Wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote!
Codependency is a big topic. As I started taking notes on the causes, symptoms, treatments, etc. I realized how big and sort of got stuck. So now I’m back ready to break it down into all the parts it needs.
Codependency is always a
learned behavior. Its main
cause is from a child’s
emotional needs not
being met, and I found
two definitions and setups
that would predispose a person
to develop this behavior.
- Codependency is an excessive emotional or psychological reliance on another person or when two people have unclear boundaries such that it’s difficult to know where one person ends and the other begins. The latter is known as enmeshment. This may be due to parents’ absence, illness, addiction, or abuse. If the adult’s problem is abuse, the child can develop survival skills and coping mechanisms to keep the parent happy in order to minimize the abuse. The child learns over time that their own feelings aren’t going to be acknowledged so they learn to tune them out, or perhaps expressing their own feelings brings more punishment or abuse. They begin to feel responsible for the behavior of everyone that lives there. If the problem is a parent’s illness or addiction, the child may become the caretaker in order to keep the household running. Again, they feel responsible. And finally, if the parent is absent due to work, divorce, or death, the child can learn to cope by assuming it’s their fault, they’re not lovable, and they strive harder and harder to keep the people in their life happy so they won’t leave.
- This quote is the second definition…
This is also a form of enmeshment. Many times, there is a parent with an illness or an addiction, and the child becomes their caretaker. Also common are silent unwritten family rules that limit open communication. Perhaps the addiction or illness isn’t public knowledge, so everyone pretends family life is going fine. These unwritten rules may also include prohibiting open expression of feelings, honest communication, realistic expectations such as making mistakes, selfishness, trust in others and one’s self, playing and having fun, and rocking the boat through growth or change even if it’s healthy and beneficial. (Just having the restrictions listed above, without the addiction or illness, can also create a propensity to be codependent.) Because the child is busy taking care of the parent and is not allowed to express their feelings or share their thoughts, they develop an obsessive need to help others even when they don’t need helping. This obsession of caretaking, helping, controlling can be the only thing that gives them a sense of worth, which easily then slips into self-repression, low self-esteem, and abandonment or self.
It’s easy to see how an impressionable child learns survival skills and develops coping mechanisms. Therapists at both ACCFS and Timberline taught about how to transition these skills into useful resources. It might be through developing a positive way to use that skill or it might be through opposite action. For example, if a child’s survival skill is to hide in the face of conflict, a transformative action might be to retreat to safe place to read the truth of scripture or to pray. The opposite action would of course be to stay in the disagreement and work through it. If a child’s coping mechanism in the face of correction is anger, the transformative action would be to use up the energy created by the anger through physical exercise and then talk about their feelings when calmer.
