The Co-Dependent Parent

You may be co-dependent if:
*you scratch yourself when your spouse itches, while failing to notice the skin cancer growing on your own arm.
*you spend every waking hour obsessing about and micromanaging your child's life, while your own needs are ignored.
*you feel like you and your mother have merged into a single person, and you can't separate your opinions from hers.
*you flip from one emotional extreme to another, depending on how someone else is doing today.
*you feel that if you could only find the right buttons to push, someone else's life would magically be transformed.

The concept of co-dependency is a relatively recent development in psychological thinking. It began in the field of chemical dependency, where the spouse or other significant person in an alcoholic's life was referred to as a "co-alcoholic", or "enabler". It was discovered that successful treatment of the co-dependent was just as likely to result in recovery for the addict, as treating the addict. Without the shock absorption provided by the co-dependent, the consequences of the addiction become increasingly painful and compelling, hastening the process of hitting bottom and making the choice to live rather than die.

At first, it was assumed that the addict's behavior caused co-dependent symptoms in significant others. However, when the addict becomes clean and sober, the co-dependent behavior of the family tends to continue as before. Unless the other participants in the dependency game choose to confront and change their own emotions and behavior, they find the new situation intolerable and start looking for a new addict to attach themselves to.

As therapists started looking for the hidden causes behind this baffling phenomenon, they realized that, in most cases, the co-dependency predated the addict's chemical abuse. Co-dependents are programmed in childhood to behavior patterns that dovetail with the emotional profile of an addict.

According to Pia Mellody, a high-profile psychotherapist and writer, the five core symptoms of co-dependency are:
1. Difficulty experiencing appropriate levels of self-esteem. (We are either the royalty of the universe, or a useless piece of excrement.)
2. Difficulty setting functional boundaries. (We are either enmeshed with others, or separated from them by thick walls which allow no intimacy.)
3. Difficulty owning and expressing our own reality. (We have been told what to think and feel so often that we are unable to think our own thoughts or feel our own feelings.)
4. Difficulty taking care of our own adult needs and wants. (We expect someone else to read our minds and provide what we need. We can't get what we want because we don't have any idea what that might be, so we concentrate on trying to get what we think we should want.)
5. Difficulty experiencing our reality moderately. (Life is a roller coaster of extremes.)

Virtually everyone experiences these symptoms occasionally, especially in relation to certain people. However, when they are a dominant pattern in our lives, the result is a chaotic mess of misery.

The relevance to child rearing is not difficult to see. A child whose role models are co-dependent will consider that behavior normal, because they lack the resources to think about it critically. When they grow up, they will engage in co-dependent behavior in their adult lives, perpetuating the curse.

If the parents are co-dependent with their children, they will try to live through them instead of managing their own lives and taking care of their own needs. The children will feel guilty for "making" Mom or Dad unhappy, and entertain delusions of grandeur, imagining that they have vast powers over others. They also learn the cardinal rules of a dysfunctional household. Don't think your own thoughts. Don't feel your own feelings. Don't trust your own perceptions. And above all, don't tell anyone what is going on.

A parent with severe emotional wounds is not capable of raising healthy children. The children will become shock absorbers between the parents and reality, and pay the price the rest of their lives.

Personality disorders, including co-dependency, are treatable. Learned behavior patterns can be unlearned. The road to recovery begins in pain and demands a great deal of courage and hard work. However, the rewards are worth it, for this generation as well as the ones to follow.

Whose Mistake is it, Anyway?

I recognized myself in this story, told by Sheila Fabricant Linn in the book Belonging, and pray that I have made as much progress as she has. She commissioned a jeweler to recast her mother's ring for her own wedding. The first version was unsatisfactory, so she sent it back. The second version, which arrived two days before the wedding, was even worse -- not only did Sheila dislike it, but the stones kept digging into the side of her fingers.

"So, the day after the wedding we returned it once more. From then on, I noticed that every time the phone rang, I was afraid the jeweler was calling to yell at me for bothering her again. I was acting as if it were my fault that she had not made the ring correctly.

"Finally she did call to tell me they were ready to mail the ring. She spoke to me in a very loving way, and apologized for not having made the ring as I wanted it the first or second time. I realized what I had been doing. We had hired her, we were paying for her work, she had made a mistake . . . and I was acting as if I needed to make amends to her.

"Years ago, I would not even have sent that ring back. I would have taken the consequences of another's mistake and worn something for the rest of my life that I did not like. So, even asking the jeweler to redo the ring was a step toward making aments to myself for all the times in the past when I took the consequences of other people's mistakes. Realizing how I had been blaming myself for the jeweler's mistake, I tried to make further amends to myself by appreciating the way I had held out for what I really wanted. I do that again each time I look at my ring and let myself enjoy how it feels exactly right for me."

While I was typing this, I remembered an incident from early motherhood. Andy -- still a pre-schooler -- bought a box of plastic pre-historic figurines. They weren't expensive from an adult point of view, but they represented a substantial investment for him. As soon as he got into the car, he tore open his purchase and discovered that one package of figurines was missing.

As he grieved over the loss, I sat in the car with the engine running, clutching the steering wheel. All I wanted to do was put my vehicle in gear and get the hell out of there. Then I said to myself,

I'LL BE DAMNED IF I LET HIM TURN OUT LIKE ME!

I shut off the engine and explained to my son that when we buy something in a store and there is something wrong with it, we can take it back and ask the people who sold it to us to fix the mistake. He was surprised and happy to hear that. We marched back into the store together. I let him handle the transaction himself because I was sure he could do it better than I could. He trusted that justice would be done, and I didn't. His explanation was so charming that he got not only what he asked for, but an additional package of figurines.

It would have been so easy for me to tell my son to stop whining and appreciate what he got. But that was a message I had heard too often as a child. I was still, at age thirty-something, absorbing the consequences of other people's mistakes instead of holding them accountable.

The good people of the Christian church tend to support unassertive behaviour, labelling it "forgiveness". But it is not loving to support other people's mistakes, unintentional or otherwise. We each need to own our deficiencies before we can experience grace and grow through it. Forgiveness is a divine act of grace, but we can't honestly offer it to others unless we first admit that we were wronged.