How do you feel when you receive a compliment or a gift? Do you ever ask for a favor or help, or would you rather do it yourself? These are just small examples of why you may not be getting the love you want in a relationship. In healthy relationships there is a daily exchange of love, help, and cooperation.

Codependency

Codependents, find it hard to receive. They’re more comfortable giving or even self-sacrificing than receiving. Yet they wonder why they’re in relationships with “selfish” or narcissistic partners. …

Twenty years ago, I’d been three years on crutches and unable to walk, not knowing if I ever would again. Gazing at my closet floor, I thought…

Too many shoes, all laden with dust. There they sit, frozen in time from when they last felt the warm moist aliveness of human tissue breathing inside their leather skins — leather that has begun to harden and crack.

I’d long needed a shoe organizer. I bought a metal shoe rack, but it helped little. The tennis shoes have no heels to hold them in place. The red, the black, the white and…

To some degree, most of us desire to improve our social status and acceptance, but narcissists feel compelled to. A recent study concluded that it’s their constant concern. More than most people, they look to others for “self-definition and self-esteem regulation; inflated or deflated self-appraisal…,” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Their self-esteem fluctuates between exaggerated inflation and deflation.

Narcissists are preoccupied with managing their self-esteem, image, appearance, and social rank. They see the world and themselves in terms of hierarchical status, where they’re superior and others are inferior. In their mind, their presumed superiority entitles…

Across town is an unassuming storefront in a corner shopping mall. A couple of male Latinos hang around having a smoke. They step aside as you enter, looking you all over. The door opens to another world … Floridita.

Mirrors on three walls reflect the band—the piano, congas, drums, cowbells, horns. The music irresistibly pulls you in, and a rhythmic wave pulsates throughout your body. Every cell in your body is smiling, yes, yes.

Salseros are already moving on the dance floor. Hips gliding effortlessly in Cuban motion. Couples swaying and twirling. …

Codependency is more than a relationship problem. It wounds our psyche and individual development. Make no mistake. It’s to no fault of our own. The wounds of codependency is adaptive and helped us survive growing up in a dysfunctional family system. But that adjustment cost us our individuality, authenticity, and our future quality of life. The beliefs and behaviors we learned then led to problems in adult relationships. In fact, they tend to recreate the dysfunctional family of our past.

Wounds of Codependency Begin in Childhood

Codependency is both learned and passed on generationally. It starts in childhood, usually because of codependent parenting, including being raised…