"As I explore CoDA meetings here in San
Diego, what I am seeing is many people - who have gone to meetings for
years - that only have a rudimentary intellectual understanding of codependence.
They do not actually know how to live codependency recovery in their lives
because they have not gone beyond simply working the 12 steps. Working
the 12 steps of CoDA is not enough to help people actually start living
in the solution - to stop giving the past the power to dictate how they are
living today. The meetings are structured in such a way that the sharing
stays almost exclusively on an intellectual level - and anyone challenging
the structure is seen as "threatening the Unity of the group." It is
very sad to me that there is so little actual codependency recovery in the
CoDA meetings I have attended here."
"It is also sad to me, that many people
who attend CoDA are as closed minded as people in AA - and are not
even open to searching the internet for resources because they think they
have to do recovery strictly according to the 12 steps. Unfortunately
the 12 steps of CoDA as written do not address the core issues."
"In the early to mid 90s, codependence was the
hot buzz word and people were flocking to CoDA meetings. CoDA - Co-Dependents
Anonymous - began in the fall of 1986 in Phoenix Arizona. By the
time I went to Treatment (30 days in the Desert) in spring of 1988 there
were between 15 and 20 CoDA meetings in the state of California. (All the
meetings were listed on 1 side of one sheet of paper. LA County where I lived
at the time, had 3 meetings.) When I moved from the Central Coast
back to Taos in the summer of 1992, there were 18 meetings a week in San
Luis Obispo county alone - 3 in Cambria which I had started. When I
moved back to the Central Coast in late 1995 there were only 3 meetings in
SLO county. Now there is one.
This is a trend that has occurred pretty much
across the country. It happened for a variety of reasons in my understanding."
"Another problem with CoDA was that it adapted most of it's literature
almost word for word from AA - which left it with a version of the 12 steps
that isn't really too accurate in describing the process of codependence
recovery - as well as other literature which didn't really apply."
This is a trend that has occurred pretty
much across the country. It happened for a variety of reasons in
my understanding.
One is that people hit the second level of powerlessness
(see 1,2, 3, 1, 2, 3, article about 12 steps) where it was necessary to
do the emotional healing - and they didn't know how to do it. They
did not have a framework in which to do the inner child healing. That
is why one of the testimonials for my book said that I had taken inner child
healing to the next level, because that is what my work is - the next level
that people were missing, a framework to do the emotional healing.
People really didn't know an effective way of doing the grief work and integrating
themselves as an empowered adult.
A second is that CoDA meetings were run by codependents. Many
of those codependents were rigid and controlling. Some were people
pleasers and rescuers. Others were irresponsible and unable to make
a commitment. The ones that were willing to commit to be the secretary
of a meeting were more often than not the controllers and people pleasers.
The controlling people tended to try to control and ended up chasing people
away. The people pleasers didn't have good boundaries and ended up
feeling used. For some people it was a mark that they were getting
healthier when they stopped being the secretary of a meeting. Without
a secretary who will show up to unlock the door and make sure the meeting
takes place, meetings die out very fast.
The very nature of codependence recovery worked against the movement.
AA has always had lots of codependents to do service work (opening meetings,
making coffee, literature, etc.) - in CoDA the codependents who got healthy
enough started letting go of keeping meetings going for the sake of others
who weren't responsible enough to make a commitment. Meetings started
disappearing.
In addition, during the early to mid 90s when lots of CoDA meetings
sprang up, what happened was a lot of lonely, hurting people came together
in one place. That led to a lot of dysfunctional relationships with
other people in CoDA - which led to break ups that made people feel uncomfortable
to go to meetings "they" might be at. (What I saw happen over and
over again, was both people in an ex-relationship avoiding meetings out of
fear of the other being there, so that both people stopped coming.)
Problems didn't just occur in romantic relationships. Because
of not having people with long term recovery to learn from and as role models,
because of not having a healthy framework within which to do the emotional
healing, many people got way out of balance. People made friendships in CoDA
and then ended up feeling betrayed and abandoned by other CoDA members.
It was not at all unusual for people to use "being honest with their feelings"
as an excuse for abusing other people.
Some of the people that claimed to have been in recovery the longest
were often the most controlling and abusive. When I first moved to
Santa Barbara there was a guy there who claimed to have 9 years in recovery
and thought of himself as the grand old man of Santa Barbara CoDA.
It evidently really upset him when I started two new meetings there because
he had not been able to keep a meeting going. The first time I ever
met this guy, he came up to me after the meeting and asked if he could share
something with me - and then proceeded to criticize how I shared in a meeting.
This is a gross violation of the traditions and principles of 12 step recovery,
and showed me just how screwed up this guy was in his control issues.
It is usually a warning signal when someone in recovery asks if they can
share something with you - it usually means they are about to blast you in
the name of being honest about their feelings. It is bullshit and codependence
at it's worst, and I saw way too much of it.
Another problem with CoDA was that it adapted most of it's literature
almost word for word from AA - which left it with a version of the 12 steps
that isn't really too accurate in describing the process of codependence
recovery - as well as other literature which didn't really apply.
The thing that AA had going for it when it first started, and still does,
it that it deals with a black and white issue. You drink or you don't
drink. Codependence recovery is not black and white - and in fact,
is a lot about getting away from black and white thinking. This is
an inherent difficulty in structuring the program. People with time
in recovery in other programs came into CoDA and wanted to make it just as
rigid as the programs they came from. People who had no clue what recovery
was about when they first came to CoDA, were looking for someone to tell
them how to do it "right." As CoDA grew the controllers won out and
made it more rigid. I passed up the opportunity to have my story in
the CoDA Big Book because I was so unhappy with how things were evolving.
And still CoDA meetings were a most important part of my recovery.
I wish there were more available to attend now. I hope that someday
there is a renaissance of CoDA . . . . ."
My Unfolding Process - May 2000
- The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the
dance of one wounded soul
