trigger happy?

finally having some silent time this past week has allowed my brain to percolate through a lot of different areas, i'm kind of on blog fodder overload and choosing where to start to process any of this online becomes difficult because it's all really linked together (in my brain) but may not make sense when i finally put it on paper, so to speak.

one of the most successful stepping stones i've found in my recovery is identifying my triggers, what is the bell that rings that causes pavolov's dog to salivate?? compulsive behavior is not as unattached (at least originally in my thinking) to surroundings as many may think. i know for myself loneliness and shame are two huge triggers for me and i really have to change loneliness to solitude to keep myself on track.

figuring out my codependency triggers has not been as easy for me. i finally clued into one yesterday. liam is a self-admitted workaholic and one of the less known id's of that addiction is retreat mode. at times the workaholic gets sick of the rat race and withdraws, sometimes to lick wounds, sometimes to punish others, sometimes because of burnout or exhaustion. the push from august to thanksgiving left liam pretty drained, it was intense. i only realized yesterday that he is in 'withdraw' mode. unidentified this causes alarm bells to ring in my codependent state. this time i was able to identify them and talk with liam about it. he agreed that he was in shutdown mode and understanding that helped him through this process too.

it was a missing piece to the puzzle that both of us really needed. so, no, i'm not happy that i get triggered into codependent craziness, but i am happy that we were able to identify it and resist the temptation to do anything other than observe it for what it was, evidence that the crazy pace is draining us dry. december is really a gift in the youth ministry calendar. a couple of banquets and no real duties in the christmas holiday, it's a good slow down time, now we just need to know how to enjoy it!