Spiritual abuse and codependence, part 11: My part

I compiled a list of sixty red flags about Sage’s behavior the day I first walked away. It has taken me several years to put together a shorter yet more comprehensive list of red flags about my own behavior. Codependence/relationship addiction is a coping mechanism I use to escape responsibility for my choices and blame others for my behavior, while simultaneously taking complete responsibility for the behavior of others. Those paradoxical illusions kept me from seeing my choices: I believed that if I were not a completely helpless victim, I would be responsible for causing the abuse I suffered. When there are no working boundaries, it’s hard to understand where the responsibility lies in a given instance. When everything is suffused with addictive shame, it’s even harder.

I did not deserve to be spiritually and emotionally abused by Sage. I did walk into the situation despite my own concerns and I did stay in it and return to it. I did so because I did not see that I had many choices. I acted out of learned helplessness. For most of the time I spent with Sage, I knew something was wrong and I wanted out. I couldn’t see how I could get out, how I could change, how I could protect myself.

It took the disintegration of another, closer relationship with an addict to make me see I was acting out of codependence and that I had to change if I wanted to stop repeating an endless cycle of misplaced trust followed inevitably by betrayal.

These are my red flags about myself:

1. I did not listen to my own better judgment or to the quiet inner voice of my Source, both of which warned me about Sage.

2. I confided in and became professionally and emotionally dependent on someone whom I had no reason to trust and had some reason to distrust.

3. I rebounded from a devastating experience (the rejection by my pre-Sage spiritual community) into a connection with Sage without going through the necessary grief work and without considering what responsibility, if any, I might have had for the situation and its outcome.

4. I chose false comfort over uncomfortable and healing truth.

5. I did not require the kind of transparency I was asked to give.

6. I was aware of red flags about Sage at every point, but did not use that knowledge to protect myself.

7. I did not examine my own behavior toward and around Sage.

8. I became dependent upon Sage for my self-image and self-worth: I made Sage my Higher Power.

9. I spent money I could not afford at Sage’s urging.

10. I accepted emotional and spiritual abuse and came back for more, denying that a pattern was becoming clear.

11. I did not listen to the concerns of others about my relationship with Sage.

12. I did not know how to set boundaries, protect myself, or identify emotional and spiritual abuse.

13. I did not feel free to say what I was thinking without punishment.

14. I resented Sage but felt unable to take action.

15. I acted out of fear instead of out of integrity.

16. As I became aware of the problems, I chose denial and rationalization over perception and action.

17. I did not go for help, although I knew help was available, until after I broke off contact with Sage.

I recognize that I was, in many ways, more like Sage than I wanted to admit. I was hypocritical, ambitious, refusing responsibility, playing power games, and above all, resentful, just as Sage was. This does not take away Sage’s responsibility for Sage’s behavior, but it does give me responsibility for mine and mine alone.

When I look at the self I was then, I see the portrait of someone unready for leadership and badly in need of help and healing. I now realize that if I had been able to get a (not very valuable) leadership credential from Sage, I might well have perpetuated the very emotional and spiritual abuse I suffered.

I understand now that no healthy leader would have taken me on as a student when I met Sage, and that I was not interested in what a healthy leader would have had to say.

I am not grateful to Sage for what I have learned from our betrayal bond: I do not believe it is ever necessary to thank others for hurting us. I am very grateful for the good my Higher Power has brought out of it. I am grateful for the help I have received from sound, respectful therapists and spiritual guides and from 12-step literature and groups. I hope Sage can heal, too. I do not expect to be part of that healing. It would be dangerous for me to try to help Sage.

12-step groups speak of experience, strength, and hope. I have written mainly about my experience with Sage. My strength comes from the ability to write this document several years ago and several years after the events I describe, then being able to work on it in therapy and in 12-step groups and see it in different ways. My hope comes from the fact that I am now able to see and to make different choices in my life every day and I can see my life changing, one day at a time.