennon Doyle
Self for each of us.
- [18:16]
Melody Beattie
So it's so much easier to try and control others. And at first we don't know them as well as we know ourselves, do we? But. And I would say that it's just not controlling other people. I would say that people with codependency issues, and I am included there, have control issues generally with life, especially if we came from chaotic situations where we could never relax and allow life to unfold. We couldn't trust ourselves because someone was gaslighting us. And I would say it takes a couple hours of my energy every day to focus on letting go of my control issues.
- [18:58]
Amanda Doyle
Oh my gosh.
- [18:58]
Abby Wambach
How do you do that?
- [19:00]
Melody Beattie
A lot of meditation. Whole lot of meditation. Yoga. I have a yoga routine that I'm able to do every day and actually in this podcast room, but by getting into my body, by getting out of the world around me and not sticking my finger in the light socket, of scrolling on my phone and just getting into who I am. Relaxing with myself, remembering what I enjoy, remembering all I have right now. It's so ungodly. Easy to see what we don't have.
- [19:34]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [19:45]
Amanda Doyle
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- [20:40]
Abby Wambach
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- [21:44]
Amanda Doyle
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- [22:55]
Abby Wambach
Can we talk about the phone? Because this is another thought I was having while I was reading your book. I don't answer texts. It's just something that I just decided. I cannot live my life just constantly responding to anybody who ever wants to reach out at any time. This upsets people, not the people in my life who've texted me, but like if I post something and it and people can see that I have like 300 unread tasks, it makes people wild. But my question Melanie is. Aren't we all setting up a system where we're completely codependent on emails and texts? Because if codependency is reacting instead of acting, if picking up our phones, and we're constantly waiting for the world for the anybody who tweets at us, for anybody who emails us, for anybody who texts us to tell us what they need from. From us, and then we live our entire lives just reacting to what everybody else needs from us or whatever ideas anybody else has from us. Aren't we all totally codependent upon the interwebs email?
- [23:59]
Melody Beattie
We are completely plugged in to the electrical circuits of almost every other human being on this planet. We pick up their anxiety. We pick up their fear. I mean, we're all, like, tapped into this big spider web of ethers. Of course we're going to have anxiety. And it gets. It gets to the point where sometimes if I'm not feeling enough anxiety, I'll scroll through my phone to start a little bit of it. So, yeah, I spent a lot of time working on staying at peace. I think that's so much better than being happy, because even being happy can be a distraction, but being peaceful really works for me.
- [24:42]
Amanda Doyle
That's amazing.
- [24:44]
Abby Wambach
Can you talk about the seeming to be in control? Like, sometimes the people who seem to be in the most control are out of control. The characteristic being, well, I've got it all under control. Or if you are trying to control another person's behavior, really that other person's in control of you?
- [25:04]
Melody Beattie
Absolutely. It's all an illusion. This whole, I can control you, you're controlling me. It's all an illusion, and it can crumble quite quickly and usually does. We can't control any human being. They are going to do what they want to do.
- [25:21]
Glennon Doyle
Can you speak to your second spiritual awakening? You say that your first spiritual awakening, you realized God was real, and your second spiritual awakening, you realized you were real. Can you. Can you speak to that moment? Because I think that exemplifies exactly what Glennon's going to right now.
- [25:41]
Melody Beattie
Okay. This happened fairly deeply into my marriage after I had been, you know, trying to convince myself I could deal with it. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but yet it was. And I had already told David, and we had two kids. I had two kids still in diapers. And I told him, you know, if you drink again, we are over. We're ended. And he went to Vegas, and I said, well, promise me you won't drink. He said, of course not. So we were scheduled to Hold a party at the home, at the home we had. And Minneapolis for a neighbor who had, who introduced me to Al Anon and had put herself through nursing school. And he was supposed to be home. And it was a big deal to me to be able to thank her. She had helped me. And he didn't show up. I hadn't heard from him. I started calling him on the phone the hotel would put me through, and it would just ring into nothing. And I know, you know, when you're a good codependent, you know, you don't really need confirmation, do you? But ultimately he did pick up the phone and I heard, you know, literally almost a glug, glug, glug. As you know, he poured liquid into either, into his throat, into something. And I went, oh, man, here we go again. But what changed in me? First it was a spiritual awakening I had when I realized I was as out of control with obsessing about him as I used to be about getting drugs. I was just, you know, I, I, I had all these people coming over for this party and all I could think about was the other person, what someone else was or wasn't doing. And for the first time since I married him, I saw myself. I thought, you know, he's out of control, but so am I. And that was the first part of my second spiritual awakening. The second part was I realized that I was real. God was real. I was real. I wasn't just an appendage to another human being. I was pretty much, I don't know about fully functioning, but getting there, a human. And that was revolutionary to me because first I had been my mom's pet, you know, and then I just turned into an object of reaction to David. And so it was the beginning of me. Well, it's the journey we're all on our entire lives. The journey of continually, every day, rediscovering ourselves, who we are, how we feel, what we want, what we don't like, what we have to offer in the world, taking our seat at the table, all the different. There's so many different phases in life we each go through. And to learn to love ourselves and not turn on ourselves when we go through these phases or when we don't do them perfectly. That's the kind of self love that we're now moving into, it being an absolute necessity to have for ourselves.
- [28:45]
Abby Wambach
It's interesting because it's almost like with codependency, the drug is control. It's not booze, it's not food, it's Worry, it's control. I think sometimes when you say control, people don't identify with it until you say help. Like if you are obsessed with helping someone else.
- [29:04]
Melody Beattie
They're still calling it helping, huh?
- [29:06]
Abby Wambach
I think so. I think so. I think I am so. I'm sure they are so helping, though. People obsessed with helping. Is helping just a sweet word for control? And what's the right kind of help? Some help's gotta be okay, right?
- [29:23]
Glennon Doyle
It's helping that no one asked for. In fact, they said, please don't do that here. I've come with my help.
- [29:30]
Melody Beattie
Yeah, they're making the Dracula sign instinct. Please don't bring your help.
- [29:36]
Abby Wambach
Okay, so that's the sign, huh? Got these bags of help.
- [29:39]
Glennon Doyle
They're like. They're like, we're closed. The big closed sign on the door. And you're like, just got a few more bags I'm going to bring in.
- [29:47]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. Of help, Unwanted help, the butting in, help that nobody asked for.
- [29:52]
Melody Beattie
But it's something much bigger than that, though, okay? We consistently and without fail love the other person more than we love ourselves. That's where we step into the pit of codependency.
- [30:09]
Glennon Doyle
And. And don't we also believe that we are not worthy of love because we seek out those with whom we can settle to be needed as opposed to be loved?
- [30:29]
Melody Beattie
We do. I mean, let's be very, very honest. Which one of us completely understands love what it is?
- [30:39]
Glennon Doyle
Not this guy.
- [30:41]
Melody Beattie
I mean, we're all pretty much on equal ground, I think. Stumbling. Stumbling through it alone. And yet. And this whole nonsense about the One. I mean, sometimes we have someone for right now, sometimes for a while, we walk with others on this journey. We gain. We give back. And if we're codependent sometimes, we keep repeating. We can get stuck in a little bit of a rut, but that's how we learn and grow. And in the end, it's all good. It's all okay. And we need to stop picking on ourselves for the way we've grown and changed. I was reading something the other day, and I talked about how we never could see a baby grow. Can we? I mean, we can't. We can't sit there all day and say, oh, she just grew. I've never seen a plant grow. I've come out the next day and I've seen that it's grown, but I can never see it when it's growing. I can never catch it. And the same holds true with us. I don't know if it's having gone through the 80s, 90s and 2000s. But we can get to expecting this parade for every time something important happens. But I found that the changes I make on the journey to self love are quieter. And they're the kind of changes I can't see any more than I can see a plant or a baby girl. But I can see the difference. You know, little by slowly, I can see the difference. When I pay attention and give awareness to loving myself as much as I love others. I'm not talking about to the exclusion of. I'm talking about as much as.
- [32:23]
Amanda Doyle
And so if you do love yourself as much as you're loving others, then. Then are you free of codependency or. Because I read your book over 20 years ago and one of the things that I have always struggled with codependency around is I have this huge heart. And I do agree that for a long time I didn't have the ability to love myself more than other people. But now I feel like I do love myself equally and sometimes more than other people. But I do still exhibit similar behaviors that I did then. Am I still codependent now? Do you heal from this, Travis?
- [33:08]
Melody Beattie
Are you. What of being human, being codependent?
- [33:12]
Amanda Doyle
Because I don't know the difference between codependency and love. Like. Like, that is my big question. Like marriage and. And my children. Raising children feels like a big pile of codependency. How do you.
- [33:27]
Melody Beattie
Well, it. Raising kids is one of the few legitimate circumstances that most closely resembles codependency. Only it's legitimate.
- [33:39]
Abby Wambach
Thank you. Thank you, Melody.
- [33:41]
Amanda Doyle
Okay, this makes me feel better because.
- [33:43]
Glennon Doyle
Because we got to that and we're like, we don't know how to make this work. This is where the theory really breaks down.
- [33:53]
Melody Beattie
I know. And it's our job to love that baby through life and into life, which is also our job with us.
- [34:01]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [34:04]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. It's interesting because in. In parenthood, the needing thing is real. The needing is real. But in adult relationships, I just keep coming back to the part where you said codependence settle for being needed. It's like I don't know what love is. I don't trust that I'm enough. So I create these situations where it seems like everyone's dependent on me to do things for them or be things for them because that legitimizes my worthiness.
- [34:42]
Melody Beattie
And I believe we all do. Who doesn't like being needed a little bit now and again? If nobody needs us, if we're not part of a community that would miss us, if we weren't there. But we can set up systems where the need is. I mean, it's a crazy, chaotic, pounding need that we've created of people leaning on us and us getting resentful. And why does this always happen to me? Well, because you keep doing it. It's not about pleasing anything or anyone outside of ourselves. Just ourselves, our own heart, our own peace, our own life. That's pretty much who we're here to please. It's not as easy said as done, though, because we have to get to know ourselves, don't we? To know what pleases us, what doesn't please us, what we like, what feels good, what doesn't feel good. And then when does it matter? Because there's a lot of times when, you know, life will break our boundaries. It will do things to us we didn't want it to do, we didn't plan on, and that aren't fair and aren't right. But we have a choice. And we can go back to our victim's story, or we can surrender. And we'll probably do some of both along the way. Life is messy. It's complicated. It doesn't happen neatly the way it does in books and movies. It's just much messier than that. And yet, when we give up our control and this thing we have with needing to know how everything is and how every detail will work out, when we're willing to say, I don't know, and step into the unknown, is when we find the magic we really do. That's when the magic happens.
- [36:23]
Abby Wambach
This doesn't make sense, but I know every single thing I struggle with in my entire life, all of my battles, the questions are many, but the answer is always let go of control in a million different ways. That's just always the answer. Can you talk to us about detachment? What is detachment?
- [36:41]
Melody Beattie
Probably the first thing we need to learn to do at the beginning of our recovery journey. And every day when we wake up, I. I'm a Gemini. I get really obsessive. I like to attach. I attach to ideas. I'm overly loyal. I will hang on to people, places, and things long after they've lost their usefulness. And so it's like trying to keep up with the way we attach fast enough to free ourselves so that we can live our lives. That. That is a worthwhile goal. And it's not easy.
- [37:25]
Amanda Doyle
You just solved my life right there. I'm a Gemini, too. Melody. Thank you for making me feel seen and heard.
- [37:41]
Abby Wambach
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- [38:47]
Amanda Doyle
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- [39:57]
Glennon Doyle
When I was thinking about detachment, I just assumed that detachment meant you put up this boundary. This person is not in your life. So basically again, my sense of control, like okay, I can just reorder everything and then these people are in and these people are out. But you say that the detachment isn't being detached from the person, it is detaching from the agony of the involvement with the person.
- [40:26]
Melody Beattie
I do. And I want to say something else too, that the detachment didn't just occur when I had that realization when I was on the phone. Because what I Did is I ended up telling him, you know, you got yourself to Vegas. If you want to get home, you'll get yourself home. I'm putting on a party. I'll see you later. That wasn't the moment I detached. I detached in the three years incrementally that occurred and the experiences I went through that occurred before that. I mean, it's a process. And those aren't just words. Everything is a process in life. And we can trust our process. We don't have to invalidate it. We don't have to call ourselves names. Although it's sometimes fun to rag on ourselves, isn't it? The beginnings and endings aren't as clear as they may appear to be.
- [41:17]
Glennon Doyle
I heard you say that you think that the changes that have happened in your life or the changes you've made in your life have all started two years before anyone could say, oh, there's a change. And that felt so comforting to me because it feels. Sometimes you're like, God, I'm just doing the same damn thing I'm always doing. And I'm not making but all those little bitty baby micro mental shifts, little.
- [41:51]
Melody Beattie
By slowly, little by slowly. And then in spring we go out and we go, oh, my garden's grown. And we need to do that with ourselves too. We need to also tell ourselves about the progress we've made. Being codependent isn't like I can get a little ashamed of it and. And I wrote the book, but it's not a bad thing. It's a human thing. It's a human thing people do. And we call it a dysfunction. But we call everything a dysfunction now, don't we?
- [42:22]
Abby Wambach
Do, yeah. I'm a recovering addict, so I am partial to us, But I always feel like all of these conditions or things that we call label as. What did you just call it? A dysfunction. Yeah, they're all just extreme forms of the human condition.
- [42:42]
Melody Beattie
Always.
- [42:43]
Abby Wambach
Like, I drank and did drugs and a really to numb. But everybody numbs in maybe less dramatic ways. A codependent who's really, really, really out of control with everybody in one way or another is dependent upon someone else's behavior.
- [42:58]
Melody Beattie
And it's all a spectrum.
- [43:00]
Abby Wambach
It's all a spectrum. Yeah.
- [43:02]
Melody Beattie
What I found when. When, and you had asked earlier about the progression of the awareness and consciousness of codependency is when I started talking openly about my experiences and especially growing up in an alcoholic home, how that had affected me. I found that all these people whose lives I envied and looked at in my neighborhood Growing up were dealing with the same issues. I wasn't that special. I was just the only one opening my app about it.
- [43:29]
Abby Wambach
Exactly. I feel that, Melody. I feel that. Can you talk to us about acceptance? Because Sister has been really thinking about this idea in your work.
- [43:40]
Glennon Doyle
I was fascinated by. You talk about Esther Olson's work where she calls grief the forgiveness process. And obviously the last stage of grief is acceptance. And it just made me think, is all of this our process of detaching, is it really all just about forgiving others for being who they are and including ourselves? Yes.
- [44:14]
Abby Wambach
Yes.
- [44:16]
Melody Beattie
And acceptance. I mean, we don't have to like it, we just have to accept it.
- [44:21]
Amanda Doyle
Damn.
- [44:22]
Abby Wambach
Yes.
- [44:23]
Glennon Doyle
Some people think, okay, if I'm going to accept this, I just have to adapt to it, or I just have to resign myself to it, or I have to just tolerate it. And that isn't what acceptance means.
- [44:34]
Melody Beattie
Surrender. Yeah, no, we're talking about surrender. A real Waving the white flag of surrender to the experience, to this new twist in our journey, to how this changes our lives. My life was blown up in 1990 when my son Shane went skiing on his 12th birthday and never came home. Disrupted my daughter's life. It disrupted my life. And it's one thing to say the word grief and to talk about the journey, but, I mean, my soul fell out of my heart and down onto the floor. And I spent the next 20 years trying to find more light and. And get through it and understand. But one of the first lessons I learned when, after moving to California with my daughter was I wasn't able to run into anyone on this planet who hadn't encountered some form of loss, some form of anguish. And, I mean, as I traveled around the world, really deep, painful, big things. That was the start of the grief club, that we're not being singled out, although sometimes it may feel like we are, but. And I. I don't know. They don't seem to tell us this stuff in kindergarten, do they? You know, carry. Carry an umbrella and a rock everywhere you go because life is going to be a little bit difficult. You're going to need to protect yourself often. No, we're not completely equipped for that.
- [46:08]
Abby Wambach
Melody, thank you for sharing that. It's really the ultimate acceptance, as opposed to codependence, is not necessarily a singular person that we're trying to control, but life itself.
- [46:23]
Melody Beattie
Yeah, we don't want to get banged up anymore.
- [46:25]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [46:26]
Melody Beattie
It's not because we're bad. It's because we've already been through enough. We think, yes. We just don't want to hurt anymore and, and who can blame us?
- [46:36]
Abby Wambach
But it's going to happen no matter what. Whether we're in control mode or in surrender mode, life is coming at us anyway.
- [46:43]
Melody Beattie
I have learned that surrender is one of the few things in life that hurts most before I do it every time out of the box. It's my resistance. It's my resistance when I'm in a state of resistance to a situation, to an emotion, to anything in life. When I'm resisting it, I'm putting myself through pain.
- [47:03]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. It's not the surrender that hurts, it's the considering surrender that hurts.
- [47:08]
Melody Beattie
Yes. Contemplating the fact that we're not really in control.
- [47:15]
Glennon Doyle
And that is the grief. Right. Because if we get to surrender, which is acknowledging that we accept our circumstances, including ourselves and including the people in our lives and our lives themselves as they are in this moment, the grief is that we can't make ourselves and our lives and other people any different than they are in this moment.
- [47:46]
Abby Wambach
The good news is we're not God. The bad news is we're not God.
- [47:52]
Melody Beattie
It's life is a duality, isn't it? Yeah, it really is a duality. There's no easy formula for anything in life that I found that actually works.
- [48:04]
Amanda Doyle
How do you approach the idea of every single day needing to surrender? Because there's so many of us, myself included, I want to do it once and be done with it. How do you approach feeling okay with the idea that every day because it's not a forever finished, done thing.
- [48:27]
Abby Wambach
Every time you get on a website and it says, do you accept the cookies? Is there anywhere that I can just accept all the cookies for once and just.
- [48:36]
Melody Beattie
Yes, it can be a bit much at times. Especially over the last, I would say 15 years, it all has been a bit much. But we're getting challenged at such deep levels about long held beliefs about right, about wrong, about who we are, about how to be in the world. If there's another thing I would encourage people to do and instead of telling ourselves stop controlling, we can start allowing life.
- [49:10]
Abby Wambach
Allowing.
- [49:11]
Melody Beattie
We can allow life to happen. We can allow ourselves to be and to happen as well. We, we can gentle up a little bit because, you know, it's just been batshit crazy for quite a few years now, hasn't it? Really crazy and really intense. And even going on a cell phone, every time I start to scroll, it feels like sticking my finger in a light switch.
- [49:33]
Abby Wambach
Yes, it does.
- [49:34]
Melody Beattie
You know, it just aggravates everything. So the next challenge is to Find doing things that calm us, that help us find our inner peace, and that nurture the light each of us have inside of ourselves to share with the world. We don't have to change the whole world. We don't have to buy out the whole table. We just need to quietly take our seat at it and let our light shine, you know, and to do that, I find meditation absolutely critical.
- [50:06]
Glennon Doyle
Yep.
- [50:07]
Melody Beattie
Right now I don't know how to get through any day successfully without meditating. The anxiety and the energy is so intense. And I live in a very natural, beautiful place. But it's not about where we live. It's about our home inside of ourselves and how that home feels to be in. And if we're comfortable in that home.
- [50:26]
Abby Wambach
And returning to the place that is the only place you can control. I mean, I think about this all the time because of anxiety. And it feels to me like the reason why yoga and meditation help me are because then my awareness is returned to the place that I can control and that is safe. When you're scrolling or when you're even talking to someone else or when you're looking outside at the world, your awareness is on everybody else and what you can't control. Like, that's why we're all anxious when we're watching the news. We're looking at this carnage and our awareness is on something that we can do nothing about.
- [51:01]
Melody Beattie
We move out of home. We move out of home. And that's what so much of life is about, is about getting us comfortable. And how can I learn to make myself comfortable in my own home? No, I can't control everything in my environment, but I can make choices that lead to an optimum environment in my home inside of myself for me to live in.
- [51:22]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [51:24]
Glennon Doyle
And moving out of our home is in that way that you just described, but it's also in the way of understanding that a lot of these very well ingrained strategies and ways of seeing the world that are making us crazy now are there because we've never moved out of our metaphorical home. Because a lot of those strategies were strategies that were letting us survive when we couldn't make that choice for ourselves. You talk a lot about how a lot of the things that you had to move away from later were the very things that kept you safe earlier.
- [52:17]
Melody Beattie
Right. Well, and we're all a bit like that, aren't we? We find one circle and it works. And if we're growing, we outgrow it or another person outgrows it and it stops working. But we with Our loyal, ever loyal codependents hearts will remain attached in that and to that and feeling guilty should we happen to neglect it for many years to come after, after it doesn't really work for us anymore or the other people. It's just like I have to keep at this, don't I? Not necessarily. We can't discount the huge changes going on around us now either. We're going through so many spiritual global changes, transformation, upheaval. And just when it lands, it's like a butterfly. It flitters again and flies away. It never, it hasn't landed, it hasn't stopped changing for years. And so, so of all the times I've lived through, I've never felt the challenge to meditate and create a peaceful home in myself as I have now, as I have recently. That doesn't come natural. I don't know that it comes natural to anyone without a practice.
- [53:26]
Abby Wambach
Because we think of detachment as not caring or saying that's enough or letting go. But really to me it has to do with the idea of just not depending on solid ground like that Everything is like riding a wave as opposed to trying to find somewhere to stand still. Because I feel like I'm always trying to find solid ground, like somewhere to stand still. And life is just constantly requiring. It's constantly movement, movement and requiring me to not be rigid but to just be agile.
- [54:04]
Melody Beattie
That's such a great point. I think being flexible right now, being flexible in our ideation and our opinions in what we expect of life every day, we need to be so flexible, otherwise we're going to run into that resistance and then that need. I mean, the more we can actively be flexible every day, the better. Not flexible with our values necessarily, but flexible enough to go with the flow of life as it shifts and changes at astronomical levels. And I think it's going to keep doing it for a little bit longer.
- [54:47]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. Forever.
- [54:48]
Melody Beattie
Yeah.
- [54:49]
Abby Wambach
I really relate to the idea of strong opinions loosely held. Right. Like I come into every situation knowing exactly how I feel about the thing and then I just try and then I'm just like, huh, shift, shift based on what the other person says.
- [55:06]
Glennon Doyle
Right.
- [55:07]
Abby Wambach
So it doesn't mean you don't. You can't be a passionate person.
- [55:10]
Melody Beattie
Absolutely. We can be passionate as long as we're open. Sometimes we can just be so sure we know things and we've maybe reached a certain level of understanding, but we don't necessarily really know it yet and we're about to learn. I mean, life can be a very exciting journey and I Don't like to just throw that out because it can get very cliche. Ish. But it can be even now, as we're challenged, as we're challenged, it's an exciting time for each of us to be alive. It is a challenging time. It's going to challenge us at levels we've not been challenged before.
- [55:45]
Abby Wambach
Yay.
- [55:49]
Melody Beattie
And the reason we've been getting all these superpowers from Recovery since the 1970s is not so we can keep them on our vanity in our bedroom and use them when we want to do a powder puff on our face. It's because we're really going to need them. We're going to need these personal skills. It's not all been about nonsense. It's happening for reasons. So do yourself another favor. We all do. Keep track of your own growth. Don't just go out in that garden and look at how that plant has grown every year. Go out every month or every time you do something or you feel good about something you've done. You know, a little pat on the back doesn't hurt, does it? We can, you know, humbly keep trying, and we can humbly feel good about the good we've done. Keeping in mind that's just my opinion.
- [56:43]
Abby Wambach
Today, we like it. We live to please. Humility. We. We just want you to like us. And if there's anything we can do.
- [56:52]
Melody Beattie
To help you, I'll let you know.
- [56:55]
Abby Wambach
Okay. Thank you. Thanks.
- [56:56]
Melody Beattie
I will let you know. Until then, just please keep being yourselves.
- [56:58]
Amanda Doyle
Oh, yeah.
- [57:00]
Abby Wambach
So this is. We can do hard things. Besides dealing with the world and all the anxiety in the world, what is the thing that you are working on right now in. In terms of this, that you're trying not to control, that you're trying to live from your home with?
- [57:17]
Melody Beattie
I think that would take more time than we have in this podcast. There's another book and follow this one, and it's called Living by Spirit. I don't want to mix the lessons up too much, but waking up at age 70 and having to start completely over again as a single woman in LA and 70 years old. So there's been a few challenges with that, you know, concerning surrender, concerning acceptance, and then starting over again. I don't know if y'all have had to do it. I'm guessing the answer is yes. I never thought I'd have to do it again at age 70. And I would say for the most part, most days, I'm pretty chill with it. I'm pretty good with it. Although sometimes I do feel like I've been hogtied and I'm just. Or trying to get out of the ropes. I would say that is the biggest challenge I'm facing right now. Waking up alive, being told that you have life, a lot, potentially, of life Left at age 70 in LA has been the biggest challenge that I've had to face.
- [58:27]
Abby Wambach
That's amazing. I gotta tell you. I had strong opinions. Loosely held. I thought we were gonna come on this interview and you were gonna just give us a bunch of lists and reasons. We were codependent. And instead, I feel like. I just feel like you gave us just some peace.
- [58:44]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [58:45]
Abby Wambach
I've just loved this hour with you. I feel more in my home than I did when we started.
- [58:53]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [58:54]
Abby Wambach
I just think you're wonderful, but. But I also think I'm wonderful, Melody. And I'm not focusing on the fact that you're wonderful, but that I'm.
- [59:00]
Melody Beattie
I think you're wonderful, too. I think the group is wonderful. And it's been my pleasure to share light with you.
- [59:06]
Glennon Doyle
Can I just ask one teeny, tiny question for those of us for whom we hear you on the returning home? Good idea. Great. Let's do that. What if our home is, like, a bit disorderly, cluttered? Their home is under construction. It's just. It's kind of chaotic in there. So we're not totally sure that returning home is going to feel as comforting as it seems to be for y'all. So do you have any suggestions on that?
- [59:39]
Melody Beattie
That's pretty much how my home felt when I realized I had to start over at age 70. I. I wasn't gangbusters for it, and it wasn't necessarily pleasant, but it was surrendering to and going through the process of getting comfortable with it. And sometimes it felt like I was being burned with lasers, you know, on my brain, on my spirit, on my emotions. It's not always that painful, but. But sometimes it is. Sometimes it can be brutal. Life can actually be brutal in moments. But we get through them, don't we? The storms do pass. We get through them. And if we're looking, we'll see that we've grown, we've changed, and we will feel a little more confident in our ability to surrender to and trust life.
- [60:30]
Abby Wambach
Amen.
- [60:32]
Glennon Doyle
So you don't wait until it's orderly to go home. You just go home and work on it until start cleaning it and straightening.
- [60:39]
Melody Beattie
It up best you can.
- [60:41]
Abby Wambach
Because there's also a place like, I'm not 70, I'm 46, but I'm just starting this Whole new freaking level of therapy that I just didn't work things out before. So I'm back to the damn work. And I have never felt more like it's more important to get back to home. But there's different levels of home. You go home and you're in your scattered, horrible place where all the memories and the thing are coming, but then there's like a sinking to like this little safe room that was never affected by any of the ghosts in the house. There is a place to get to that is not the rest of the cluttered house. Like this little room.
- [61:25]
Melody Beattie
It is. When I started redoing my life at age 70, I also started remodeling my home. And remodeling your home while you're living in it is like making the bed while you're in it. It is just terrible. Horrendously uncomfortable. And yet I was that uncomfortable within myself. And I had to be patient. I had. The most important thing I had to realize is if I couldn't be happy and grateful for everything in my life right now, I would not be happy or grateful. When those things came along, they would be like something else that was just passing by. We make ourselves happy at home or not, or we accept it when we're not. Whoever is happy all the time when they're home? No one.
- [62:13]
Amanda Doyle
No, I mean, on behalf of my 20 year old self, I'm now 42. I just want to say thank you so much for giving me the language back then. To know that I had a life, a life's work ahead of me. And I think that. I don't know if you meant this at the time, but it's really a feminist manifesto of. Of women returning to their homes. And I just. On behalf of all women everywhere, I want to thank you for your work and sharing this hour with us.
- [62:43]
Abby Wambach
Every woman needs a room in her own home of her damn own.
- [62:47]
Melody Beattie
Well, we were told we didn't have homes. Yeah, but we could clean up their homes and keep them nice and cozy. I know, I know, I know. But the good news is we're being evolved. We're being changed. We're growing.
- [63:04]
Amanda Doyle
That's right.
- [63:05]
Abby Wambach
We love you, Melody.
- [63:07]
Glennon Doyle
Give your daughter a big hug from us.
- [63:09]
Abby Wambach
Yes, please.
- [63:11]
Melody Beattie
All right, I will. She'll be thrilled.
- [63:13]
Amanda Doyle
What's her name?
- [63:14]
Melody Beattie
Nicole.
- [63:15]
Amanda Doyle
Hi, Nicole.
- [63:16]
Abby Wambach
Hi, Nicole. For the rest of you pod squatters, just find some time to get home this week. Yeah, we love you so much. See you next week. Bye. I loved that so much.
- [63:29]
Amanda Doyle
You're incredible.
- [63:30]
Abby Wambach
Oh, my gosh.
- [63:31]
Glennon Doyle
You know what? It's just like this, this thing where you know you have a really good friend when you don't clean up your house before they come in.
- [63:40]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. Oh, but to be like the best.
- [63:43]
Glennon Doyle
Friend to you, you don't need to clean up your own house before you go home.
- [63:48]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [63:55]
Melody Beattie
We mind ourselves so much. Just continually, constantly ourselves. It was my pleasure. I hope we meet this way again.
- [64:10]
Abby Wambach
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the POD helps you because you'll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on Follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our Executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner and Bill Schultz.
- [65:18]
Glennon Doyle
SA.