The “C” Word - Re-examined

I hate labels.

“I’m just a raging codependent! My therapist swears I’m suffering for the disease of codependency. I personally think my wild kids have just made me crazy!” She announces as she sashays into the meeting twenty minutes late.

“Who wouldn’t be crazy with all the chaos going on in my life?” She chuckles as she says it, inviting the group to join her in sympathy. She rustles around and squeezes into a seat between two women who just moments ago were pouring out the pain so inevitably associated with love gone awry. The room falls silent in the face of such jocularity over such a serious malady as bad loving.

All the signs and symptoms are present – she is a raging “codependent.” She’s doing what many of us do - label our dysfunction and hang it around our neck like a red warning flag on the beach after a shark sighting or a dangerous rip tide. We make little jokes about it. We warn others of our affliction and dare them to enter into relationship with us at their own risk. That’s why I hate labels.

Years ago experts began observing a cluster of behaviors in sick families and decided to call these symptoms “codependency.” This “thing” we call “codependency” helps us identify one way of living that contributes to bad loving. But labeling doesn’t help us find solutions to this form of lousy loving. I am passionately committed to finding solutions to plaguing life problems. If we can identify what’s going wrong when we “go codependent” – perhaps we can find a way to turn it around and love better. But if all we’re going to do is give ourselves a label and act like it is permission to keep up the cycle of hurting love – I hate that!  

Everyone says I’m codependent and that’s why my
relationships are so messed up – are they right?

Maybe - but first, let me ask you a question: do you know what codependency means? I ask because I realize we throw that term around like loose change, sometimes without true understanding of what it means. The definition of codependency has evolved over the years – so it’s no wonder we find it a bit confusing!

Pia Mellody, a nationally recognized authority on codependency, describes it as a disease of immaturity. She has a list of symptoms that she uses to describe how codependents are unable have a healthy relationship … with themselves. Does that startle you? It does me.

I hear stories from men and women who describe with great pain and passion their inability to maintain a healthy relationship with others. Parents, children, spouses, significant others, bosses, employees, extended family, friends, even enemies …all relationships end up hurting. If people consistently tell me one sad belief about their relationships, it is this – other people harm them, and they are angry, frustrated and depressed about it. Love hurts and they don’t understand why this hurting love keeps happening to them.

Remember Mellody’s theory - the problem lies in our inability to have a healthy relationship – not with others, but with ourselves. This is hard to hear when we have the belief that others cause our pain.

Let’s give her a chance to make her point. Here are her five symptoms of codependence (See Pia Mellody, A. Miller and J. Keith Miller, Facing Codependence ( San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), especially chapter two for further explanation. I’ve paraphrased liberally.)

• Difficulty loving self.

• Difficulty protecting oneself.

• Difficulty identifying who one is and knowing how to share that appropriately with others.

• Difficulty with self-care.

• Difficulty being appropriate for one’s age and various circumstances.

Mellody, Miller and Miller go on to describe how codependents see their problem relationships through the lens of faulty viewing. Codependent lovers attribute failed relationships to other people’s bad behaving. If we back up from that belief and examine it carefully – there is little room left for hope. If all failures are the result of another’s choices, then we are helpless victims to the whims of others. Think carefully about this. If all our unhealthy hurtful relationships are someone else’s fault, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WE CAN DO TO KEEP IT FROM HAPPENING OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

That kind of faulty logic leaves one feeling unlucky in love. The truth is – and this is a tough one to swallow – we are not the recipients of random acts of bad loving. We are relating to others in a way that creates an environment where unhealthy love thrives and healthy love dies. We can change how we’re relating. We don’t have to live like this anymore.

When my daughter was four, she decided she wanted her room painted pink. Pink is a tricky color to pick off a paint chart so I spent a long time deciding on just the “right” shade. Everyone who paints knows that when you roll on that first swipe, you have to let it dry before deciding if you like the color. So I ignored the garish glare of pink as I swiped, and swiped, and swiped paint across the walls of her room. I had taken a long time picking this color – how could I be wrong? When it dries, it’ll lighten up, I thought to myself. It’s dark in this room. In the daylight, it will be perfect. It wasn’t. Pepto Bismol Pink – that’s what I splashed on those walls. But did I stop? Nooooooo! I kept going like my life depended on having chosen wisely with my first attempt. We kept that color for four long years. Why? Because I simply couldn’t face the fact that this was NOT the color I had intended to put on my little princess’s walls (it did match perfectly with the Barbie doll playhouse).

Maybe you read the description Pia Mellody has written about codependency and you think – not me! It’ll be better in the light of day! This isn’t my problem! I so hope you don’t waste four years waiting around for something magical to happen that makes your life better. I asked some of my favorite codependent friends in recovery to tell me how it feels when they’re in the midst of codependent loving. Here’s their description:

You know you are codependent if you:

• feel responsible for the entire world, but realize some of your personal responsibilities are slipping while you take care of everyone else’s needs.

• give constantly to others but don’t know how to receive; you are an expert at taking care of others, but would fail the test on how to take care of yourself. (People say you’re great in a crisis.)

• race mindlessly from one activity to another, unable to say “no.”

• obsess with other people over their “issues” and go to great lengths to help them.

• can (and do) recite big old long lists of others’ deeds, misdeeds, feelings, thoughts, intentions and beliefs (and how to solve all this mess) but cannot tell what you are feeling, thinking, doing or not doing adequately, or how to solve your own problems. You believe that other people are your problem, and life would be great if everyone would just get with your program.

Sound familiar? (If you are thinking, “Yeah, that sounds just like….” then you know you are a codependent!) If this list rings true, you may be struggling with principle number two – a failure to love with limits. You’re probably stressed, depressed and miserable. You may not feel free to share your situation with others. Are you the problem solver in every crisis? Do you believe that you must be strong at all times, especially when you see everyone around you falling apart? If someone asks how you’re feeling, do you reply, “Fine, just fine, thank you very much!”