CO-DEPENDENCY: Fundamentals of Diagnosis, Treatment and Recovery
[Under the title “Co-Dependency: An Emerging Epidemic,” this article was first published in The Women’s Record (April 1989), a monthly newspaper in which I wrote a regular book review column titled “Books for the Record”.]Co-Dependency is a disease of negative attitudes and the distorted behaviors they induce. In turn, such behaviors reinforce and perpetuate pessimistic expectations about life, oneself and others. But no baby is born negativistic, fearful and unhappy. Such a perception of life forms growing up
in dysfunctional families or in abandonment, as in orphanages or foster homes. A child in a dysfunctional system is exposed to repeated sick interactions with parents and siblings.
An abandoned child has limited or no opportunity to interact with blood relatives at all.
The Co-Dependency Syndrome is characterized by ignoring one’s own needs in order to take care of others’. This self-sacrificial life-view comes from the person’s urgent need as a child to master
all aspects of an abandoning or unpredictable environment. Thus, the panic of a fearful childhood is carried into adulthood where co-dependents live on an emotional precipice trying for the impossible in human relationships. They must compulsively keep their loved one comfortable and happy so the person won’t abandon them, either literally, or by becoming emotionally unavailable
for normal interactions, as in alcoholic stupor or rages, or by depressive withdrawals.
Some of the symptoms and problems plaguing people raised to expect abuse, neglect or abandonment include repeated failed love relationships, inability to make or keep friends, approval-seeking, people-pleasing, being harshly self-critical, alternating low self-esteem with grandiose self-inflation, denying a troubled or lonely childhood, feeling alien,
defective and not good enough to be loved, being perfectionistic, staying in
relationships that don’t work, apologizing for “bothering” people, and fearing rejection if anger comes up at all. These are only a few crippling effects of co-dependency, a progressive disease which, untreated or inappropriately treated, terminates in depression, isolation, hopelessness, violence, physical ills, addictive disorders and suicide.
Originally, the word “co-dependent” referred only to a person compulsively enmeshed in a family rela-tionship with an alcoholic. It is still said by Al-Anon members, “The alcoholic has his
arms around the bottle while the co-dependent has her arms around the alcoholic,” each
holding on for dear life to the chemical or person to which he or she is addicted. But in the last three to
five years, codepen-dency has taken on a much broader meaning and is now widely
recognized by specialists as an epidemic whose causes extend well beyond parental alcoholism.
Ultimately, what troubled families produce are children who enlarge into physical adulthood without the child they were ever having been given a chance to grow up.
Aptly, the other name for co-dependent is “Adult Child”. In this state of developmental arrest, the damaged child Self goes around, housed in the adolescent and later adult body, still secretly yearning and seeking to have its unmet early needs for love and approval filled. If all this seems alien, here’s more
shocking news. According to John Bradshaw, a leader in the field and director of the Life
Plus Co-Dependency Treatment Center in Los Angeles, nearly 100% of Americans are afflicted to
one degree or another, depending on the severity of dysfunction in their childhood lives.
Bradshaw, who conducts co-dependency workshops all over the country, who also co-founded the Center for Recovering Families in Houston, stressed in my recent in-person interview with him, “Abandonment is the rock bottom fear for co-dependents. Their pain and loneliness are medicated with alcohol and drugs or by denial of feelings and needs.” In his new book, Healing
the Shame that Binds You, he describes the kinds of “shame-based thinking” that shape co-dependent behaviors including “catastrophizing, mind-reading, personalizing, overgeneralization, either-or thinking, having to be right, “should” thinking, control thinking and blaming.
These thought patterns are instilled by a family in heavy denial of emotions. For example, a
child must not be angry, is not allowed to speak of his father’s alcoholism, or is not permitted to
know why mother went to the mental hospital. Society’s rules contribute to the family’s
dysfunction, Bradshaw says, because “Society’s perfectionism has no boundaries – you must be the
perfect ten, be big enough, make no mistakes. There are rigid rules for ‘success’ but no measurement
for being. So we become human doings, not human beings. [He also meant and said, in our
discussion, "We are humans doing when we should be humans BEING."] What is needed is somebody
to be there for you. Children need their parents’ time, attention and direction.”
When a parent is physically abusive or verbally scornful, or inaccessible due to depression,
hospitalization, abandonment or death, the child adopts rigid emotional defenses that preclude healthy personality development. He or she turns into a virtual survival machine, becoming
hypervigilant, ever watchful for further loss or abuse. At the same time, an automatic mechanism renders the real Self inoperative. It submerges long before intrapsychic development is complete, becoming almost totally unconscious and unavailable for further growth.
Ironically, the child has now become inaccessible to him/herself.
Forced to focus on what others think of them, what others need from them, rather than what they
need for themselves and how to meet these needs, ever-watchful co-dependents operate with
a “false self.” At this superficial level, theh are always anticipating hurt or rejection, ever ready to
muster primitive defenses against real or imagined pain or loss. This constant state of readiness
accounts for the myriad stress-related physical and emotional diseases they suffer.
In his book, Healing the Child Within, Dr. Charles Whitfield, another co-dependency pioneer, emphasizes that stuffing feelings, blowing up, substance abuse or emotional numbness are “...not
nearly so effective as ventilating the pain when it happens or ‘comes up’ with a person who is safe and supportive.” And Bradshaw points out, “The ideal co-dependency therapist must be
someone in his or her own process of recovery.”
Recovery from co-dependency involves the emergence of the Real Self, which surfaces when
feelings and needs of both the present and past are made known. Out loud! Mourning for what
is lost and can never be retrieved ensues. Angers surface, tears flow; anxiety, pain and emptiness
set in. But only for a while. Relief comes. Letting go of the old hurts and unfilled needs becomes
possible. And paradoxically, when the co-dependent can feel whole in the absence of others
to cling to, he or she becomes capable of intimate friendships and love not founded on
infantile expectations, hurts or losses, but based on true acceptance of oneself and others as separate, valuable human beings.
Successful treatment heals “the Child Within” through a combination of intensive individual
therapy, group therapy, and attendance at meetings of programs such as Al-Anon or CODA
(Co-dependents Anonymous). Contrary to popular notions, Al-Anon is for all co-dependents,
not just families of alcoholics. The healing process requires a Self-love that begins when
co-dependents become no longer willing to live on the fringes of life as bystanders to their own
painful existence.
To learn more about co-dependency, here are some new books in the field: John Bradshaw’s
On the Family, Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More, Robert Subby’s Lost in the Shuffle,
Anne Wilson Schaef’s Co-Dependency: Misunderstood-Mistreated and Laurie and Jonathan B.
Weiss’ Recovery from Co-Dependency: It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy Childhood.
Helen Borel, R.N., Ph.D., who writes fiction as well as medical and psychological nonfiction, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC. Her recent book is Journey Into Self: Holistic
Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis.
***
© Copyright 1989-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering and
on to fulfillment, write to me at emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
No comments:
Post a Comment