Health
Codependency What is It?
Plus, Tips on How to Get Healthy
I hope to simplify codependency and sort out a few facts from myth. Due to space limitations, I am not attempting to describe all areas of codependency, thus will only cover a few points of interest.
Psychiatrist Timmen Cermak gives us
some insight gives us some insight into
some insight gives us some insight into
codependency with information from the books he has authored on the subject. I encourage anyone seriously interested in the subject to read his books because they are excellent. It is difficult to find accurate information about codependency.
Three Points to Consider
· Under-learning is one of the causes of codependency.
· Immaturity is present in codependency.
· If a person stays with a partner who is an active addict or has a serious personality disorder for two years or more without taking action the person has a codependency issue.
Under Learning
First, let us consider some possible examples of under-learning. This results from growing up without adequate role models. I often think about people who have not learned what reasonable physical boundaries are. Most of us have encountered a person who attempts to stand almost on top of you–you move back and they move towards you, again. It doesn’t encourage you to make them your friend and it is really annoying. This doesn’t mean they are not intelligent or well educated; it just means they did not learn about physical boundaries as a child.
Inadequate Emotional Boundaries
Typically, codependents have inadequate emotional boundaries and this seriously impairs their social life, probably more than lacking skills with physical boundaries.
I remember a social worker who had many years of experience with family problems associated to addiction. Her understanding of codependence was excellent. She said it is about learning to mind your own business. A codependent person has no way of determining the difference.
Immaturity
Immaturity is present when an adult has not acquired adult skills and attitudes which are needed to function in everyday life. A child needs parents who can demonstrate how to behave as an adult or they have no way to become a mature adult. Having a parent with active addiction or an untreated mental health problem often will result in an adult who doesn’t know how to behave.
It isn’t always true that growing up in this situation results in immaturity. Sometimes, fortunately, they have another relative or a neighbor who teaches them the skills they need.
If an individual grew up in a home with untreated addiction or mental illness it may seem normal for them to be with a partner with a similar pathology. So, it may not even occur to them to attempt to demand change.
Codependency Rewards Lowest Common Denominator
After many years of working with families of alcoholics I understand codependency as behavior that supports pathology in other people. It helps the addicted keep using without facing the consequences of their own behavior. It supports the immature in continuing in their immaturity, it penalizes and ignores the healthy, and rewards the lowest common denominator.
I remember a patient who came in for detox. He had been very ill and confined to a bed for several weeks. He was in a bed with tubes running in and tubes running out, with his wife sitting bedside. He still smelled of alcohol. She said he just won’t stop drinking.
I asked her how he gets the alcohol; she said, “He me he makes me get it!”
Codependency Dilemma
When I am confronted with attempting to explain codependency to a codependent person I often think about an example a former colleague used. This describes the dilemma of codependency, “It is hard to see the picture when you are the frame.”
Codependency is a very common problem among sober alcoholics. After being sober a short time it is not unusual for the recovering alcoholic to undermine their own recovery by exhibiting codependent behavior.
I believe a reasonable estimate would be thirty percent of those who have a chronic relapse history, or a very difficult recovery, avoid recovery work by indulging in codependent behavior. There is a lot of misunderstanding about codependency characteristics. The term has been used so much in so many different ways that it has lost some of its usefulness.
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Doctor, Nurse, Social Worker, Therapist
Codependents are attracted to employment in the helping professions such as physician, social worker, nurse or therapist. Their burnout rate is very high, so their rate of ending up on a disability is much higher than average. Their use of sick leave is also higher than average.
There is often a pattern here: they initially work more hours than other employees, they keep secrets, and they soon believe they are the only ones who really understand how things should be run. They often complain a lot and secretly feel superior. They find it difficult or impossible to be a team player. After some months (or even years) they burn out and end up taking a lot of sick leave, quit or go on disability.
Excellent Judge of Character?
Another area that really baffles codependents is that regardless of a lack of any evidence to prove it, they are sure they are an excellent judge of character. A man meets a woman and everyone else knows she has terrible financial problems and shops until she is in deep debt with her credit cards or, for that matter, anyone
else’s. He believes it to be bad luck or just plan untrue gossip.
When she helps wreck his credit his response is “But she said ….”.
A man has a history of being late most of the time. His friend is furious when he is late again, he’d somehow expected him to be on time this time. Regardless of his past behavior he expects him to be different this time. It appears that the person is chronically naïve.
A man’s wife’s has a history of alcoholic drinking for over twenty years; she has drunk in good times and bad times alike. After her last drinking bout he brings her to treatment and says “I just don’t know what set her off.” The nursing staff is baffled–not with her but with him that after all these years he thinks she needs something to set her off, is he an idiot?
No, he is a codependent and had years of training as a child to think that way. The world is a confusing place for him and he attempts to control the uncontrollable.
Focus on the Motivated
For about three decades I trained interns to work in the addiction field. All had training, education and experience at group therapy. Many had several years of experience.
The most common problems I had in the early months of their training were their habit of focusing all their time and energy on the patient most resistant to recovery. This left the motivated patients out of the picture; soon the groups would be negative and near rebellion.
By focusing on the motivated patients at least as much or more than the resistant patients, soon the positive group attitude would be hard even for the most resistant ones not to change their attitude.
Getting certain interns to see their own codependency is not an easy task. Codependency keeps narrowing the person’s vision down to seeing only the one very resistant patient and no one else exists to them.
Helpful Ideas for Releasing the Bondage of Codependency
Here are a few ideas which have been helpful in producing long term results for codependents:
1. Attend Alanon, family programs associated with addiction treatment programs, and education on codependency.
2. Books that are helpful: By Pia Mellody, Andrea Wells Miller, J. Keith Miller and Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence: A Guide for Professionals Who Work with Chemical Dependents, Their Spouses, and Children (Professional Series) By Timmen L. Cermak. Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives
For an interesting overview of codependency there are several books by Anne Wilson Schaef which describe how codependency has undermined politics, mental health therapy and business.
Although, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey does not even mention codependency, I know of cases where his information has been of great benefit to codependents.
A book on therapy that can be helpful to both alcoholics and codependents is The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns.
3. The Grief Recovery Institute is a powerful resource, go to the helpful articles
The Central Issue with Codependency
The central issue with codependency is a subconscious belief system that goes unchallenged. It can be described in many ways and is the result of family rules that have been taught as a child. Some of these unconscious rules work for the person and some don’t.
The way people experience this unconscious thought process has often been described by patients.
The patient says, “I am educated about codependency and I know how I should behave to feel better, but it always takes so much effort and as soon as I relax, the old behavior is back. It is like a rubber band pulling me back.”
When this happens, it is the old unconscious thought pattern running the show and it won’t change until it is challenged at the conscious level.
The Career Front
Codependents are attracted to jobs that only have vague and general descriptions with low authority and high responsibility. Then, they can only perform their job duties by covert action. This is a familiar situation for them and a repeat of their childhood condition.
Bad Behavior Excused by Good Intentions
Codependents, like alcoholics, have a remarkable ability to assign themselves good motives for bad behavior and then believe it themselves. However, most of the time they don’t fool others.
An example would be advising an alcoholic in early recovery to go slowly in working the twelve steps because it might upset them and make them relapse. Unfortunately, they really believe they are just being helpful. That is like telling a diabetic to wait until their glucose is normal before taking their medication.
In over thirty years in the treatment business I have never had an alcoholic patient come back after a disastrous relapse and complain they completed a fourth and fifth step too soon. Many have said, if only I had followed my sponsor’s advice and completed the work he or she suggested, I wouldn’t be here.
Yet, many codependents continue to see the healing process as dangerous. They don’t know that they don’t know.