The Codependency Primer... (Part II in a Series)

This post, we need to look at what motivates the codependent "giver" mindset and behavior.  In case you forgot, codependency is "people" addiction.  Not an addiction to just to any person or any group...but to certain persons or groups in certain of your own important-enough relationships.  Needless to say, neighbors can be highly codependent with one another...but they could also be superficially polite strangers.  It's all up to the parties involved exactly how and when things will go on blast codependently speaking!

As I mentioned last post, we are all capable of functioning as codependent "giver" types of people when we want to impress some person (or group!) we are interacting with....just as we are all capable of functioning as codependent "taker" types when we want to be impressed by some person (or group!).  As such, nobody is JUST a "giver" or JUST a "taker" in their codependent and important-enough relationships.  We can and do function as BOTH codependent "givers" AND codependent "takers" depending on the person or group involved and the nature of our own relationship with that person or group! Copy that.  

Here is an example of how that can look in real life.  "Gail" is a hairdresser who is married to "Shawn".  They have been married for 16 years and have two minor children.  Shawn was married before and has two grown adult children.  Gail pretty much does anything and everything Shawn asks for, because he makes the majority of their family's income...and Gail works part time at her salon since their kids were born.  

With Shawn, Gail functions most often as a codependent "giver".  What ultimately motivates Gail to "give" as she does to Shawn?  It's not genuine love or loving sacrifice, believe me.  It's her need to be ACCEPTED, APPROVED OF, and LOVED "HER WAY" by Shawn which most motivates her "giver" role towards him.  

The kind of love Gail seeks is not the kind of sacrificial love spoken of in faith-based scriptures.  Gail's desire for "love" has strings attached.  When Gail "gives" to Shawn...she wants acceptance, approval, and her own brand of "love" in return for her giving.  Because codependency is an addiction, Gail's addiction to Shawn means that she has her own expectations as to what Shawn will give her in return for being a "good enough" codependent giver towards him!  

What I am saying here is not a result of conscious thinking on Gail's part.  She merely "knows" what she wants Shawn to say or do to make her feel accepted, approved of, and "loved" her way in exchange for her giving.  Gail's brand of love has major strings and expectations attached.  Gail is the type who feels "loved" when she spends quality time with her partner.  As such, Gail wants Shawn to do things with her that Gail wants to do.  Hello!  This isn't rocket science people.  Get the book "The Five Love Languages" for more on that topic...

Meanwhile, Gail functions as quite the codependent "taker" with her self-reported best friend "Charla".  Charla has money, Charla has a nice life in Gail's estimation, and Charla is always open to treating Gail to lunches and fun excursions whenever Gail is feeling dejected, rejected, or neglected by Shawn.  Gail hasn't thought about how she "uses" Charla more often than she celebrates Charla and their friendship;  Gail only knows when she feels bad about how Shawn is treating her...she calls Charla right away to make herself feel better.  This isn't uncommon.  When we "give" as a codependent to one person...in order to maintain emotional balance in our own minds, we often "take" as a codependent from another person.  As such, someone like Gail gives and gives to her husband...yet takes and takes from her best friend.

Back to Gail and Shawn.  In Shawn's world, all he knows and knew at that time was that Gail kept bugging him about things he had absolutely NO interest in doing or pursuing with her...or for her.  "I'm not going with her to some stupid lilac festival in Timbuktu!" as he told his brother one day.  In fact, Shawn was becoming increasingly annoyed about Gail's "Honey Do" list that only seemed to get longer with each passing week!  "She wants a jacuzzi set up the garage AS IF I'm going out there in the middle of winter to soak in a tub?!  She's out of her damn mind!"  "She wants me to go with her to Kroger for groceries for God's sake!  Who does that in 2022?"  "She keeps bugging me bring her with me when I go golfing with the guys.  AS IF!"

Over time, Gail felt burned out and frustrated by Shawn's non-compliance when it came to "What I do for him...and what he has NO interest in doing for me!"  As I write this post, Gail moved on to have an affair with a guy who coached her kid's baseball team...and ultimately left Shawn in the dust for this new man. As one addiction (to Shawn) left her feeling neglected, un"loved", and misunderstood....she moved on to a new object of desire (and addiction!) hoping it would work out better for her.

Now, ten years after her second marriage took place, Gail's "coach" dumped her for someone younger and more compliant given his needs that Gail did not adequately satisfy.  Codependency knows no gender best after all!   And what about Charla?  Charla got wise to Gail and her codependent ways when Gail confessed her relationship with "coach" to Charla shortly after Gail and coach met each other.  As Charla put it, "Gail actually expected me to be happy for her having an affair with this random guy from her kid's baseball team without considering her OWN kids with Shawn...and how such a betrayal would affect her kids over time.  After I realized Gail was only interested in what made Gail feel good, I dumped her."  When I tell you that codependency and the codependent trap lifestyle is a scourge on human relationships...I am NOT kidding!

As codependent "giving" is most motivated by our need to receive ACCEPTANCE, APPROVAL, and LOVE OUR WAY by the person we are addicted to...codependent "taking" is most motivated by another set of our own needs.  What are those needs? 

Next time, what motivates the codependent "taker" within each of us!

Until next post....

The Codependency Primer...for All of Us! (Part I in a Series)

I've written about this topic so often over the past several years because it is absolutely foundational to what's wrong with the way humanity "naturally" pursues its close personal relationships.  Time to get back into the saddle here and present the facts associated with codependency, the codependent trap lifestyle, and how it messes with our minds, hearts, and spirits when it comes to achieving and maintaining authentic Into-Me-You-See (intimacy!) between any two people...

I had a church contact me pre-covid to conduct an in-serve to their care ministry staff about codependency. Since I knew I was addressing a group whose understanding of codependency would be quite varied, I had to start with the basics and work my way up from there.  As I will do here as part of this blog series.  So let's go!

Codependency is...what?  You'll get as many responses as you will people to provide them.  "It's when a person gives and gives to someone else until they burn themselves out!"  "It's when someone is such a taker and user of other people, you have to get out from under that bondage before you vaporize into oblivion!"  "I don't know what it is, but whatever it is...it makes people treat each other like crap 99% of the time!"

All of these are true statements.  Codependency is like that.  But there is so much more to it.  It is a lifestyle choice that nobody realizes they have adopted until it starts working more against them than "for" them.  Ultimately, being codependent means that one struggles with chronic feelings of hurt, anger, loneliness, guilt, shame, and confusion in the context of their close personal relationships---without knowing "why" that is!

Yes, the chronic and uncomfortable/negative BIG SIX feelings we struggle with when codependent IS a huge red flag that we may be trapped in the codependent lifestyle.

There is a saying that when you scratch the paint off an addict, what you get underneath is a codependent.  I say when you scratch the paint off of most ANYBODY, what you get underneath is a codependent also!

Codependency is an addiction.  Unlike an addiction to sex, booze, weed, shopping, or gaming...codependency represents the ULTIMATE addiction!  Why?  Because codependency is about being addicted to CERTAIN people in CERTAIN of our relationships.  When we are codependent, we become addicted to (insert name of object of desire here)...in hopes that this person will become similarly addicted to us in return.  Good luck with that *$)@ as the saying goes.  

When I used to attend a small Lutheran church in Redford many decades ago, there was an elderly couple who had been attending there since it first opened.  When you walked through the entry doors, there they were.  As informal greeters, it was like watching Tik then Tok in action.  "Good!" "Morning!"  "How are!" "You?!"  They literally spoke in half phrases and completed each other's sentences with perfect timing!  I half expected to hear "Ahh!" and then "Choo!" one day when one or the other had to sneeze.  THIS was an example of two codependent "givers" finding and falling in love with each other...and still getting along after 50+ years of marriage.  

This is an extremely rare example of how codependency can work in the context of a marriage when each party is "giving" to one another to the point of achieving eternal (enough!) bliss in their own minds.  Mutually addicted, with each other as their focus.  Don't know how their kids turned out, but that's another topic.  As Oscar Wilde once wisely stated, "The children of lovers are orphans."  Yep, I tend to think this would have been the case with this couple too.  And how do people of faith genuinely live with the idea that "God" as perceived by each of them can be relegated to the background of their lives because this mutual "But I love YOU best!" mentality with one another?!  After all, "There is a God, but He/She/Them are NOT  you---or your chosen person!"

At the other end of the spectrum, imagine being addicted to an alcoholic (typically a codependent "taker") as opposed to a fellow "giver" codependent type of human.  There is a great new book out right now that has been written by Liz Fraser.  I am in the process of reading it.  Never before have I found a confessional memoir that was so spot on about her own deep dive into codependency having fallen in love with an alcoholic.  The book is entitled "Coming Clean:  A True Story of  Love, Addiction, and Recovery."  Since the book came out, the author and her boyfriend's relationship finally ended for real and for good.  They shared a little daughter together.  SHE (their daughter) is the one I am most concerned about, as I am with any children of hard-core codependent parents.  

The trouble with being addicted to certain people in certain of our close personal relationships is that we can function as both a "giver" and as a "taker" depending on what's going on in any given moment, situation, or circumstance.  This is because we can and do flip flop between functioning as a "giver" or as a "taker" depending on how we want to either (1) impress that other person and/or (2) be impressed by that other person we are interacting with.  As such, nobody is JUST a codependent "giver" or JUST a codependent "taker"!  We are both!  All of us are both givers and takers depending on our motives in the moment with any given person we interact with.

So, lesson #1.  Codependency and the codependent trap lifestyle is based on our addiction to certain people in certain of our close personal relationships.  One spouse addicted to the other.  A grandma who addicted to her oldest male grandson.  A mother addicted to her only daughter.  A teenager addicted to her Youth Pastor at church.  It doesn't matter who is addicted to who here;  it's the people addiction mentality that is the scourge itself!

People who have come to see me believing they have complex PTSD because of "abuse" rarely consider codependency as the ultimate reason why they have been traumatized repeatedly over the course of their childhoods and/or adult lives.  When we are addicted to someone else who doesn't care...or we are the object of someone else's addiction when we don't care---we have to wonder how we get all messed up mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, and spiritually over this dynamic?  We shouldn't!  

Next time, what MOST motivates and drives codependent thought, feeling, and behavior!

Until next post...

DARVO...and Other Realities of Malignant Relationships

What is DARVO?  It is an acronyn that means the following:

Deny

Attack

Reverse 

Victim

Offender

What the heck does that mean?  It means that when we confront someone about something they have said or done that we find personally or professionally offensive, the other person will launch into DARVO mode.  How so?  They will "D" deny what it is you are confronting them about, then they will "A" attack you for even bringing up the issue to them directly.  Next, they will "R" reverse the roles between you by now making themselves the "V" victim (because you confronted them)...and you the "O" offender.

DARVO isn't a new concept.  It's been around for as long as humanity has been busy avoiding personal and/or professional responsibility for their own transgressions.  After all, it takes emotional maturity to recognize and then take responsibility for our own harmful behavior(s)!  Even toddlers know how to DARVO when mommy confronts them.  "Billy!  Where is the cookie that was right here?" "I not take mommy!  You eat cookie not me!"  Wow, DARVO in action at age three...

Decades ago, I was watching a video where a maid was caught stealing from the rooms she cleaned at a local hotel.  When confronted by the police and shown the video, what was her response?  "That's not me!  You people are crazy!  You think all of us look alike anyway!"  (Massive DARVO moment!)

Nobody has to go to school to learn DARVO.  Yet DARVO is the most common way to gaslight someone else.  As a reminder, gaslighting is the practice of manipulating another person's reality so that they will see things the way you are instructing them to, rather than trusting their own judgment.  There has been a lot written about gaslighting.  One of the more popular books is "The Gaslight Effect" by Dr. Robin Stern.  It's an oldie, but a goodie.  Too many of us are easily swayed by others when it comes to the strategies people employ (like DARVO as part of gaslighting) to emotionally abuse others.  By the way, emotional abuse IS the number one form of abuse amongst us.  Think about that.  

Avoiding responsibility is a relational lifestyle for way too many of us these days.  "It's YOUR fault that I......"  (Blah blah blah-de-blah!)  Well, what do you expect when codependency is the cultural lifestyle of choice for the vast majority of our country today?  When we allow ourselves to expect others to make sure we are "o.k." before WE ourselves do what's necessary to make sure we are o.k. (legally, morally, and ethically that is!)...we've just dipped ourselves into the dung so to speak.  People do NOT exist to eat or be eaten by others...use or used by others....or treated like objects rather than equals.  Yet we have gone so far up one another's behinds in the name of "real love", we have completely lost our ability to see daylight!

Codependency is people addiction.  It is the ultimate addiction.  A mother who is addicted to her favorite son or daughter.  A grandmother addicted to her grandchildren.  A wife addicted to her husband.  When we are codependent, we put up with DARVO like it's our job when the offender is that same person we are addicted to!

When will we ever learn...?

Next time you experience a DARVO moment with someone, try responding as follows:

"Last time I checked, I'm not the one who (insert offensive behavior here).  You were.  And while you are at it, look up DARVO online.  Get yourself educated."

(Well, that's what I'd say at least!)  ;-)  Until next post...