Adulting IS Hard

They say that adulting is hard.  Who is 'they', anyway?  I don't know if we'll ever know the answer to that, but it still stands that being an adult is hard.  What does it mean to be an adult?  Well, beyond the physical actions that you see adults engaging in such as working a full-time job, paying bills and balancing a budget/checkbook, there's an emotional aspect that comes with being an adult as well. Like????

Well, generally adults don't throw temper tantrums.  (I'm looking at you, Occupy Movement.)  There's this little thing called self-control and as an adult, if you want to be successful, you have to build that self-control muscle.  I could even go so far as to say it's called self-control for a reason and not 'others-control' because you are the only person on this planet that you can control.  Remember that.  Others will do things you don't like, but it's up to you to handle your own emotions and deal with them wisely.  That looks different for everyone I'm sure, however, if  you want to live at the mercy of others, by all means, ride every wave of feelings that comes into your head.  Let me know how that works for you.

You are responsible for your own happiness.  Period.  There isn't one other person on this planet now or previously that is or was responsible for your happiness.  No one can make you 'feel' a certain way.  You allow it or you don't.  So, you have to be careful on that front, too.  You could say that your partner or spouse makes you 'feel so good'.  That's only because you accept their behavior and process it as good.  On the other hand, you could say that your partner or spouse makes you 'feel so bad'.  That's because of the way you process it.  Now, there are people out there with abusive behaviors, but that's a different topic for a different day.

Adulting means that we have needs and we are aware of who can meet them.  We have emotional needs, physical needs, and spiritual needs.  Some of those needs others can meet, some of which we have to meet on our own.  For example, you feed yourself, right?  You shop for, prepare and cook food to physically feed your body.  However, you cannot hug yourself.  Only others can do that.  Some emotional needs that we have can be met by ourselves.  There's a constant internal conversation that we have with ourselves.  I think that is where we have the ability to turn it around for ourselves emotionally.  Training the internal voice and tweaking the conversation that we hold is major.  In the spiritual department, we all have a need for God.  There's a God shaped hole in our hearts and minds that only God can fill.  When we realize that we have to take up our cross and work out our OWN salvation, that's when we can start to work with God to fill that hole.  Nobody here on earth can do that for you.  Pastors and priests and clergy can point you to God, but they are not God themselves.  

Here's where I think a lot of relationships go bad.  Marriages, boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, parent/child relationships, etc. all start to fail when we start to put the needs that we can meet for ourselves and the ones that only God can meet onto others.  Doing so is a recipe for disaster.  These become an unrealistic expectation in a relationship, which furthers the recipe for disaster.  There are other expectations that become unrealistic as well; unspoken expectations.  When we don't ask for what we want or need, things can definitely start to go sideways.  There are also some caveats to this scenario, but that is also another topic for another day.

If you're in a relationship with any of these tendencies on your part or the part of your partner, it's not too late to change these.  It's going to take some work, but depending on the situation, it might be worth it to put in the work to reverse these bad behaviors.  Again, you are responsible for YOUR behaviors and working on yourself.  You should not accept responsibility for anyone else even if they insist that you are the person solely responsible for their happiness.  That's a red flag and it might be time to reevaluate things.  

So, yes, being an adult is hard because not only do you have the physical, outward responsibilities to take care of, you have the responsibility to keep your emotional health in check, and only YOU can do that for yourself.  I feel like Smokey the Bear, "Only YOU can prevent forest fires.", except it should be a different tagline of, "Only YOU can prevent emotional self-destruction.".  Or something.  

  

What's Love Got to Do With...Codependency?

Codependency is defined by Mental Health America as, "an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as “relationship addiction” because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive."

Codependency is not an 'issue' that often takes center stage in the likes of commercials, movies, music, television shows or the typical 1980's PSA movement.  When we hear the word 'codependent', we automatically think of alcoholics or drug addicts and the relationships they find themselves in with their substance of choice.  Or it refers to the spouse or family member of an addict.  There is codependency without alcohol or drugs involved.  People can find themselves addicted to a relationship; a husband and wife, or a child/parent relationship.  Not only has it not been something that's been discussed, I think that subliminally society has perpetuated it on some level.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I think that there are lots of underlying messages in songs, movies, commercials, and social media, all of which parents have been or should be concerned about and lots of those issues have been addressed in some way or another.  I remember as a kid passing through the living room while Tipper Gore droned on in the background about labeling cassette tapes for explicit language in music. Movies and reality television shows often showcase issues like pregnancy out of wedlock (I'm looking at you, Candice Bergen of Murphy Brown), abortion, drug use, smoking, etc to desensitize the public to these issues, even though some of them are wrong in the eyes of God.

Commercials also obviously work their way into our psyche with messages about products and foods and clothes.  "Buy this and you'll look beautiful."  "Eat this and lose weight."  Music also plays a HUGE role in shaping who we are.  The messages they send out are so subliminal, though, that sometimes we don't even know that our minds are being shaped or molded by what we're listening to.

My journey to become more healthy mentally started about five years ago.  I was first introduced to the word codependency in a very real way when I discovered that my husband and I were in a codependent relationship.  Neither one of us has substance abuse issues, but we have self-esteem issues.  That was a light bulb moment for me.  I wish I had paid a bit more attention to it then, but my eyes had definitely been opened.  As it says on the Mental Health America website, the first step is to understand the problem.  Then you'll need to educate yourself on the issue so that you can 'unlearn' those behaviors.

As I've been going through this journey of self-discovery and learning to implement more of the healthy behaviors I've learned in therapy, I started to wonder if there could have been more of an accurate message in the depiction of love and marriage interwoven into the movies and messages and songs produced over the years.  What we hear on the radio at times and see in the movies is completely unrealistic.  We start off as little girls dreaming of Prince Charming when we watch Cinderella and Snow White.  We start to believe that a man is going to rescue us and take care of us for the rest of our lives.  It's not just movies for children that perpetuate this idea; adult movies do the same thing.

We hear on the movies lines like, "You complete me."  Sounds good and all the females in the audience swoon, but I'm here to remind you, that's not love.  That's called codependency.  When you rely on others, or someone relies on you, for their identity of their sense of worth, you've got a problem.  This is something I wish was discussed more often in Hollywood circles, but sadly, that doesn't sell tickets, so, yeah.

So besides this Jesus blog being a place to share my own personal faith and my journey to being a better version of Kelly, I would love for this to be a place for practical application as well.  If  any of what I've written about sounds familiar to you, but you aren't sure if you're in a codependent relationship, click this link here to read through a list of qualifiers of what constitutes one.  If you are in an unhealthy relationship, if you are contemplating marriage, (or a divorce), I would encourage you to see a licensed marriage counselor or an individual counselor to get the help you need.  Please also remember that there's absolutely no shame in reaching out for help.