Co-dependency and Addiction
...ailed attempts in controlling the behavior of her father, she will either give up or resort to using a different approach or strategy, manipulation over her father’s behavior(s). Regardless of what may be seemingly obvious, to any observer outside the father/ daughter relationship, it has blinded the daughter from the truth, claiming yet another victim. In fact, the cycle of addiction crosses into another person’s life very subtly, often without notice. The actions of the father are entirely out of his daughter’s control, thus, unpredictable. Additionally, she lost her sense of herself in her father, presently trapped in a guessing game. This may be her foundation for co-dependency, as well as the motive in gaining her wants, needs, and desires from everyone other than her self. This too, will lead to constant struggles for her future relationships, especially those involving men. In conclusion, the inability to trust and depend upon one self destroys the essential strength for healthy relationships. In order for children to learn how to stand up for their beliefs, the behaviors of the child’s family must represent and portray just that. In order for a child to learn how to, not only say the word “no”, but to also mean it, the parent’s personal boundaries must be exercised and reinforced. Children that are spoiled rotten, or “loved too much” are often just as co-dependent as orphans or foster care children. For a parent or elder to demonstrate consistency and respect, self-respect, trust, and love must be within. Otherwise, validity doesn’t exist. Schaef (1986), author of Codependence: Misunderstood, Mistreated, believes addiction is a “family disease” in other words, “The entire family is affected and each member plays a role in helping the disease perpetuate itself.”(9). A relationship addiction is born in dysfunction, in not recognizing the preciousness of children and not teaching gentleness and respect for life, of not modeling healthy boundaries and in giving up the ability to impact toward sanity, peace, care, and spirituality. Co-dependency and enabling behaviors are correlated and often the enabling is caused by co-dependent construct of enmeshment. Although correlated, co-dependency and enabling are viewed as different conditions. An enabler is someone that is “consciously aware” of the use, misuse, and abuse of a substance of another, though, supports the continued substance use and abuse. In other words, the enabler has his/her head in the sand, versus attempting to control or prevent this behavior. This person is often held accountable for protecting the guilty person from penalties that in the end would have transpired exclusive of the manipulations by the enabler. An example of an enabler, regarding alcoholism, the booklet The Family Enablers (Johnson Institute, 1987), is defined as any person who “reacts to an alcohol-dependent person in such a way as to shield the alcoholic from experiencing the full impact of the harmful consequences of alcoholism” (p. 5) and/or drug addiction. Any person who is directly involved with the addict/alcoholic can be the enabler: a sibling, parent, teacher, friend, or business associate. Impaired personal boundaries are prevalent in mental illness, co-dependency, and addiction. There is a link between overly open, permeable personal boundaries to schizophrenia, affective disorders, borderline personality and codependency. Impaired overly open personal boundaries often result from inadequate individuation, lack of personal differentiation, enmeshed and/or addictive families. Webster's dictionary defines "boundary" as something that indicates, fixes, decides and/or determines a limit. Scott (1988) cites geographic-structural boundaries such as fences, or limits set on ideas, limits set on a child’s behavior by parents, and boundaries used in systems theory to define open and closed systems. Scott (1988) defines boundary as a “dynamic line of demarcation separating an individual’s internal (body, mind, and spirit) and external environment and varying in permeability and flexibility.” (24). Permeability describes how open or closed the boundary is, whereas flexibility explains the person’s ability to move back and forth from open to closed boundaries and vice versa depending on specific situations. A person with boundaries that are ajar may display behaviors such as: being overly talkative, having a short attention span, and frequently sharing self with others. In contrast, a person with closed personal boundaries is likely to be excessively protective of secrets and personal space, tends to isolate and prefers silence. Co-dependency is not always about a relationship with an addict/alcoholic, but the absence of relationship with self. A co-dependent relationship with a person or pattern of behavior is just as addictive as a substance, in part due to the external reinforcements and reward potentials. Robert Westermeyer, Ph.D. claims, “not only is all caring manifested by the spouse of an addict/alcoholic deemed pathological, but the very act of compromising one’s needs to aid a loved one is now deemed symptomatic of a progressive disease processes, a relationship addiction.” Co-dependency can be an over-involvement in relationships with others, or it can be the avoidance of relationship altogether. Independence is the opposite side of coin of co-dependence. A co-dependent person may adopt a state of independence. A person who isolates from relationships is in as much pain as a person who becomes lost in relationships. The avoidance of relationships may stem from the fear of over-involvement, the fear of intimacy, the fear of abandonment or the fear of losing too much of oneself in a relationship. In reaction to co-dependence many people become counter-dependent while rejecting dependency in themselves and others. Counter-dependence is a much more aggressive battle with the self than independence, usually accompanied by more isolation and chaos, and often contributed to having been over-controlled in the past. Counter-dependence is displayed in rebellious behaviors against authority, intimacy, and law. Adolescents, for example, become counter-dependent because of their curiosity, creativity, or being has been repressed or abusively controlled. Bill W., founder of A.A., defines repression as, “the involuntary blocking out of our conscious minds unwanted, painful, or undesirable memories.” The consequences of repression are evident in a reactive co-dependent. For instance, a counter-dependent may display a false sense of power, but is not self-empowering and tends to destroy the power of others. The majority of acting out is counter-dependence. A relationship addiction or co-dependency, is identical to an addiction to drugs and/or alcohol, work, sex, and is a life-long illness that does not go away, rather goes into remission or recovery. The concept of cross-addiction states that once a person is addicted to one substance, the person is addicted to all substances. Therefore, if the addict/alcoholic wants to get help, complete abstinence from any and all “habit-forming” substances needs to be the starting point for treatment. The disease of addiction is linked to having a disease of the mind, consequently, co-dependents are equally as bankrupt as addicts/alcoholics, and in order to have healthier relationships in the future, both must learn how to take care of the “self.” By healing the “shame-based core” one is able to discover the origin in addiction. (Beattie, 1987). Co-dependency impacts all aspects of one’s life, although discrete, the progressive nature of the disease ultimately impinges upon one’s financial, physical, occupational, emotional, social, and spiritual abilities. It contributes the greatest amount of strain on a pre-existing stressor in one or more aspects of a person’s life. For instance, if the person is struggling in their marriage, place of employment, school, mental, physical and/or spiritual health, the impact of co-dependency will coincide with the extraordinary degree of distraction, focused on none other than the co-dependents obsession. In order for change to transpire, the person needs to redirect the focus towards oneself and begin herself, making the changes necessary to achieve inner-peace, trust, fulfillment, and hopefulness. Once the healing process of recovery takes over, the precious gift of trusting the self will lead to automatic differences affecting every aspect of the person’s life. Someone once said when asked, “How do you change the world?” “You start by changing yourself and the people among you will begin to change too.” However, not everyone is ready to take a good look at themselves, so a self-sufficient person will have the proper tools to decide if the relationship is healthy or not. Unfortunately, falling back into old patterns of behaviors is just as likely as an addict/alcoholic is to use, in other words, relapse. A relapse is always forewarned and distinctively marked by “stinking thinking” and behaviors that are directly linked to the diseased mind of addiction. Co-dependency occurs in all dysfunctional families. Targeting families with addiction, neglect, abandonment, abuse, victimization, dishonesty, unpredictability and denial while affecting all levels of our society. Defense mechanisms are typically displayed as means of convincing others the lie we fell victim to. John Bradshaw believes that, to some degree, all families are dysfunctional. Children who are hurt, neglected, abused and traumatized tend to continue this cycle, not only toward themselves and their children, but toward their physical environment as well. In other words, children who have been hurt will hurt their surroundings. For example, a violent offender may only be guilty of modeling the behavior/s of a parent or sibling, although the conviction is concurrent with substance abuse. The substance abuse may only be an indicator of the person’s attempt to gain control, thus the precedent is not symbolic of underlying problems or the driving force within. The effects of co-dependency are directly and/or indirectly one and the same when compared with effects of drug addiction and alcoholism on our lives, organizations, government and culture. Co-dependency is a cultural issue that manifests itself as a chronic syndrome in certain individuals and organizations. In reference to the likelihood of bad things happening to us, psychologist Neil Weinstein points out how common it is for us to think, “it won’t happen to me.” This psychological self-protection leads certain individuals in society to allow their ego to play a major part. In fact, people who feel superior over other cultures in society, consistently draw wrong conclusions and apply the findings incorrectly. This self-serving bias may especially hold true where being vulnerable to risk of addiction implies personal failure-for example, the risk of depression, suicide, alcoholism, or drug addiction (Weinstein, 1989). “If you admit you’re at risk,” says Weinstein, “you’re admitting that you can’t handle stress. You’re not as strong as the next person.” A sense of helplessness accompanied by an unwillingness to make necessary changes is perpetuated by the dependent nature of addiction. Ironically, the hidden, u...