Codependency and Therapy

What is codependency and how can therapy help with it?

In his best-selling book, John Bradshaw wrote, “Much has been written about codependency. All agree that it is about the loss of selfhood,” (1). While being trained at the former Bay Area affiliate of the John Bradshaw center one of my supervisors would quote Bradshaw as saying that codependency was the ‘disease of the lost self.’ But what does this really mean? In order to understand this, we need to know about the conditions in which codependency forms.

Codependency refers to a pattern or set of patterns wherein we disconnect from the truth or reality of our own embodied experience. Why would one do this? We do this because we have learned that something about our experience is threatening to the stability of our relationship to a significant other.

In the process of disconnecting from ourselves, we experience several trickle-down impacts. These impacts are summarized in this list from Pia Melody:

Codependents have difficulty

1. Experiencing appropriate levels of self-esteem

2. Setting functional boundaries

3. Owning and expressing their own reality

4. Taking care of their adult needs and wants

5. Experiencing and expressing their reality moderately (2)

Many definitions of codependency are vague, misleading, or simply non-existent (3). When I refer to codependency I am referring to an observable internal dynamic that takes shape in external relationships. In other words, the pattern is observable in how we relate to ourselves and how we relate to others. These dynamics are formed through the course of our emotional development, and thus in response to our primary caretakers. This is why Bradshaw goes on to say that codependency is a “disease of the developing self that does not manifest fully until one is in an adult relationship,” (1).

Many people think they had a normal childhood. However when we look deeper, they realize they experienced a lack of emotional support. As adults they now find it difficult to feel and express their true feelings. Furthermore, if they were shamed for having certain feelings, this adds to the difficulty. Now their feelings can also be experienced as threatening to their sense of security.

People-pleasing, fawning, feigning, and other protections.

Codependency is often connected with people-pleasing. Why is that? If we learn that our emotional experience can lead to a threat to our sense of security with a significant other, we need to find a way to mitigate that threat. In trauma-informed practice most people are familiar with the fight, flight, and freeze responses. More recently clinicians have begun to connect “fawning” and “feigning” as a systemic response to threat. People pleasing falls under the category of these two. Each are strategies to to avoid conflict and the potential threat it entails. Each ultimately require us to disconnect from our true needs, desires, and emotions - some may say our true selves.

While the strategies of fawning and feigning are very much a part of the codependency presentation, they are not the only defenses that can operate under this moniker. The truth is each person may rely on defenses a little differently. If we have learned to disconnect from our feelings we may also do so unconsciously through repression, denial, and dissociation. We may rationalize our true feelings away. We may minimize our hurt or anger in order to avoid conflict. All of these processes are meant to mitigate the potential for threat.

The problem with such protective strategies is that over time they erode our ability to experience genuine fulfillment and connection in our relationships. So for this reason, in my work with clients I focus on both practical skills around helping them identify and express feelings when they struggle to do so. I help them learn how their feelings are vital to their relationship to themselves and others. I help clients to connect their feelings to their relational needs, desires, and boundaries. I have seen these practical skills have a transformative effect on my clients time and time again. They help clients develop a healthy sense of self-esteem, competence in setting limits, verbalizing their needs and emotions. This often results in a lessening of internal conflict and a capacity to manage conflicts in relationship with significantly less drama and sense of threat.

At a certain point in our work, I will help the client to start to connect with their inner child. As we learn practical skills to manage our emotions, we can then begin to deepen awareness into how these patterns, or as I call them ‘templates,’ began to develop in the first place. This often brings up feelings of fear, grief, and/or anger that have been disconnected from for a long time. We develop a relationship to the embodied inner child experience so that this part of us can begin to an internalize a compassion, patient, and tolerant relationship. As this part of us begins to develop trust that we can hold it lovingly, they don’t have to rely on other ways to protect themselves which create damaging consequences which could include: low self-esteem, dissociation, dis-satisfying relationships, shame spirals, depression, and anxiety.

The good news is that it is possible to experience significant growth and healing from these patterns. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you are interested in learning more about how I work with codependency in therapy.

(1) Bradshaw, John. Healing the Shame That Binds You (p. 34).

(2)Mellody, Pia; Wells Miller, Andrea; Miller, J. Keith. Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives . Kindle Edition.

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency

Distinguishing Two Kinds of Attachment

Attachment is an important idea in both contemporary psychology, and in the genesis of Buddhist thought. However, for folks who share an interest in each of these disciplines, it’s possible to get tripped up on the word—that is if we are trying to connect the attachment in psychology to attachment in Buddhism we may begin to scratch our heads. Despite utilizing the same word (at least in translation), these two concepts are totally different.

Attachment in psychology is based on the research of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. This research focused on the bond between infant and mother. In essence, the theory postulates that the child may develop different “styles,” of attachment bonds based on their relationship with their primary caretaker. The ideal attachment bond being a “secure” one. Developmentally speaking, this bond forms a kind of template that the child then brings into future relationships—even into adulthood.

Let’s zoom out a little to address the importance of security for a child. As humans we depend on our parents for a long time relative to many other species. Security in relationship to our parents quite literally could mean the difference in our survival nowadays and also in our evolution as a species.

Yet, when that security is absent from the side of the caregiver (and there are many ways this can happen… I won’t get it into all of them here) then the child has to develop other strategies to cope with this insecurity. This idea lends itself more to the more traditional psychoanalytic concept of defenses… however it is definitely relevant to attachment.

While I am taking a very broad brush stroke here, I am attempting to illuminate the connection of these ideas of attachment and security in relationship to our development as individual and relational human beings. In an ideal sense we need relational security as human beings in order to feel at ease. When we don’t get that, it’s possible we can have trouble regulating our own emotional realities, and relating to others.

However, the reality is that we live in a fundamentally insecure world. While developing security is essential to emotionally healthy relationships, there is also the idea that existentially speaking, nothing can ever be that secure. This is what Buddhist thought seeks to address.

There are many different strands of Buddhist thought, however they all seem to emerge from the idea that not only is our world fundamentally in flux, always changing, but our self is too. In fact, according to Buddhism, if we look closely what we call “the self,” is more of a conglomeration of constantly changing streams of consciousness than a static entity. If we look even more closely, we might discover that “the self,” is not able to be found.

Attachment here is when we try to concretize or fixate something that is by nature always changing. We try to hold on to that sensation of joy as long as we can only to find out that it’s replaced by a loss. Inversely, we might try to get rid of the feeling of loss by eating a whole bunch of ice cream. We might feel better momentarily, but then we might feel sick. This is sort of a game our minds play to try and somehow keep us from pain, but according to Buddhism the end result is always that we end up feeling quite sick. That is because we try to dictate to “reality,” the terms that are acceptable to us, but this is not really possible because everything is always in flux.

So attachment in Buddhism, the literal translation of which is “thirst,” is really considered to be the primary cause of dis-satisfaction in life—which is sometimes translated as suffering.

Why am I making this distinction? Well, terminology is difficult. In the US, Buddhist thought is often lumped into the psychology category and for better or worse these two traditions are associated here. The two kinds of attachment are about entirely different topics: relational development and existential malaise. Sure they may intersect, but their contexts are different.

I believe both are relevant to our understanding of psychology and mental health as a whole. We should just be careful about defining our terms clearly, understanding their appropriate contexts, and discussing how they are functionally relevant to us as human beings.