Codependency vs. Unhealthy Relationships, Part 2
As I am want to do, it seemed fitting to get at some of the possible suggestions (therapists call them “interventions”), things to do, regarding the specific “symptoms” of what I call codependency from this post. Like James Brown, Please, Please, Please read that post first for the necessary context.
Understandably, when people come to therapy they are looking for “answers”. How we define what is an answer in context is mercurial, varies from person to person, and may be seen differently between therapist and client. My attention tends to surround methods more than “answers” in this way. Answers are important, but the quality of those diminishes significantly if we come to them by way of questionable methods. What I am getting at is this - in practice, we end up focused on whether our kid picks up after themselves rather than the quality of our relationship. The latter of which, actually predicts the success of most things. Answers focus on cleaning up, methods get us focused on how to have a relationship.
In terms of the codependency thing and seeing it as the soul of all unhealthy relationship styles (again, see the previous post), that’s what we’re employing here. We’re at least “differently” defining a thing (hopefully, more accurately), learning about it’s fundamentals (see a better definition for those, here), and using those insights to guide better ways of managing our relationships to those problems.
Below, I’ll use the simpler version of the symptoms from the previous post, and give a couple of examples of what might be done about them. These are of course non-exhaustive, but will give at least one or two for each…
Giving away parts of ourselves that we can’t afford to lose. Possible interventions: using the principle of “intervening in what someone else can, should do for themselves, so that I don’t feel bad” as a guide for being more skilled at boundaries, self-preservation, managing our own bandwidth, and etc. Learning to live gracefully with unsolved problems. Learning to live and deal with our feelings about others’ feelings.
Mental and emotional labor for others. Possible interventions: some of the ones above are great for this. Thought-stopping techniques (there’s tons of these, and like everything else you read here, best learned and done with a therapist). Postpone coming up with solutions for others, and examine the feelings that come up.
Accepting behavior that shouldn’t be accepted. Possible interventions: start with one or two ideas of things that should absolutely not be acceptable. Physical or emotional violence are good examples. See if you can come up with more. Engage a “responsibility partner” - someone that you agree with that you will start having a boundary with a behavior. Speaking of - so many of these interventions are going to be about boundaries. Once truly understood they’re magical - but beware. People start using boundaries for everything, and they often become the wrong tool and/or used on the wrong kinds of problems. Boundaries are definitely for another Stack but, have to say here that they usually should be the “last house on the block” for relationship struggles. There’s obvious exceptions like the aforementioned physical violence. More to the thing at hand though, doing someone’s thinking and feeling for them (the latter of which takes more fleshing out as to what I mean) is a hugely time and energy consuming activity. It is at its core a boundary problem.
Caretaking/controlling. Possible interventions: Sometimes referred to as “enabling”. Not all caretaking or enabling is controlling. As for what to do? Learning to live with the feelings around not insulating people from natural consequences of their behavior. Learning to live with the feelings of not being able to control people, places, things, outcomes. Learning other methods of loving people, and learning more about what love is/isn’t.
“Feeling responsible/guilty” for things that aren’t ours. Possible interventions: This one is sorta tough. My impression is that most of our sense of “responsibility” comes from shame. John Bradshaw, amongst others, refers to shame for simplicity in the sense that we didn’t do something wrong, we are something wrong. That wholesale sense of broken-ness puts us in a place that we “feel like everything is our fault”, hence, we are always responsible. This is a longwinded way of saying that if we work on shame, we will “feel less guilt or responsibility” when it’s not really ours (in quotes because as most of you here know, I don’t think guilt/responsibility in this context are feelings). Here is another hard part of this - the experience often comes from sadness. This is important because when most of us first start a healthier relationship with how we feel, part of the process is that we feel our most carried emotions first. Because shame is such a big deal and easy access for most of us, we tend to put all our feelings in that one basket. In other words, we often confuse other feelings with shame. Lots of our experience of responsibility/guilt, we find, are actually about sorrow. Point is, work on that is also really helpful. There’s more but, one last one for now - “pulling our own covers”. This is a common intervention for a lot of things, but putting out there that we not only “feel” guilt/responsibility, but that we are aware we engage it as if we did something wrong as part of that experience is really important.
Attracting, or being attracted to, “needy” people. Possible interventions: The longer story is kind of fun and instructive, but long for here. A short version is that one day I realized that the best way to have healthy people in my life is to be healthy myself, and the healthier I am, particularly mentally/emotionally/’spiritually’, the more difficult it will be for unhealthy people to stick around. Speaking of… a peeve about therapists. We are great at telling people what unhealthy behaviors and relationships look like. We’re ok at giving a short list of “healthy” relationship behaviors. It’s for a longer post but, here is an actual possible definition: a healthy relationship exists between two people when they are both mentally, emotionally, physically, and ‘spiritually’ self-supporting through their own contributions. This is definitely one or two Stacks or a whole book, so just take my word for it for now. The healthier one is in this department, the more likely we are to attract and sign up for others who are as well. As Tom Waits says though - “the large print giveth and the small print taketh away”. Here is the small print: unless we possess these things, particularly emotionally, we cannot identify them in other people. Unless we are skilled at having and dealing with our own feelings, we can’t see it clearly in others. Other ideas? Boundaries, communication with not just “I statements” but fact and feeling (for another Stack), all of the ideas about not accepting unacceptable behavior… A PS here: sometimes we simply like having needy people around as a distraction, a method of importing self-esteem and such. That’s the kind of thing we can stop simply by throwing some self-will at, though I am not a fan of will-based interventions. Yes, I am aware that all things take some will. That’s for another Stack.
“Living in the same boat” with another person. Possible interventions: Some of this is about boundaries. Most of this is about the healthiest relationship with our own feelings. Lots though, is about the ability to live gracefully with our feelings about other people’s feelings. Increasing a life of one’s own is useful here. Getting ahead of another one here but, not insulating others from natural consequences (of course, not including immediate physical danger).
Filtering what we think/feel through what we think others think/feel. Possible interventions: The aforementioned “pulling our own covers”. It can be pretty useful to say something like, “I have a style of agreeing when I may not, and this is one of those times it can happen.” or somesuch. A sense of our own worth and value is a great tool here. That’s a deep pool though. Self-esteem (or whatever one prefers to call it) requires both a sense of self, and knowledge/ability in treating oneself with some “esteem”. While these are a little hard they’re not impossible, and can take less time than one might think if one works with a mental health professional. So much of the “filter” we are talking about comes from simply not treating our own sense of the world with the same weight as others. Similar to living in the same boat with another above.
Having difficulty living with unsolved problems. Possible interventions: Some of you might be noting a theme - most of these symptoms will improve if someone does more than simply cope with their feelings, which is what many mental health folk are putting out, in my view. Often, I refer to codependency as “preventative medicine”. Codependents are constantly living in the future, managing people places and things as a way of harm reduction. That harm reduction though is mostly about emotional difficulties. Postponement works well here too - simply getting used to not always jumping on or getting ahead of things.
Struggling with self-worth, that worth attached to “fixing” other people/things. Possible interventions: It’s likely no mistake these two things are put together. Many of us, as we should to some degree, get a sense of worth and value from being of service. Like many human foibles though, that’s not the problem - the lack of a filter (better said, an “epistemology” about when/when not to “be of service”/fixing/helping etc., is. Much of this has to do too with how we define these terms, so that will help a lot. Working on shame as noted several times above is also helpful. Being able to say something like, “I really want to be helpful here but think that may be as much about me as it is about helping you, and I think it’s probably better for you to take care of this.”, or something like it. Those kinds of statements aren’t my fave interventions because they go against a lot of communication theory and more but, they can be helpful both in a pinch, and long-term helping us get ok with these feelings when we don’t intervene. Speaking of? Shoutout again to 12-step programs and their ability to help people learn to deal with powerlessness through acceptance, and more.
Because this is becoming another lengthy post, I am going to have to make at least a part 3.
A note about all of these, and likely a topic for another Stack: we can always employ sheer force of will to start/stop some of these, employ these ideas. Meaning - we can just try real damn hard to __________. That’s what most people do for most things, and unfortunately, that’s what many therapists engage in with other clients… just more versions of tryin’ real hard. Will is human agency, it’s what we have to employ to do everything, including me typing this sentence. However, will is limited, way more than we think, there are other methods available, and we usually endeavor to increase it or employ more of it when there are other methods available. Again, for another Stack.
It should of course be mentioned too that all of these can improve with the help of working the steps in 12-step programs. They are arguably the experts on circumstances around powerlessness, letting go, living with unsolved problems, dealing with resentments, and so much more. All to say, going to meetings, getting a sponsor, educating oneself about those problems with their literature, being of service (which helps employ many useful tools), and working the steps can really help us mitigate the problems above. A little more specifically, the steps in 12-step programs “proper” can help with interventions therapists use every day: postponement, responsibility/accountability partners, replacement behaviors, processing/grieving/”metabolizing” feelings, having what I call a “hands off foreign policy” with issues not our own, and so much more. On to part three.
