Codependency

Codependency is a term widely used in the chemical addiction field. Originally it was used to describe the person or persons who were affected, due to being involved with someone who is/was chemically addicted.  The parent, spouse, sibling or loved one who is involved with the addict develops certain pattern of behaviors for coping that leads to an unhealthy lifestyle. The behaviors are reactions or adaptations to the trauma. Although these behaviors seem to help the individual cope, they become maladaptive and harmful.

Recent research shows us that you do not have to be in an addictive family to develop codependent behaviors.  The condition can emerge from any family system where certain unwritten, even unspoken, rules exist.  These rules make healthy growth difficult and change very challenging.  Here is a list by Robert Subby of  common characteristics of codependency:

 

Because many codependent people appear to be strong and self sufficient, it is hard to image them with these characteristics.  They live with the fear of “If they really knew me, they would…”  To change this codependent pattern of living, we need to make friends with and nurture the child that lives within all of us. It is that child that we lost through our unhealthy relationships.

Painful Relationships

Many people develop codependent behaviors due living in painful and emotionally abusive relationships.  Emotional abuse is behavior that makes all relationships toxic. Every relationship has moments of anger, distance, and upset. In a healthy couple the events are addressed with apologies and changes that help to mend the problem. In contrast, the wounds in emotionally abusive relationships are not repaired and the relationships continue to feel more damaged and toxic.

The easiest behavior of emotional abuse to recognize is verbal abuse.  Verbal abuse involves repeated, use of words and tone of voice to criticize and name-call, express sarcasm or contempt, attack, humiliate, threaten, and manipulate.  Some forms of the abuse are non-verbal.  Non-verbal emotional abuse can be punishment through withholding affection or refusing to speak.  They might betray your trust in a variety of ways.  Emotional abuse can also be seen with physical and sexual abuse. When it happens alone, it is easy to minimize the abuse and believe that “it is not that bad”.

Some possible qualities of emotionally abusive relationship.

If you have been emotionally abused, do not discount your injuries. Just because you cannot see them -does not mean that they are not there.  Emotional abuse is devastating to your self-worth and toxic to your relationships.  Learning how to be intimate and in connection with others is important to your healing. Be patient with yourself.


Trauma Recovery

A traumatic event involves a single experience or repeated experiences,  that completely overwhelm the individual’s ability to process the memories and emotions that are associated with them. The sense of being overwhelmed can continue for weeks and sometimes for many years.  Trauma can be caused by a wide variety of events, but there are a few common aspects.  There is frequently a violation of the person’s familiar ideas about the world and of their human rights, putting the person in a state of extreme confusion and insecurity. This is also seen when people or institutions depended on for survival violate or betray the person in some unforeseen way. 

Your brain is unable to adequately processes the experience and becomes  locked in there like a snap shot.  These “snap shots” causes the person to react to situations in the present with the same emotions from the past.   Nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, and high levels of arousal may be viewed as signs of the state dependent storage.  Victims clearly feel inappropriate levels of fear and powerlessness and behave accordingly. 

Different people will react differently to similar events.  It is important to accept it for what it is so it can be processed.  It is essential to deal with these memories and the feelings associated with them in order to truly feel love in the present.


Family Of Origin Issues

Codependency is handed down from generation to generation. We are attracted to other codependent's because their patterns feel familiar. We fit like a lock and key and vow to “do it differently” than our parents.  As children, we tend to take on roles to fit in and adapt to this family system. These roles often overlap and can change as the family changes.

Each role wears a specific mask to cover their pain.  The process that children learn early is that there are unwritten-unspoken rules to follow:

The family members get locked into their roles and obeying the rules which denies who they really are. The real self gets stuck and forgotten. We carry these roles to our adult life where they are no longer helping us to adapt but causing maladaptive behaviors and dysfunctional behaviors. Experiential therapy will help to re-experience the family dynamics and give new freedom to heal.


Multiple Relapses

Relapse is, unfortunately a part of recovery. Although some  people can go through treatment or start recovery and never relapse, a larger group of individuals feel the shame associated with “slipping”. There are several possible factors of relapse:


Depression/Anxiety

Many people are unclear about the difference between anxiety and depression, since the two feelings often go hand in hand.  Dr. David Burns explains that “Depression is the feeling of loss.  You feel defeated and discouraged” and anxiety is “the feeling of fear”. In other words, anxiety feels like you are hanging on to a small limb over top of a high mountain and depression is the feeling you get when you hit the ground.


Feeling Stuck

Many individuals, who come to therapy or have been in therapy for a length of time, learn intellectually about their issues and ways to change their behavior.  They are overloaded with knowledge, self educated with tremendous amounts of information about addictions compulsions, and feelings.  They can quote theories, cite experts and use all the right worlds.  But it does not’t make them improve their own condition or learn new choices. They gain insight which gives them some relief for a while.  But even with their new insights, they feel stuck. 

A Hero’s Journey offers a group called “New Outfits”, where the group assist one another in coming up with ideas for new behaviors to be modeled for 24 hours.  This group is an opportunity to break free of “self-inflicted insight Abuse’. Self inflicted-Insight abuse, as coined by Joan Marineau, LMHC, occurs when there is bondage with awareness without change.  This will typically lead to being self critical.


Anger Management

In recovery from Codependency, we’re challenged to develop healthy ways of relating to others.  Often, the hardest challenge to face is around resolving conflict.  Conflict can present us with some of our most fearful and uncomfortable experiences.  There are two ineffective ways of dealing with conflict: 1) denial and avoidance, and 2) explosive and harmful anger.

Learning to express anger and resolve conflicts is essential to having a nurturing, healthy relationship.  We may have to learn to:

The best way to learn these skills is through a group experience. Learning to assert your anger in a safe and nurturing environment is essential to healing.


Addiction in Families

Living with addiction in any capacity effects our emotional growth.  Adult Children of Alcoholics refers to these individuals as Para-alcoholics. Para-alcoholics represents the mannerisms and behaviors you developed by living with an alcoholic or drug addict. As children, you took on the fear and denial of the addict without taking a drink. The roles which are usually present in alcoholic and dysfunctional homes have specific jobs.  These jobs are:

 

Family Roles      Their Jobs
The Chemical/ Behavioral Addict  Creates chaos to which everyone else reacts
Chief Enabler    To maintain control at any cost by manipulating, covering up and compensating destructive behavior
The Family Hero    Makes the family look good by being the honors student and successful child
The Lost Child     Being the person no one has to worry about, by being silent and invisible
The Scapegoat  Providing a “Dumping Ground” for the family’s anger. Enabling everyone else to feel superior and they are the troubled one
The Mascot   Provide a diversion by affection and  distraction

Some roles allowed us to be the favorite child of the parent or the.  These roles provided a sense of safety and structure while growing up.  Although these roles tend to have a long life span. They can remain fixed in our personalities and show up in  our adult relationships.  This will cause problems in the present without consciousness as to the reasons why. 

Growing up in an addictive family leaves us feeling powerless.  Without recovery, we as adult children, find dysfunctional people and attempt to heal them or cure them  based on our upbringing.  We confuse intimacy with intensity.  We create an unhealthy relationship with dependency. 

To learn how to change your behavior in a relationship is a journey. 


Shame Issues

Shame is cunning.  It eats away at a person’s self-respect and dignity.  Unfortunately, many individuals get involved in shame-based relationships with out consciously knowing it.  These relationships are humiliating.  It is the difference of feeling like you did something wrong and the feeling that something is wrong with you.  Each one of us deserves to be treated with respect. It is our personal human right.  

There are one-way shaming relationships and two-way shaming relationships. One-way shaming couples, usually involves power and control.  In a two-way shaming couple, you will see that they are both actively shaming each other.  People who grew up in shame based families feels like these critical relationships, that they are in today are normal.  They expect to be told what is wrong with them or they take on the role of shaming others.  Relationships with mutual respect, feels dishonest and they do not trust them. The more a person suffers from shame the more they believe they deserve it.

Keep in mind that the person, who shamed you or is currently shaming you, may not realize it.  This means, that they are also acting out their shamed based patterns in the role of the attacker.  It is important for you to look at how you are both roles; the victim and the attacker.  Also keep in mind that shame based relationships can be changed.  Individuals can break the cycle of shame for themselves, as well as working together in relationships. 

It is important to identify the shamed-based behaviors and work on its origins. Once you have been in a shamed based relationship- it is easier to be attracted to them again.  The shame prevents intimacy, which is typically what they both want.  Be aware of how you feel while around different people.  As yourself;

Do I feel less intelligent and incompetent?

Do I feel embarrassed after a conversation with them?

Do I feel like a child around them?

Does this person speak of my shortcomings often?

Do I believe that this person can’t accept me for who I am?

Keep in mind that you can be shaming yourself with old messages.  Shame can be that damaging to your dignity and identity.   With the help of a counselor you can break old patterns and learn new ways to connect with yourself and others.


Adult Children of Alcoholics

Tony A., founder of ACOA identified 14 characteristics of  Adult Children of Alcoholics

“The Laundry List”

  1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
  2. We became approval seekers and lose our identity in the process.
  3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
  4. We either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
  5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by the weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
  6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
  7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
  8. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue”.
  9. We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (denial).
  10. We became addicted to excitement.
  11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
  12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
  13.  Alcoholism is a family disease and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
  14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.



Healthy Boundaries

Rokelle Lerner describes boundaries as having a sense of ourselves, and our perception of how we are different from others physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Boundaries are there to provide protection.  They are not fixed; we can change them with what we feel and who we are with.

When our boundaries are intact, we know that we have separate feelings, thoughts, and realities from others around us.  We need boundaries to get close to others, otherwise we will not know where we start and others end.  When we have healthy boundaries, we know when people are violating our rights.  A person without boundaries will not know when someone is physically, emotionally or intellectually abusing them.

Developing boundaries is one of the core issues of codependency and especially adult children of alcoholics.  They need to develop boundaries to develop their identities and reclaim their inner selves.  Growing up with unhealthy parental figures can result in a disconnected self.  A disconnected self occurs when you hide your identity away from others in an attempt to change the environment.   If you hide your true self long enough, you forget who you are.  Parents can blame the children for their inappropriate behaviors and deny the reality of the family dynamics.  

No parent consciously destroys a child’s boundary system.  In fact, Rockelle Lerner shares that boundaries are often set in honor of love by parents who lack a clear sense of themselves or do not understand the importance of allowing their children to set limits.   It is important that we enter our recovery without needing permission to do so.  It is up to us to form our boundaries with others.  No one can do this for us.  Repairing damaged boundaries may require assistance from a sponsor, therapist, or healthy mentor. A therapy group will allow you to learn and experiment with your boundaries in a safe and nurturing environment.

It is time to be reunited with an old friend – that old friend is you.

 

E-mail: info@aherosjourney.com