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...