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Life Ways Co-Dependence: By its nature, alcoholism creates victims. What many people fail to realize, however, is that not all the victims are those who suffer from chemical addiction; they include the persons closely related to the alcoholic. The understanding of alcoholism as a "family disease" has received greater focus within the last two decades. Attention has shifted slightly from the alcoholic, to draw into the picture those members of the family who have somehow been emotionally affected by a loved one's pattern of addiction. Their behavior has been impaired to the point that they themselves have become "enablers" of the addictive relationship. Their own neediness feeds upon the alcoholic's need of them. They are co-dependent. While co-dependent behavior is adopted as a means of "survival" within a dysfunctional family system, and is the result of someone else's addiction, those in the fields of treatment and recovery have become increasingly aware that co-dependence is itself a form of addiction. What does being "co-dependent" mean? In simple yet poignant terms, those who have acknowledged their co-dependence give voice to the illness: "Co-dependency means that I'm a caretaker." "It means I'm always looking for someone to glob onto." "Co-dependency is knowing all your relationships will either go on and on the same way (painfully), or end the same way (disastrously). Or both."2 Melody Beattie, author of the popular book Co-Dependent No More, further notes that a co-dependent person struggles with the overriding obsession to control the addict's behavior. Paradoxically, the more control one tries to gain over another person's addiction, the more out of control everything--including the co-dependant's own behavior--becomes. How is co-dependence caused? According to Anne Wilson Schaef, author of Co-Dependence: Misunderstood-Mistreated, co-dependence is a disease which "grows out of" another disease process--as she calls it, "the addictive process."3 Schaef defines addiction as a lack of control over the use of any substance or process. So, while "addiction" was formerly understood to mean the abuse of or dependence on alcohol, its definition has expanded to include a wider range of dependences: on food, work, sex, etc. Approximately ten million people in the United States are alcoholic. Moreover, it has been estimated that for every alcohol addict, there are anywhere from three to five others seriously affected by that person's alcoholism. Considering the other prevalent forms of addiction today, the figure of 30 to 50 million co-dependents doesn't even begin to reflect a realistic count. How are family members "affected" by a loved one's addiction? What types of help are available? And how does spirituality fit into the context of recovery? Fortunately, such questions can be asked--and answered--because of the abundance of information made available by persons who have both studied and experienced the problem of addiction and the challenge of recovery. Married to the Disease--Getting the Ism without the Alcohol Pioneering efforts were made in the area of co-dependency by the establishment of a group called Al-Anon. Founded by Lois Wilson, wife of one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon was originally formed as a support group for the spouses of alcoholics. Today, the organization welcomes any person--family member or friend--whose life has been adversely affected by contact with an alcoholic, and who seeks personal recovery through group support and by working a Twelve Step program. Living with an alcoholic--or with the craziness that accompanies any addictive behavior--can be an extremely disorienting, destructive experience. In an effort to compensate for the utterly unpredictable situations around them, co-dependents develop a warped sense of normality. At the same time, they struggle to project the image that "everything's okay." Because of this denial of the problem's reality, a co-dependent's thought patterns, feelings and behavior are radically distorted. A co-dependent justifies his or her existence by "being needed"; one's purpose in life is to fulfill the needs of others, of the other--the alcoholic. The key to the co-dependent's happiness is outside of himself/herself, focused on the addict to the point that the co-dependent's self-esteem hinges on whether oar not his or her caretaking efforts are successful. In the meantime, the co-dependent's own needs are suppressed. One learns to mistrust and eventually deny one's feelings, or to project them onto others. An incredible amount of anger, guilt, helplessness and repression surge within the individual, each struggling for control. Each emotion holds its own weight, surfacing at inopportune moments and adding to the general condition of chaos. A persistent perfectionism often forces the co-dependent to set goals always "just beyond" reach. A co-dependent spouse is constantly threatened by a misguided sense of responsibility for the alcoholic's continuing addiction. ("If I were a better wife, he wouldn't drink.") In an effort to control and change the alcoholic, the co-dependent will resort to any number of tactics: pleading, threatening, cajoling, bribing, nagging, silence. When these fail, the co-dependent will often "cover up" for the alcoholic: making excuses for the alcoholic's addiction, cleaning up after him or her, even lying if it seems necessary for the alcoholic's protection. An alarming percentage of children from alcoholic families become addicts themselves or marry alcoholics, creating a vicious cycle of co-dependency. A recently established support group, in fact, has emerged for children whose lives were disrupted by a parent's alcoholism: Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs). Adult children maintain that they carry within themselves "seeds" of co-dependence, which often flower into behavioral problems during early adulthood or midlife. These facts show the urgent need for intervention and treatment, essential means to halt the deadly merry-go-round ride that threatens to sweep up succeeding generations of families. Breaking
the Cycle-- The process of recovery for a co-dependent person primarily involves letting go of the need to control and change the addict, and reclaiming responsibility for one's own happiness, one's own life. The first step in such a process requires acknowledgment of the relationship-addiction, coupled with a surrendering of it to the Lord. Ultimately, God is the One who alone can satisfy our deepest yearnings, can give the fullest meaning to our existence. We learn to relish life's meaning when we accept the reality that only he is God and that we are human beings, his creatures. Whether one seeks help through a formal Twelve Step program or through professional treatment, this basic admission will always be the foundation upon which recovery will proceed. Gradually, as one learns to replace the "stinking thinking," the automatic negative thoughts that place within the co-dependent like a taped recording, he or she will gain a true perspective of life. The co-dependent will acquire a clarity of vision to see all that is sin and all that is grace within oneself. The co-dependent will possess hope, enabling him or her to look upon the journey from co-dependence to wholeness more as a quest than as a painful process. Self-awareness and acceptance come through prayer, through an openness to the spiritual part of ourselves often hidden behind such defenses as our fears, projections and denials. The more we can be grateful to God for each new day as gift, as an unrepeatable opportunity to embrace life anew, the more serenity will become--even in the midst of pain. And this, in a sense, is where the wisdom of the Twelve Step program lies. A Twelve Step "slogan," One Day at a Time, reminds the person in recovery that he or she has no more hold on the past, and can relinquish worries about the future. It is the present which is ours to savor, ours to conquer--absolutely new, absolutely fresh. It is the present in which we can encounter the Lord ever more fully. We cannot be victimized by other people unless we victimize ourselves first by not trusting or loving ourselves in a healthy manner. The reality is that no one has to live with the hurt or the confusion brought on by addiction. God calls us to recognize the truth about himself and about ourselves. In so doing, we learn to value and put into proper order relationships with others, to care for ourselves and others in a healthy way. As we become ever more grateful for our own lives--accepting ourselves in love, changing within us that which we are able, and giving over to God the rest--we become more sensitive to God's presence within others. We become willing not only to accept ourselves when we fail, but to accept the fact that we can neither change nor save others when they fail. But that's all right. God created each one of us specifically in love. And the God who created us delights in saving us. Notes 1. Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters. One Day at a Time in Al-Anon, p. 3. 2. Beattie, Melody, Co-Dependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Care for Yourself. New York: Harper and Row/Hazeldon, 1987, p. 28. 3. Schaef, Anne Wilson. Co-Dependence: Misunderstood-Mistreated. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.
Copyright © 1999-2003, Daughters of St. Paul. All Rights Reserved.
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