Choosing to take responsibility for ourselves and for the consequences our choices create looks like hard work, but it really sets us free.
Melody BeattieRead
Codependents are reactionaries. They overreact. They under-react. But rarely do they act. They react to the problems, pains, lives, and behaviors of others. They react to their own problems, pains, and behaviors.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Codependents often focus on the reactions to their own and others' issues, instead of taking proactive actions.
This quote by Melody Beattie highlights the behavior of codependents, who tend to react excessively or insufficiently to various situations. Rather than taking control of their lives and making intentional choices, they are often caught in a cycle of responding to the needs and problems of others and their own struggles, which hinders their ability to act decisively.
Themes
CodependencyReactionBehaviorProactiveRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal growth, someone might use this quote to illustrate the challenges faced by codependents.
More from Melody Beattie
All quotes βToday, I will focus on what's right about me. I will give myself some of the caring I've extended to the world.
Melody BeattieRead
Letting go means we stop trying to force outcomes and make people behave. It means we give up resistance to the way things are, for the moment. It means we stop trying to do the impossible-controlling that which we cannot-and instead, focus on what is possible-which usually means taking care of ourselves. And we do this in gentleness, kindness, and love, as much as possible.
Melody BeattieRead
What do you do when life blindfolds you and spins you around? We think it's our fault, that we're to blame, when really we should be focused on being gentle with ourselves.
Melody BeattieRead
I didn't have to scramble up and down the ladder from despair to euphoria anymore, trying to convince myself that life was either painful and terrible or joyous and wonderful. The simple truth was that life was both. p 214
Melody BeattieRead
I want people who have received a diagnosis of Hepatitis C to know that they didn't just receive a death sentence. They do have options, even if the person who gave them their diagnosis isn't aware of all of them. The path they choose doesn't have to be one of desperation.
Melody BeattieRead
Similar quotes
I am not sure that the inner world of teenage girls has changed. What's most important to kids today is still the same stuff.
Judy BlumeRead
Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledores, Dumbledores from the moment you started hunting down my mother.
J. K. RowlingRead
Our country has a painful history of mistrust between police departments and people of color. The overuse of stop-and-frisk has made those divisions much worse.
Bill De BlasioRead
It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries - to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.
Charlotte BronteRead
A lot of times, we talk about black people as if being black is all they are. They get up, go to work... and are as complex and interesting and variable as any other group of people. We don't often capture that or write about it.
Margot Lee ShetterlyRead
Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.
Wallace StegnerRead