The Evolution of the Term "Codependence"

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The Evolution of the Term "Codependence"

"The phenomenal growth of AA and the success of the disease concept in the treatment of Alcoholism generated the founding of treatment centers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These early treatment centers were based on what had been successful in early AA. They focused on getting the Alcoholic sober and paid very little attention to the families of Alcoholics.

As these treatment centers matured and evolved, they noticed that the families of Alcoholics seemed to have certain characteristics and patterns of behavior in common. So they started to pay some attention to the families.

A term was coined to describe the significant others of Alcoholics. That term was "co-alcoholic" - literally "alcoholic with."

The belief was that while the Alcoholic was addicted to alcohol, the co-alcoholic was addicted in certain ways to the Alcoholic. The belief was that the families of Alcoholics became sick because of the Alcoholic's drinking and behavior.

With the drug explosion of the sixties, Alcoholism treatment centers became chemical dependency treatment centers. Co-alcoholics became co-dependents. The meaning was still a literal "dependent with," and the philosophy was much the same.

In the mid-to-late seventies, however, certain pioneers in the field began to look more closely at the behavior patterns of families affected by addiction. Some researchers focused primarily on Alcoholic families, and then graduated to studying adults who had grown up in Alcoholic families. Other researchers started looking more closely at the phenomenon of Family Systems Dynamics.

Out of these studies came the defining of the Adult Child Syndrome, at first primarily in terms of Adult Children of Alcoholics and then expanding to other types of dysfunctional families.

Ironically this research was in a sense a rediscovery of the insight which in many ways was the birth of modern psychology. Sigmund Freud made his early fame as a teenager with his insight into the importance of early childhood trauma. (This was many years before he started shooting cocaine and decided that sex was the root of all psychology.)

What the researchers were beginning to understand was how profoundly the emotional trauma of early childhood affects a person as an adult. They realized that if not healed, these early childhood emotional wounds, and the subconscious attitudes adopted because of them, would dictate the adult's reaction to, and path through, life. Thus we walk around looking like and trying to act like adults, while reacting to life out of the emotional wounds and attitudes of childhood. We keep repeating the patterns of abandonment, abuse, and deprivation that we experienced in childhood.

Psychoanalysis addressed these issues only on the intellectual level - not on the emotional healing level. As a result, a person could go to psychoanalysis weekly for twenty years and still be repeating the same behavior patterns.

As the Adult Child movement, the Family Systems Dynamics research, and the newly emerging "inner child" healing movement expanded and developed in the eighties, the term "Codependent" expanded. It became a term used as a description of certain types of behavior patterns. These were basically identified as "people-pleasing" behaviors. By the middle to late eighties the term "Codependent" was associated with people-pleasers who set themselves up to be victims and rescuers.

In other words, it was recognized that the Codependent was not sick because of the Alcoholic but rather was attracted to the Alcoholic because of his/her disease, because of her/his early childhood experience.

At that time Codependence was basically defined as a passive behavioral defense system, and its opposite, or aggressive counterpart was described as counter dependent. Then most Alcoholics and addicts were thought to be counter dependent.

The word changed and evolved further after the start of the modern Codependence movement in Arizona in the mid-eighties. Co-Dependents Anonymous had its first meeting in October of 1986, and books on Codependence as a disease in and of itself started appearing at about the same time. These Codependence books were the next generation evolved from the books on the Adult Child Syndrome of the early eighties.

The expanded usage of the term "Codependent" now includes counter dependent behavior. We have come to understand that both the passive and the aggressive behavioral defense systems are reactions to the same kinds of childhood trauma, to the same kinds of emotional wounds. The Family Systems Dynamics research shows that within the family system, children adopt certain roles according to their family dynamics. Some of these roles are more passive, some are more aggressive, because in the competition for attention and validation within a family system the children must adopt different types of behaviors in order to feel like an individual.

A large part of what we identify as our personality is in fact a distorted view of who we really are due to the type of behavioral defenses we adopted to fit the role or roles we were forced to assume according to the dynamics of our family system.
Behavioral Defenses

I am now going to share with you some new descriptions that I came up with in regard to these behavioral defenses. We adopt different degrees and combinations of these various types of behavior as our personal defense system, and we swing from one extreme to the other within our own personal spectrum. I am going to share these with you because I find them enlightening and amusing - and to make a point.

The Aggressive-Aggressive defense, is what I call the "militant bulldozer." This person, basically the counter-dependent, is the one whose attitude is "I don't care what anyone thinks." This is someone who will run you down and then tell you that you deserved it. This is the "survival of the fittest," hard-driving capitalist, self-righteous religious fanatic, who feels superior to most everyone else in the world. This type of person despises the human "weakness" in others because he/she is so terrified and ashamed of her/his own humanity.

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The Aggressive-Passive person, or "self-sacrificing bulldozer," will run you down and then tell you that they did it for your own good and that it hurt them more than it did you. These are the types of people who aggressively try to control you "for your own good" - because they think that they know what is "right" and what you "should" do and they feel obligated to inform you. This person is constantly setting him/herself up to be the perpetrator because other people do not do things the "right" way, that is, his/her way.

The Passive-Aggressive, or "militant martyr," is the person who smiles sweetly while cutting you to pieces emotionally with her/his innocent sounding, double-edged sword of a tongue. These people try to control you "for your own good" but do it in more covert, passive-aggressive ways. They "only want the best for you," and sabotage you every chance they get. They see themselves as wonderful people who are continually and unfairly being victimized by ungrateful loved ones - and this victimization is their main topic of conversation/focus in life because they are so self-absorbed that they are almost incapable of hearing what other people are saying.

The Passive-Passive, or "self-sacrificing martyr," is the person who spends so much time and energy demeaning him/herself, and projecting the image that he/she is emotionally fragile, that anyone who even thinks of getting mad at this person feels guilty. They have incredibly accurate, long-range, stealth guilt torpedoes that are effective even long after their death. Guilt is to the self-sacrificing martyr what stink is to a skunk: the primary defense.

These are all defense systems adopted out of a necessity to survive. They are all defensive disguises whose purpose is to protect the wounded, terrified child within.

These are broad general categories, and individually we can combine various degrees and combinations of these types of behavioral defenses in order to protect ourselves.

In this society, in a general sense, the men have been traditionally taught to be primarily aggressive, the "John Wayne" syndrome, while women have been taught to be self-sacrificing and passive. But that is a generalization; it is entirely possible that you came from a home where your mother was John Wayne and your father was the self-sacrificing martyr.
Dysfunctional Culture

The point that I am making is that our understanding of Codependence has evolved to realizing that this is not just about some dysfunctional families - our very role models, our prototypes, are dysfunctional.

Our traditional cultural concepts of what a man is, of what a woman is, are twisted, distorted, almost comically bloated stereotypes of what masculine and feminine really are. A vital part of this healing process is finding some balance in our relationship with the masculine and feminine energy within us, and achieving some balance in our relationships with the masculine and feminine energy all around us. We cannot do that if we have twisted, distorted beliefs about the nature of masculine and feminine.

When the role model of what a man is does not allow a man to cry or express fear; when the role model for what a woman is does not allow a woman to be angry or aggressive - that is emotional dishonesty. When the standards of a society deny the full range of the emotional spectrum and label certain emotions as negative - that is not only emotionally dishonest, it creates emotional disease.

If a culture is based on emotional dishonesty, with role models that are dishonest emotionally, then that culture is also emotionally dysfunctional, because the people of that society are set up to be emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional in getting their emotional needs met.

What we traditionally have called normal parenting in this society is abusive because it is emotionally dishonest. Children learn who they are as emotional beings from the role modeling of their parents. "Do as I say - not as I do," does not work with children. Emotionally dishonest parents cannot be emotionally healthy role models, and cannot provide healthy parenting."
http://www.healthyplace.com/communit...ependence3.htm

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Codependence as Delayed Stress Syndrome

"In a war, soldiers are forced to deny their emotions in order to survive. This emotional denial works to help the soldier survive the war, but later can have devastating delayed consequences. The medical profession has now recognized the trauma and damage that this emotional denial can cause, and have coined a term to describe the effects of this type of denial. That term is "Delayed Stress Syndrome."

In a war soldiers have to deny what it feels like to see friends killed and maimed; what it feels like to kill other human beings and have them attempting to kill you. There is trauma caused by the events themselves. There is trauma due to the necessity of denying the emotional impact of the events. There is trauma from the effects the emotional denial has on the person's life after he/she has returned from the war because as long is the person is denying his/her emotional trauma she/he is denying a part of her/himself.

The stress caused by the trauma, and the effect of denying the trauma, by denying self, eventually surfaces in ways which produce new trauma - anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, nightmares, uncontrollable rage, inability to maintain relationships, inability to hold jobs, suicide, etc.

Codependence is a form of Delayed Stress Syndrome.

Instead of blood and death (although some do experience blood and death literally), what happened to us as children was spiritual death and emotional maiming, mental torture and physical violation. We were forced to grow up denying the reality of what was happening in our homes. We were forced to deny our feelings about what we were experiencing and seeing and sensing. We were forced to deny our selves.

We grew up having to deny the emotional reality: of parental alcoholism, addiction, mental illness, rage, violence, depression, abandonment, betrayal, deprivation, neglect, incest, etc. etc.; of our parents fighting or the underlying tension and anger because they weren't being honest enough to fight; of dad's ignoring us because of his workaholism and/or mom smothering us because she had no other identity than being a mother; of the abuse that one parent heaped on another who wouldn't defend him/herself and/or the abuse we received from one of our parents while the other wouldn't defend us; of having only one parent or of having two parents who stayed together and shouldn't have; etc., etc.

We grew up with messages like: children should be seen and not heard; big boys don't cry and little ladies don't get angry; it is not okay to be angry at someone you love - especially your parents; god loves you but will send you to burn in he!! forever if you touch your shameful private parts; don't make noise or run or in any way be a normal child; do not make mistakes or do anything wrong; etc., etc.

We were born into the middle of a war where our sense of self was battered and fractured and broken into pieces. We grew up in the middle of battlefields where our beings were discounted, our perceptions invalidated, and our feelings ignored and nullified.

The war we were born into, the battlefield each of us grew up in, was not in some foreign country against some identified "enemy" - it was in the "homes" which were supposed to be our safe haven with our parents whom we Loved and trusted to take care of us. It was not for a year or two or three - it was for sixteen or seventeen or eighteen years.

We experienced what is called "sanctuary trauma" - our safest place to be was not safe - and we experienced it on a daily basis for years and years. Some of the greatest damage was done to us in subtle ways on a daily basis because our sanctuary was a battlefield.

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It was not a battlefield because our parents were wrong or bad - it was a battlefield because they were at war within, because they were born into the middle of a war. By doing our healing we are becoming the emotionally honest role models that our parents never had the chance to be. Through being in Recovery we are helping to break the cycles of self-destructive behavior that have dictated human existence for thousands of years.

Codependence is a very vicious and powerful form of Delayed Stress Syndrome. The trauma of feeling like we were not safe in our own homes makes it very difficult to feel like we are safe anywhere. Feeling like we were not lovable to our own parents makes it very difficult to believe that anyone can Love us.

Codependence is being at war with ourselves - which makes it impossible to trust and Love ourselves. Codependence is denying parts of ourselves so that we do not know who we are.

Recovery from the disease of Codependence involves stopping the war within so that we can get in touch with our True Self, so that we can start to Love and trust ourselves."
http://www.healthyplace.com/communit...dependency.htm

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The Codependence Recovery Process
Mental, Emotional, Spiritual

In order to change our relationships with self and life we need to focus on the mental and emotional levels while consciously working to integrate Spiritual Truth into our personal inner process.

Mental Attitudes and Definitions (conscious and unconscious) create Perspective and Expectations which dictate Relationship.

"We learned about life as children and it is necessary to change the way we intellectually view life in order to stop being the victim of the old tapes. By looking at, becoming conscious of, our attitudes, definitions, and perspectives, we can start discerning what works for us and what does not work. We can then start making choices about whether our intellectual view of life is serving us - or if it is setting us up to be victims because we are expecting life to be something which it is not."

From Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)

"Perspective is a key to Recovery. I had to change and enlarge my perspectives of myself and my own emotions, of other people, of God and of this life business. Our perspective of life dictates our relationship with life. We have a dysfunctional relationship with life because we were taught to have a dysfunctional perspective of this life business, dysfunctional definitions of who we are and why we are here.

It is kind of like the old joke about three blind men describing an elephant by touch. Each one of them is telling his own Truth, they just have a lousy perspective. Codependence is all about having a lousy relationship with life, with being human, because we have a lousy perspective on life as a human."

"The more we enlarge our perspective, the closer we get to the cause instead of just dealing with the symptoms. For example, the more we look at the dysfunction in our relationship with ourselves as human beings the more we can understand the dysfunction in our romantic relationships".

"As was stated earlier, our perspective of life dictates our relationship with life. This is true for all types of relationships. Our perspective of God dictates our relationship with God. Our perspective of what a man or a woman is, dictates our relationship with ourselves as men or women, and with other men and women. Our perspective of our emotions dictates our relationship with our own emotional process".

"Changing our perspectives is absolutely vital to the growth process".

"We need to be willing to let go of, surrender, our ego's definitions, belief systems, expectations, in order to change our perspective of life. Then we can make the choice to align our beliefs with the concept of an unconditionally Loving God-Force".

"The Truth is that the intellectual value systems, the attitudes, that we use in deciding what's right and wrong were not ours in the first place. We accepted on a subconscious and emotional level the values that were imposed on us as children. Even if we throw out those attitudes and beliefs intellectually as adults, they still dictate our emotional reactions. Even if, especially if, we live our lives rebelling against them. By going to either extreme accepting them without question or rejecting them without consideration we are giving power away".

"In order to stop giving our power away, to stop reacting out of our inner children, to stop setting ourselves up to be victims, so that we can start learning to trust and Love ourselves, we need to begin to practice discernment. Discernment is having the eyes to see, and the ears to hear - and the ability to feel the emotional energy that is Truth."

"We need to change our perspective and learn to practice discernment so that we can change our relationship with life and with ourselves. We need to be pro-active in our own process so that we can stop being the victims of the old tapes and start owning the power to co-create our lives in a healthy, Loving way."

"Recovery involves bringing to consciousness those beliefs and attitudes in our subconscious that are causing our dysfunctional reactions so that we can reprogram our ego defenses to allow us to live a healthy, fulfilling life instead of just surviving. So that we can own our power to make choices for ourselves about our beliefs and values instead of unconsciously reacting to the old tapes. Recovery is consciousness raising. It is en-light-en-ment - bringing the dysfunctional attitudes and beliefs out of the darkness of our subconscious into the Light of consciousness."
Emotional

"On an emotional level the dance of Recovery is owning and honoring the emotional wounds so that we can release the grief energy - the pain, rage, terror, and shame that is driving us".

"That shame is toxic and is not ours - it never was! We did nothing to be ashamed of we were just little kids. Just as our parents were little kids when they were wounded and shamed, and their parents before them, etc., etc. This is shame about being human that has been passed down from generation to generation".

"There is no blame here, there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and scrambled minds".

"Codependence is dysfunctional because it is emotionally dishonest. As long as we are reacting out of childhood wounds and old tapes we are not capable of being in the moment in an emotionally honest, age-appropriate way. It is necessary to be healing the childhood wounds and have an emotionally honest relationship with ourselves internally in order to respond to life honestly in the moment".

"When the role model of what a man is does not allow a man to cry or express fear, when the role model for what a woman is does not allow a woman to be angry or aggressive, that is emotional dishonesty. When the standards of a society deny the full range of the emotional spectrum and label certain emotions as negative - that is not only emotionally dishonest, it creates emotional disease. If a culture is based on emotional dishonesty, with role models that are not honest emotionally, then that culture is also emotionally dysfunctional - because the people of that society are set up to be emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional in getting their emotional needs met. What we traditionally have called normal parenting in this society is abusive - because it is emotionally dishonest".

"We live in emotionally dishonest and Spiritually hostile societies. Trying to get sane in an insane world is crazy-making!"

"We are set up to be emotionally dysfunctional by our role models, both parental and societal. We are taught to repress and distort our emotional process. We are trained to be emotionally dishonest when we are children".

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"Attempting to suppress emotions is dysfunctional; it does not work. Emotions are energy: E-motion = energy in motion. It is supposed to be in motion, it was meant to flow. Emotions have a purpose, a very good reason to be even those emotions that feel uncomfortable. Fear is a warning, anger is for protection, tears are for cleansing and releasing. These are not negative emotional responses! We were taught to react negatively to them. It is our reaction that is dysfunctional and negative, not the emotion".

"Emotional honesty is absolutely vital to the health of the being. Denying, distorting, and blocking our emotions in reaction to false beliefs and dishonest attitudes causes emotional and mental disease. This emotional and mental disease causes physical, biological imbalance which produces physical disease".

"Codependence is a deadly and fatal disease because of emotional dishonesty and suppression. It breaks our hearts, scrambles our minds, and eventually kills our physical body vehicles because of the Spiritual dis-ease, because of our wounded souls".

"The key to healing our wounded souls is to get clear and honest in our emotional process. Until we can get clear and honest with our human emotional responses - until we change the twisted, distorted, negative perspectives and reactions to our human emotions that are a result of having been born into, and grown up in, a dysfunctional, emotionally repressive, Spiritually hostile environment - we cannot get clearly in touch with the level of emotional energy that is Truth. We cannot get clearly in touch with and reconnected to our Spiritual Self".
http://www.healthyplace.com/communit...ependency2.htm

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A Dance of Suffering, Shame, and Self-abuse

"The reason that we have not been Loving our neighbor as ourselves is because we have been doing it backwards. We were taught to judge and feel ashamed of ourselves. We were taught to hate ourselves for being human."
"If I am feeling like a "failure" and giving power to the "critical parent" voice within that is telling me that I am a failure - then I can get stuck in a very painful place where I am shaming myself for being me. In this dynamic I am being the victim of myself and also being my own perpetrator - and the next step is to rescue myself by using one of the old tools to go unconscious (food, alcohol, sex, etc.) Thus the disease has me running around in a squirrel cage of suffering and shame, a dance of pain, blame, and self-abuse."

Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

Codependence is an incredibly powerful, insidious, and vicious disease. It is so powerful because it is ingrained in our core relationship with ourselves. As little kids we were assaulted with the message that there was something wrong with us. We got this message from our parents who were assaulted and wounded in childhood by their parents who were assaulted and wounded in childhood, etc. etc., and from our society that is based on the belief that being human is shameful.

Codependence is insidious because it is so pervasive. The core emotional belief that there is something wrong with who we are as beings affects all of the relationships in our life and keeps us from learning how to Truly Love. In a Codependent society value is assigned in comparison (richer than, prettier than, more spiritual than, healthier than, etc.) so that the only way to feel good about self is the judge and look down on others. Comparison serves the belief in separation which makes violence, homelessness, pollution, and billionaires possible. Love is about feeling connected in the scheme of things not separate.

Codependence is vicious because it causes us to hate and abuse ourselves. We were taught to judge and shame ourselves for being human. At the core of our relationship with ourselves is the feeling that we are somehow not worthy and not lovable.

My father was trained that he was supposed to be perfect and that anger was the only permissible male emotion. As a result, that little boy that made mistakes and got yelled at felt like he was flawed and unlovable.

My mother told me how much she loved me, how important and valuable I was, and how I could be anything that I wanted to be. But my mother had no self-esteem and no boundaries so she emotionally incested me. I felt responsible for her emotional well-being and felt great shame that I couldn't protect her from father's raging or the pain of life. This was proof that I was so flawed that, though a woman might think I was lovable, eventually the truth of my unworthiness would be exposed by my inability to protect her and insure her happiness.

The church I was raised in taught me that I was born sinful and unworthy, and that I should be grateful and adoring because God loved me in spite of my unworthiness. And, even though God loved me, if I allowed my unworthiness to surface by acting on (or even thinking about) the shameful human weaknesses that I was born with - then God would be forced, with great sadness and reluctance, to cast me into he!! to burn forever.

Is it any wonder that at my core I felt unworthy and unlovable? Is it any wonder that as an adult I got trapped in a continual cycle of shame, blame, and self-abuse?

The pain of being unworthy and shameful was so great that I had to learn ways to go unconscious and disconnect from my feelings. The ways in which I learned to protect myself from that pain and nurture myself when I was hurting so badly were with things like drugs and alcohol, food and cigarettes, relationships and work, obsession and rumination.

The way it works in practice is like this: I am feeling fat; I judge myself for being fat; I shame myself for being fat; I beat myself for being fat; then I am hurting so badly that I have to relieve some of the pain; so to nurture myself I eat a pizza; then I judge myself for eating the pizza, etc. etc.

To the disease, this is a functional cycle. The shame begets the self-abuse which begets the shame which serves the purpose of the disease which is to keep us separate so the we don't set ourselves up to fail by believing that we are worthy and lovable.

Obviously, this is a dysfunctional cycle if our purpose is to be happy and enjoy being alive. The way to stop this cycle is two-fold and simple in theory but extremely hard to implement on a moment-to-moment, day-to day basis in our lives. The first part has to do with removing the shame from our inner process. This is a complicated and multi-leveled process that involves changing the belief systems that are dictating our reactions to life (this include everything from positive affirmations to grief/emotional energy release work, to support groups, to meditation and prayer, to inner child work, etc.) so that we can change our relationship with ourselves at the core and start treating ourselves in healthier ways.

The second part is simpler and usually harder. It involves taking 'the action.' ('the action' refers to the specific behavior. We have to take action to do all of the things listed in the first part as well.) Changing the behavior that is giving us a reason for the shame. Just saying 'no' - or 'yes' if the behavior in question is something like not eating or isolating or not exercising. And even though it may sometime work in the short run to use shame and judgment to get ourselves to change a behavior, in the long term - in alignment with our goal of having a more Loving relationship with ourselves so that we can be happy - it is much more powerful to take that action in a Loving way.

This involves setting a boundary for the little child inside of us, who wants instant gratification and instant relief, out of the Loving adult in us who understands the concept of delayed gratification. (If I exercise every day I will feel much better in the long run.) True pride comes from action taken. It is false pride to feel good about ourselves in comparison because of looks, talent, intelligence or for being forced to become spiritual, healthy, or sober. Those are gifts. True pride is taking credit for the action we have taken to foster, nurture, and maintain those gifts.

The way to break the self-destructive cycle, to stop the dance of shame, suffering, and self-abuse, is to set Loving boundaries for ourselves in the moment of that desperate need for immediate gratification and to know that - though it is not shameful if we can't do it perfectly or all the time - we need to 'just do it.' We need to stand up for our True Self to our wounded self in order to Love ourselves.
http://www.healthyplace.com/communit...odependent.htm