LIVING MY LIFE THROUGH SOMEONE ELSE

I hate living by circumstance. But, this is how I have lived most of my life. Up down up down up down up down. Whom can I please to make me feel accepted? Up down up down up down up down yada yada yada.

Over my life span I have perfected my trade in pleasing people just to make me feel good and feel worthy. I learned very early on, all the intricacies in playing against different personalities by observing and watching what makes one person happy and what makes them not. I deliberately became what the other(s) wanted me to be, whether with my parents, relationships, friends, co-workers, etc. I certainly knew what I was doing and would even question myself at times why I was living my life through someone else? A lot of the time I felt other people’s lives were much more interesting and pleasant than mine! If you are honest and share this same struggle, you can agree that it takes a whole hell of a lot of mental and play acting effort, to keep this charade up. The majority of the time I was successful in pulling off “pretend friendships” a/k/a co-dependency, until the Lord had enough of that and once again "moved the person(s)" out of my life. Only to have the cycle start over again with me, finding someone new. It is a miserable existence, which sucks the life out of you!!!

In my journey to freedom, this is just another branch extension of mine that I am working on conquering! When you have been addicted to something for such a long time and it is taken away from you, there comes painful withdrawals. My "la-la land" runs along side with this and gets tangled up. Which in turns creates false perceptions at times. I can honestly say that the Lord has been preparing me for close to two years with this particular part of my journey. Thank God this element of it has been slow. As this is a tremendous stronghold for me, and for it to be ripped away from me in one sitting would certainly have landed me somewhere not too pleasant.

Many of us learn early in life that we need to earn our sense of value.
For some, value was earned by entertaining people with our clowning acts.
For others, value came from taking care of everyone else. And for others,
value was derived from achieving success of some kind. But often there is
no way to entertain enough, take care enough or achieve enough to meet our needs for approval. No matter how compulsively we entertain, or care or work, we still are not able to feel valued. These substitutes do not meet the deepest longings of our heart. In addition we run the risk of becomingv compulsively attached to these substitutes because we fear that the sense of value which they offer is our only hope of finding peace.

The longing to experience ourselves as valued is a fundamental human need.
The need is really a need to be heard, seen, enjoyed and loved by others
for who we are rather than for what we do. No amount of earned approval
can meet this need. We long to know that we have value simply because we exist. This kind of value cannot be earned, it must be received as a gift.

Jesus says to us "you are valuable. Simply because you are, you are valuable". The birds of the air are God's creatures. God sees them and cares for them. God made them and God enjoys them. They are valuable. You, too, are God's creation, made and known by God. God sees you and cares for you. You are of great value.

As we grow in our awareness that our true value is a gift already given to us by God, we can begin to let go of the tight hold we have on our substitute strategies for achieving worth.

Copyright 1991 Dale and Juanita Ryan