A Definition of Codependence
"Codependence is a primary, progressive, chronic, fatal, and treatable
disease which is caused by being raised in an emotionally dishonest,
Spiritually hostile environment. The primary environment is the family
system which is part of the larger emotionally dishonest and dysfunctional
society which is part of a civilization that is based on false beliefs
about the nature and purpose of being human.
Codependence is characterized by dependence on outer or external sources
for self-worth and self-definition. This outer or external dependence,
combined with unhealed childhood emotional wounds which get reactivated
whenever an emotional "button" is pushed, cause the Codependent to live
life in reaction to, give power over self-esteem to, outside sources."
- Codependence Defined
We live in societies that are only a few generations removed from
the belief that children and women were property. And not much farther
removed from so called "civilized societies" that saw nothing wrong with
slavery and genocide.
Human beings have been being abused in all ways, including emotionally,
by the belief systems of Patriarchal, Spiritually hostile (hostile to
the idea that we are all connected and have equal Divine worth), emotionally
dishonest civilizations for many generations.
"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.
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."
(All quotes in this color are from Codependence:
The Dance of Wounded Souls)
Our parents were emotionally abused in childhood because their parents
were emotionally abused in childhood. Our parents were our role
models who taught us how to relate to ourselves and our own emotions.
We learned to relate to ourselves as emotional beings from the role modeling
of the adults we came in contact with and the messages we got from the
way they treated us - as well as the messages we got from cultural sources
ranging from fairy tales to religion.
"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."
"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.
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."
"The dance that we learn as children - the repression
and distortion of our emotional process in reaction to the attitudes
and behavior patterns we adopt to survive in an emotionally repressive,
Spiritually hostile environment - is the dance we keep dancing as adults.
We are driven by repressed emotional energy. We live life in reaction
to childhood emotional wounds. We keep trying to get the healthy attention
and affection, the healthy love and nurturing, the being-enhancing validation
and respect and affirmation, that we did not get as children. This dysfunctional
dance is Codependence. It is Adult Child Syndrome. It is the tune that
humans have been dancing to for thousands of years. Vicious, self-perpetuating
cycles of self-destructive behavior."
The most destructive emotional abuse is the emotional abuse we learned
to inflict upon ourselves. We formed our core relationship with
self in early childhood and have been judging and shaming ourselves ever
since. The most destructive thing about the emotional abuse we
suffered because our parents were wounded, was that we incorporated the
messages we got from their behavior into our relationship with self.
We emotionally abuse ourselves on a daily basis. If we had healthy
self esteem we would not allow anyone to emotionally abuse us - including
ourselves.
"When we were 3 or 4 we couldn't look around us and say, "Well,
Dad's a drunk and Mom is real depressed and scared - that is why it
feels so awful here. I think I'll go get my own apartment."
Our parents were our higher powers. We were not capable of understanding
that they might have problems that had nothing to do with us.
So it felt like it was our fault.
We formed our relationship with ourselves and life in early childhood.
We learned about love from people who were not capable of loving in a
healthy way because of their unhealed childhood wounds. Our core
/ earliest relationship with our self was formed from the feeling that
something is wrong and it must be me. At the core of our being is
a little kid who believes that he/she is unworthy and unlovable. That
was the foundation that we built our concept of "self" on. . . . . .History
has been, and is being, made by immature, scared, angry, hurt individuals
who were/are reacting to their childhood wounds and programming - reacting
to the little child inside who feels unworthy and unlovable." - Loving the Wounded Child Within
We not only were trained to be emotionally dishonest and emotionally
abusive to ourselves - we learned concepts that set us up for more emotional
abuse. One of the most damaging of those dysfunctional concepts
was what we were taught about love in childhood.
"I don't remember how the particular insight that I am writing
about here came about - whether I heard it, or read it, or just had
the thought occur (which would mean, to me, that it was a message from
my Higher Self/Higher Power - of course any of those methods would be
a message from my Higher Power.) In any case, this particular insight
struck me with great force. Like most great insights, it was amazingly
simple and obvious. It was to me earth shattering/paradigm busting
in it's impact. The insight was:
If someone loves you, it should feel like they love you.
What a concept! Obvious, logical, rational, elementary -
like 'duh' of course it should.
I had never experienced feeling loved consistently in my closest relationships.
Because my parents did not know how to Love themselves, their behavior
towards me had caused me to experience love as critical, shaming, manipulative,
controlling, and abusive. Because that was my experience of love
as a child - that was the only type of relationship I was comfortable with
as an adult. It was also, and most importantly, the relationship
that I had with myself.
In order to start changing my relationship with myself, so that I could
start changing the type of relationships I had with other people, I had to
start focusing on trying to learn the True nature of Love.
This, I believe, is the Great Quest that we are on. Anyone in
recovery, on a healing/Spiritual path, is ultimately trying to find
their way home to LOVE - in my belief. LOVE is the Higher Power - the
True nature of the God-Force/Goddess Energy/Great Spirit. LOVE
is the fabric from which we are woven. LOVE is the answer.
And in order to start finding my way home to LOVE - I first had to
start awakening to what Love is not. Here are a few things that
I have learned, and believe, are not part of the True nature of Love.
Love is not:
Critical
Shaming
Abusive
Controlling
Manipulative
Demeaning
Humiliating
Separating
Discounting
Diminishing
Belittling
Negative
Traumatic
Painful most of the time
etc.
Love is also not an addiction. It is not taking a hostage
or being taken hostage. The type of romantic love that I learned
about growing is a form of toxic love. The "I can't smile without
out you," "Can't live without you." "You are my everything," "You are not
whole until you find your prince/princess" messages that I learned in relationship
to romantic love in childhood are not descriptions of Love - they are
descriptions of drug of choice, of someone who is a higher power/false
god.
Additionally, Love is not being a doormat. Love does not entail
sacrificing your self on the altar of martyrdom - because one cannot
consciously choose to sacrifice self if they have never Truly had a self
that they felt was Lovable and worthy. If we do not know how to Love
our self, how to show respect and honor for our self - then we have no
self to sacrifice. We are then sacrificing in order to try to prove
to ourselves that we are lovable and worthy - that is not giving from
the heart, that is codependently manipulative, controlling, and dishonest.
Unconditional Love is not being a self-sacrificing doormat - Unconditional
Love begins with Loving self enough to protect our self from the people
we Love if that is necessary. Until we start Loving, honoring, and
respecting our self, we are not Truly giving - we are attempting
to take self worth from others by being compliant in our behavior
towards them." - The True Nature of Love - what Love is not
Any kind of physical, verbal, mental, sexual abuse is also emotionally
abusive. Any attitudes or behaviors that convey a message that
the other is less than a being who deserves to be treated with respect
and dignity - including objectifying and stereotyping - are emotionally
abusive.
The overt forms of abuse are often much more readily identifiable than
the more covert forms. It is relatively easy for most people to
see that raging and yelling are emotionally abusive. That name
calling and verbal put downs are emotionally abusive. It
can be hard to identify some of the more passive aggressive forms as being
just as wounding - as being abusive and damaging.
"Passive-aggressive behavior is the expression of anger indirectly.
This happens because we got the message one way or another in childhood
that it was not OK to express anger. Since anger is energy that
can not be completely repressed it gets expressed in indirect ways.
This takes the form one way or another, overtly or subtly, of us acting
out the Codependent battle cry "I'll show you - I'll get me." As
a kid I was very angry at my mother for not protecting me or herself from
my father - but it was not ok to be angry at my mother so I was passive-aggressive
in various ways. One was to not show any feelings. By
the time I was 7 or 8, I was being cool in a passive-aggressive response
to her attempts to be close to me - I would not let her touch me, I would
not show happiness if something good happened or pain if something bad happened.
I would just say "it's ok" no matter how much it wasn't. I also "showed"
her and my dad by not getting the type of grades as I was capable of getting
in school. I have spent much of my life sabotaging myself to get
back at them.
Passive-aggressive behavior can take the form of sarcasm, procrastination,
chronic lateness, being a party pooper, constantly complaining, being
negative, offering opinions and advice that is not asked for, being the
martyr, slinging arrows ("whatever have you done to your hair", "gained
a little weight haven't we?"), etc. If we don't know how to set boundaries
or will go along with anything to avoid conflict, then we often will agree
to doing things we don't want to do - and as a result we will not be happy
doing them and will get back at the other person somehow, someway because
we are angry at them for "making" us do something we don't want to do.
A classic codependent scenario is being asked where you want to eat and
saying "oh, I don't care, wherever you want to" and then being angry because
they take us somewhere we don't like. We think they should be able
to read our mind and know we don't want to do whatever. Typically, in relationships,
one partner will ask the other to do something and the person who can't
say "I don't want to do that" will agree to do it and then not do
it. This will result in nagging and scolding which will cause more
anger and passive-aggressive behavior.
The way to stop being passive-aggressive is to start being honest (first
of all with ourselves), having boundaries (the more we get in touch with
our inner children the more we can have boundaries with the angry ones that
are causing us to be passive-aggressive), saying no when we don't want to
do something. It is easier said than done. On one level what we
are doing is recreating our childhood dynamics of being criticized by our
parents. It is because at our core we feel unworthy and unlovable
that we have relationships - romantic, friendship, work - where we will be
criticized and given the message that we are bad or wrong. Because we
don't Love our self we need to manifest people outside of ourselves that will
be our critical parent - then we can resent them, feel victimized, and be
passive-aggressive. They are in fact just a reflection of how we treat
ourselves internally. The more we can learn to defend ourselves internally
from the critical parent voice the more we will find that we don't want critical
people in our lives." - Q &
A 7
If we had a parent in childhood who criticized and shamed us -
that was emotionally abusive esteem mutilation. If the other parent
did not protect us from the verbal abuse (or physical, or whatever), then
they were also being emotionally abusive to us through their role modeling
- and through abrogating their responsibility as a parent. As a young
child the only "normal" we know, is what we are experiencing. Growing
up in an emotionally abusive environment sets us up to be attracted to emotionally
abusive people and situations in adult life.
Emotional abuse is a devastating, debilitating heart and soul mutilation.
Bruises to the body fade away, bruises to the heart and soul stay - until
we start focusing the Light of healing upon them. Emotional abuse
is crippling to self-esteem and sets us up to become trapped in the viscous
self-perpetuating cycles of shame, suffering, and self-abuse that drive
the dynamics of the dysfunctional dance that is codependency.
It is vital to start learning how to protect ourselves. It is
vital to start realizing that emotional abuse is not acceptable - that we
deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. In order to do that,
we need to start learning how to treat ourselves in kinder, gentler ways
- we need to start learning how to be Loving to our self.
Realizing that we have been emotionally abused is the beginning
of a recovery process that involves growth, change, and healing in our
relationship with our self. There are a myriad of different facets
and levels that are involved in our internal relationships - with our own
emotions, bodies, minds, gender, sexuality, etc. In an attempt to
shed some Light on what to do once you become aware of emotional abuse, I
have written a new page - the first of a series of articles - on Emotional Honesty & Emotional Responsibility.
3-15-01: As part of this series of articles I have now posted an article
on Setting Boundaries (One that maybe should have been the first one
in the series instead of the third.) You can access it at Setting Boundaries.
