Codependency

Codependency is a universal underlying addiction that I found out about around a year after giving up the addiction (as do many others I have talked to). Just as removing the primary surface addiction reveals resentments and fears, removing some of those things then reveals codependent behaviors.  I’ve found codependent behaviors in marriage, parenting, facilitating, sponsoring, or any human relationship I’ve been involved with.

So, what is codependency? In my experience, codependency is when I am dependent on someone else for my happiness or self-worth. They, in turn, can be dependent on me for their happiness, turning it into a vicious cycle.  I can be dependent on others for my happiness because of lies that I believe.  For example, if I think that my worth and worthiness come from my wife’s opinion of me, I will feel a deep need to control her opinion.  If my worth and worthiness can be based on my relationship with God, then what other people think won’t matter, and I won’t feel a need to control them or be controlled by them.  So as my faith in Christ and His atonement increases through working my program and being in recovery, my codependence (and all other addictions) gradually lose their power over me.

In my experience, codependency has a lot to do with how I was raised and not having healthy boundaries with my family and friends. I was never taught where the other person ends and where I begin, so I’d take responsibility for their feelings and push my feelings onto them. If I was angry, it’s their fault. If they’re sad, it’s my fault and I needed to save them from their feelings. It’s a mess, but coming out of it (patiently, it takes time) is awesome!

Often, codependency can be motivated by avoiding consequences.  So a wife might control her husband, so he doesn’t act out his addiction and destroy their family.  This was satan’s argument from the beginning.  If you give people freedom, they’ll make bad choices, and bad outcomes will happen.  There could be a world of reasons to control outcomes.  Does the wife think she’s a failure or not attractive enough to hold the marriage together and make it successful?  Is she taking her husband’s problems on her own shoulders?  Codependency can be very messy because it strikes at the heart of all of our hopes, fears, and desires for our lives, and so we control those around us to protect what we think is the best future for ourselves.  I’ve found it better to have appropriate healthy boundaries and for each person in the relationship to seek God in the context of those healthy boundaries instead of reaching into each other’s areas of stewardship and trying to steer their lives for them.  Sometimes I can manipulate people with the Drama Triangle to satisfy my codependency.  It takes a lot of support and wisdom from others who have experience overcoming codependency to navigate these troubled and confusing waters most efficiently.

Perhaps a few examples will clear up this abstract idea. The wife of a person addicted to pornography could feel her self-worth disappear when her spouse acts out his addiction. Thus, her happiness is tied to his acting out or not acting out. When she is sad or angry because he has faltered, he can also become unhappy. When I need someone else to be or behave a certain way for me to be happy, I feel compelled to control their behavior to be happy.

So, a wife may feel the need to control what her husband does or experiences so that he won’t falter so that she won’t be so miserable. Knowing that his wife depends on him not acting out his addiction, a husband might decide to control her environment by not being truthful with her so she can be happy so he can be happy. I have found that control or unrighteous dominion is one result of codependency.

In one case, I personally was dependent upon my wife being in a good mood for me to be happy. She was dependent upon the kids being obedient for her to be in a good mood. Therefore, I had to control the kids to make them compliant so that my wife would be happy so that I would be happy. Once one of my kids figured out what I was doing, I stopped controlling the kids but quickly resorted to telling my wife what to do to control the kids. So, my codependency was now four levels deep: I controlled my wife to control the kids to be obedient to keep her happy so that I could be happy. Codependency can get really confusing.  I have found that the Spirit of God is not with me when I engage in the powerful addiction of codependency.

Another example is from a friend of mine in recovery.

“I was trying to have everything perfect when my husband got home so he wouldn’t be angry. So essentially, I was teaching my children that we wanted a clean house, etc., so that my husband wouldn’t be angry.  And I would find myself becoming anxious before he would get home. It has taken a long time to overcome that anxiety, and I’m working to reteach my children.  Also, making excuses for another’s ‘bad’ behavior to children or to others was another way codependency manifested itself for me.  I would also make excuses for my own behavior based on his behavior.”

And another example from another friend in recovery:

“For me, a lot of codependency shows up in wanting to control other peoples emotions. One way I see it is with my kids when we get a rule in place and I not only want them to keep the rule, but be happy about it, which simply isn’t realistic. The more I keep working at it, the more I realize that letting people FEEL the emotions they feel is one of the kindest things I can do.  Because sometimes sadness and anger are very real and need to be allowed in order to get to the other side of the emotion.

I grew up in a really loving home, but there was (still is) some passive aggressiveness and a lot of pretending to be happy when things were actually kind of sad and needed to be acknowledged as that.

Not learning how to feel difficult emotions seemed to affect my ability to show empathy to others in feeling theirs. I look at it kind of like a child trying to learn how to walk without ever learning how to crawl. Naturally, there would be some holes that developmentally need to be there.

I feel so grateful Heavenly Father took the time to go back and teach me how to “crawl” and doesn’t just always pick me up and set me on my 2 feet, skipping that step in order to help me be “happy.”

Another friend in recovery also noticed:

I grew up in a house where codependency was both modeled and enforced and took those things into my own home as an adult. The honesty, with both myself and my family, that recovery requires is helpful in unwinding much of that.

Another helpful example:

I share my feelings with others (especially my husband) in hopes that he will fix my feelings and his “bad” behavior. I’ve found that I bring in a big old bag of feelings and dump it at someone else’s feet and expect them to behave in ways to change them. And most of the time they aren’t true feelings. They are actually accusations mixed with a semi-feeling in there that is actually driven by the desire to change someone else’s behavior. “I feel annoyed when you leave a dish in the sink.” (Instead of me just saying, could you please put the dish in the dishwasher?) And when they don’t show up in the way that I would like them to, I get to feel offended and not validated because I was “vulnerable” and shared my “feelings”. I think that’s the worst part, honestly. That Satan has used it as a tool to pretend like it is building connection with others because I’m sharing my “feelings” but ultimately, it is driving more wedges between us. And ultimately, it is me trying to control others with my actions and feelings and at the root of that is codependency for me.

In the context of facilitating a 12-step group or sponsoring someone, my happiness may be dependent upon how well people in the group or my sponsee is doing or how big the group is getting or how much people in the group praise what I’m doing or how smart they think I am. If this is the case, I may feel that I must preach or give the group members a sales pitch to save them from walking away from the group meetings because of ignorance or a lack of faith in the program or in Christ. This is a particularly deadly practice as I have seen the Spirit of God leave me as a facilitator as I resorted to codependency addiction. Without the Spirit, nothing else matters. It is very easy for me as a facilitator to become a savior or salesman for the group when I’m struggling with codependency issues.

One of the main focuses of the family support groups (that go along with the 12-Step groups for the addicts) is overcoming codependency. Often, it’s easy for family members to become addicted to monitoring and trying to control the addict’s behavior because their own happiness depends on the addict’s behavior. When codependent, the family member can become miserable each time the addict falters. So, the family member, not wanting to be unhappy, will try to control or “help” the addict to not fail. From what I have learned from people who attend these family support groups, they learn to rely on God for their happiness instead of relying on the performance of an imperfect human. They become happier and less controlling because they no longer need to because their happiness comes from their dependence on God and Jesus Christ.

The only way I have found to overcome codependency is to work the steps and try to be aware of when I’m controlling and surrender my will to do that. As my faith in Christ increases, unhealthy dependence upon other people decreases, which seems to be the only way out – just like any other addiction. Still, codependency appears to permeate every relationship I have in one way or another, and I have found that escaping this addiction little by little is very rewarding and liberating.

Author: Robert

I am a recovering addict and I love to share my experience with others so they can also experience the freedom I've found. View all posts by Robert