Co-Dependents Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women whose common purpose is to develop healthy relationships.
The only requirement for membership is a desire for healthy and loving relationships. We gather together to support and share with each other in a journey of self discovery, learning to love the self. Living the programme allows us to become increasingly honest with ourselves about our personal histories and our own co-dependent behaviours.
We rely on The Twelve Steps and The Twelve Traditions for knowledge and wisdom. These are the principles of our programme and guides to developing honest and fulfilling relationships with ourselves and others. In CoDA we learn to build a bridge to a higher power of our own understanding, and we allow others the same privilege.
This renewal process is a gift of healing for us. By actively working the programme of Co-Dependents Anonymous, we can each realise a new joy, acceptance and serenity in our lives.
Most of us have been searching for ways to overcome the dilemmas of the conflicts in our relationships and our childhoods. Many of us were raised in families where addictions existed – some of us were not. In either case, we have found in each of our lives that codependence is a most deeply-rooted, compulsive behaviour, and that it is born out of our sometimes moderately, sometimes extremely dysfunctional family systems. We have all experienced the painful trauma of the emptiness of our childhood and relationships throughout our lives.
We attempted to use others – our mates, friends, and even our children, as our sole source of identity, value and wellbeing, and as a way of trying to restore within us the emotional losses from our childhoods. Our histories may include other powerful addictions, which at times we have used to cope with our codependence.
We have all learned to survive life, but in CoDA we are learning to live life. Through applying the Twelve Steps and the principles found in CoDA to our daily lives and relationships – both past and present – we can experience a new freedom from our self-defeating lifestyles. It is an individual growth process. Each of us is growing at our own pace and will continue to do so as we remain open to God’s will for us on a daily basis. Our sharing is our way of identification and helps us to free the emotional bonds of our past and the compulsive control of our present.
No matter how traumatic your past or despairing your present may seem, there is hope for a new day in the program of Co-Dependents Anonymous. No longer do you need to rely on others as a power greater than yourself. May you instead find here a new strength within to be that which God intended – precious and free.