Co-dependence is a learned behavior, rooted in shame, where the needs of others are chronically put before your own. The co-dependent lets others define who he is and sacrifices his own integrity to insure the emotional wellbeing of another. Co-dependents are caretakers and rescuers, controlling their outside world to obtain inner peace.
Where Does Co-dependency Come from?
The word "co-dependent" was coined in the late 1970s and was used to describe the person or persons whose lives were affected from being involved with someone who was chemically dependent. The co-dependent spouse or child or lover of someone who was chemically dependent was seen as having developed a pattern of coping with life that was not healthy, as a reaction to someone else’s drug abuse.
How Does This Happen?
"Co-dependence" is just a new name for an old game. Professionals had long suspected that something peculiar happened to people who were closely involved with chemically dependent people. A physical, mental, emotional and spiritual condition similar to alcoholism seemed to appear in many non-alcoholic or non-chemically dependent people who were close to an alcoholic. Later it was learned that co-dependency was triggered through relationships with people who have serious illnesses, behavior problems, or destructive compulsive disorders. So even though alcoholism in the family helps create co-dependency, many other circumstances produce it also.
What Do Co-dependents Have In Common?
One fairly common denominator is having a relationship, personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people.
But a second more common denominator seems to be the unwritten, silent rules that develop in the immediate family (or work setting) and set the pace for relationships. These rules forbid discussion about problems, open expression of feelings, and direct, honest communication.
Toxic Family / Toxic Office:
A normal, functional family is constantly in motion, adjusting and reorganizing around the changes of its members. A dysfunctional family is motionless and rigid, with no variation or change.
A functional family exists for its members. But in a dysfunctional family the members exist for the family. This is where co-dependence is born.
John Bradshaw, Ph.D., who has studied co-dependency and other aspects of the dysfunctional family, explains that co-dependence is a characteristic of an adult who is contaminated by childish dependency needs because the home in which he grew up was not able to meet them.
When children are nurtured properly, their developmental dependency needs are generally met, although never perfectly, but certainly to the degree that they emerge as normal, emotionally healthy adults. When these dependency needs are not met, children grow into adults with a child’s neediness, hence: adult children or co-dependent adults. The adult child will spend the rest of his life trying to have these needs met.
Here Are Some Common Characteristics of a Co-Dependent:
1. Co-dependents are the world’s caretakers and rescuers. They feel responsible for other people’s feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, and destinies;
2. They almost always have a low self-worth;
3. They repress their thoughts and feelings out of their conscious awareness because of fear and guilt;
4. Co-dependents obsess and feel terribly anxious about problems and people;
5. They are controlling and fear losing that control. They try to control events and people through helplessness, guilt, coercion, threats, advice-giving, manipulation or domination;
6. Co-dependents practice denial. They ignore problems, pretend that circumstances are not as bad as they are, become workaholics, compulsive spenders, and food-a-holics;
7. They have extreme dependency needs and don’t feel happy, content, or peaceful with themselves. They latch onto whoever or whatever they think can provide happiness. They desperately seek the love and approval they didn’t get as children;
8. Many co-dependents have poor communication skills. They don’t say what they mean and tap dance around their main point. They try to say what they think will please people and do what they want them to do. Co-dependents never say no. They are consummate people pleasers.
9. Co-dependents have weak boundaries. They say they won’t tolerate certain behaviors from other people. But they gradually increase their tolerance until they can tolerate and do things they said they never would;
10. Co-dependents lack trust. They don’t trust their feelings, decisions, or other people;
11. Anger is an issue for most co-dependents. They are afraid of their own anger and think those close to them will go away if anger enters the picture.
It is torturous living within the skin of a co-dependent because his mind is constantly in motion, coercing, manipulating, and trying to make himself look heroic and thereby receive the praise and acceptance he never received as a child. Only he never finds it. He is a bottomless pit of neediness.
The co-dependent will spend his entire adult life trying to "fix" his childhood deficits by picking the same kind of person as the alcoholic or dysfunctional parent who failed to meet his need for love and acceptance as a child. Subconsciously he decides that THIS time he will get it right. Sadly, this doesn’t happen. So he tries again with another archetype of his parent, and another and another.
Co-dependents Can Change:
Through reading, counseling, and application, the co-dependent can break free from his affliction. Getting his balance and keeping it once he has found it is what recovery is all about. If that sounds like a big order, don’t worry. He can do it. He can learn to live again. He can learn to love again. He can even learn to have fun at the same time.
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