stay in your own hoola hoop
a visual metaphor for codependency
Whenever one of my friends get consumed about something that their significant other or their boss has done, I often repeat something that I once heard in a 12-step program: stay in your own hoola-hoop. The first time I say it to someone, they usually just stare at me perplexed as they wonder about how how a childhood game could apply to their very serious adult situation. But the hoola-hoop analogy is simple— it basically means stay on your side of the street. If someone is struggling to keep their hoola-hoop in motion, and you try and attempt to aid them, not only is that going to put you own hoola-hoop in some serious jeopardy, it also won’t do anything to help their situation either. You can support and encourage them from afar, but if you get involved all the hoola hoops are going to fall.
Hoola-hoops are the best metaphor for me to think about codependency, a predilection to be be overly concerned with others as a way to regulate one’s own emotional states. As you can imagine, it can lead to several issues like extreme people pleasing, an inability to be alone, a lack of sense of self and a tendency to end up in dysfunctional relationships. The motto of a codependent person is “if you’re okay, i’m okay” and this level of attachment to other people’s moods or decisions, can be crazy-making. It’s an exhausting way of life because your internal sense of peace and happiness depends on a person you ultimately have no control over. It’s also frustrating to those around codependents because they can feel manipulated, monitored or managed. Codependents and addicts often attract each other for a reason: they’re both looking for coping mechanisms outside of themselves and usually find it within each other. The codependent finds relief at helping or even enabling the addict, while the addict can transfer personal responsibility onto someone other than themselves. They both fill a void for each other. I’d argue both are addicts, because one is addicted to a substance and the other to a person.