Melody Beattie wrote:

No, I don’t mean a clogged kitchen sink or a shower stall that empties slowly.

I’m talking about allowing people, places and things to slowly and insidiously creep in and begin sucking the soul, energy, life force – and resources – out of us.  No matter how many years ago we learned about not being codependent, it can still happen to us. Again.

Drain Pain occurs so slowly and subtly, we may not see it happening.  Following you’ll find a list of symptoms and the remedy for each:

• We leave our bodies – disconnect from ourselves. We’re experts at fleeing the body. We hover around ourselves doing everything except feeling what we feel and valuing ourselves. When this happens, we often feel numb, confused and afraid.  We may also feel emotional (generalized) pain. The thoughts that accompany this condition include:  I CAN’T STAND THIS ANYMORE.  IT, HE, SHE OR THEY IS OR ARE DRIVING ME INSANE.  This means it’s boundary-setting time again.
• We complain about the same thing, behavior or person or problem for days, weeks, months or years but nobody hears us.  The cure for this means listening to ourselves.
• We know that something’s wrong but we aren’t sure what it is (because we’re not listening to ourselves).   When we mention the problem to the Drainer(s) — the people or institutions in the first symptom above — they look at us askance and reassure us that nothing is wrong except us – who we are, how we feel and what we think is going on just isn’t occurring, they insist.  Remember the story from the first Language of Letting Go, about the scene in a movie where a wife catches her husband in his pickup truck?  He’s parked at the drive-in movie theatre all cuddled up and kissing with another woman. When the wife confronts him about having this affair, he denies it vehemently while the other woman sits there kissing his neck, arm, hand and more.  “What are you going to believe?” the infidel asks his wife.  “Me or what you think you see?”  Crazy as that sounds, it can easily describe us when we’re in codependent mode.
• We feel tired, unfocused and somewhat like a Boxer looks (the dog, not Mohammed Ali) when it’s chasing not a tail, but the remnants of one before the vet clipped or docked it.  We’re caught up in trying to do the impossible. It’s time to assess what we can and can’t change and then put energy into assessing and solving the right problem – the real issue that’s going on.
• We feel increasingly angry at the people, places or things in our personalized list in the first symptom above, but as soon as we feel anger we also start to feel guilt. The guilt’s not real.  It’s the codependent guilt that’s followed us around for most of our life. The guilt yammers about how there must be something wrong with us because the other person wouldn’t do that — whatever that is. We wonder what’s wrong with us for feeling this angry and then decide that the problem is us. ZZZZZT.   Wrong answer. Solution?  Look in the mirror and tell ourselves that who we are is okay.
• Of all the signals that someone’s manipulating or lying to us, feeling cruddy and confused after our interactions with this person or institution — if they’ll stand still long enough to talk to us — ranks highest and indicates that it’s time to open our eyes, shake off the denial dust and start a self-care revival.” This is a long post. You can get the rest here: Drain Pain | Melody Beattie.