Co-dependency is not about a relationship with an addict,
but it is the absence of relationship with self.
Co-dependency can be an over-involvement in relationships with others, or it can be the
avoidance of relationship.
The avoidance may come from the fear of over-involvement, the fear of intimacy, the fear of abandonment or the fear of losing too much of oneself in a relationship.
Independence is the opposite side of the coin of co-dependence. A person with
co-dependency may adopt a posture of independence. A person who isolates
from relationships is in as much pain as a person who becomes lost in
relationships.
In reaction to co-dependence many people become counter-dependent,
defying or rebelling against authority, against intimacy, against law,
against their own dependency needs. They reject dependency in themselves
and others. Counter-dependence is a more aggressive posture than
independence, and involves a battle with self in a system that creates
more chaos and isolation. Sometimes counter-dependence is necessary to
break out of the repression of being over-controlled. Adolescents, for
example, become counter-dependent because their curiosity, creativity or
being has been repressed or abusively controlled. It is a reactive
co-dependent posture because it does not create true identity and
facilitate integration and boundary development. Counter-dependence can
be a posture of power, but it is not self-empowering and tends to
destroy the power of others. Much acting out is counter-dependence
Co-dependency affects our lives,
organizations, government and culture.
It is born in dysfunction, in not recognizing the preciousness of
children and not teaching gentleness and respect for life, of not
modeling healthy boundaries and in giving up the ability to impact
toward sanity, peace, care and spirituality.
Co-dependency occurs in dysfunctional families, families with addiction,
neglect, abandonment, abuse, victimization, dishonesty, unpredictability
and denial and it affects all levels of our society.
Children who are abused, hurt, neglected,tend to continue this pattern, not just toward themselves, their relationships and their children, but toward their physical environment as well. Children who have been hurt will hurt their surroundings.
When we were discussing a name for our philosophy of vulnerability and
strength, healthy dependency and spiritual stewardship, Terry was
leaning toward the term integration. As therapy heals the
disintegration-events of childhood, recovery is an accumulation and
blend of styles, knowledge and aspects of self. Through integration
healing we find integrity, which is balance, wholeness and holiness.
Marvel preferred the term interdependence, in recognition of the value
of caring, nurturing and cooperation as much as individuation.
Interdependence represents the balance between co-dependence and other
dependencies at one end of the spectrum and independence and
counter-dependence at the other. Our interest in Native American
spirituality and its strong focus on interdependence convinced us to
adopt this concept as our therapeutic approach. Recovery from
co-dependence involves discovering interdependence: accepting our
healthy dependency on others, ourselves, our planet and a Higher Power,
a balance of mutuality and complementarily.
Interdependence holds integration as a key therapeutic process. We will
continue to work and pray for a planet whose inhabitants are moving from
co-dependence to interdependence in a celebration of our strengths,
needs and oneness. Writing this book exemplified our adventure into
interdependence.
We must accept that both our perceptions and the reality of
our lives have an impact. Simply changing our perceptions does not heal
the hurt from the reality of the past. We cannot think and affirm our
way through recovery with unresolved hurts and trauma buried in the past
or continuing in our present, nor can we process and deal with the hurts
if we are actively involved with addiction.
The interdependence perspective allows us to see the addictive nature of
many self-destructive behaviors. Addiction is about despair, trauma,
neglect, poverty and isolation.
Co-dependency is a cultural issue that
manifests itself as a chronic syndrome in certain individuals and
organizations. Crime, drugs, violence, relationship and environmental
problems have a core cause, with roots planted in our view of children
and each other. We see children as extensions of ourselves, as ways to
fill the emptiness and give meaning to our lives. We use our children to
meet our needs for affection and nurturing, and they become the objects
of our pent-up anger and frustrations. Instead we need to accept that we
do not own our children and they are not of us or about us. As Kahlil
Gibran says, "Our children are a miracle of the gift of life itself." We
cannot appreciate the miracle of our children until we embrace the
miracle of our own childness.
True interdependence recognizes that all creatures and creation are
interwoven and that we all have a place to belong. Humans, with our
capacity for imagination, creativity and industry, have been granted the
guardianship of our planet. This stewardship requires embracing the
interdependence of creation and living a life of balance. It requires
taking responsibility for our excess dependency on externals and our
over-consumptiveness. We must notice the intricacies and fragility of our
world and its inhabitants. It is a process of knowing ourselves and
gaining self-respect, which in turn can lead to respect and protection
of vulnerable groups and our environment. The process is a gentle one
-gentle with ourselves, our choices, our mistakes and others.
Self-gentleness allows us to be gentle with our home, the earth.
Our goal is to recognize our uniqueness and preciousness on our way to
becoming other-directed and service oriented. Kindness and caring are
not co-dependency, they are spirituality. Interdependence is a posture
toward life and each other that weaves the concepts of identity,
integration and intimacy into a design of creation.
...... the ability to wonder and dream, the ability and the desire to
search for more of its own, to pray, to notice, to be filled with
gratitude for and awareness of, this gift of life itself.
We may not be alone in the universe, but we are rare. Life is not cheap;
it is precious.
The human mind, the human soul the life spark of our
being, are unique.
With its possibilities, curiosities, noticing,
wondering and craving, human life is one of the most precious and rare
items in the entire universe. To stifle it, confuse it, threaten it,
deprive it - of nutrition, information, freedom, a chance to achieve its
potential - may be the most heinous, insidious crime in our universe.
Each child is the culmination of the potential of this universe. To
provide the child I with safety, gentleness and awareness of that
uniqueness and preciousness, to pro!' vide all of the encouragement and
information they can handle, is the prime responsibility of adulthood.
This guardianship of children, of our own potentiaL includes the
nurturing of our own childness, our newness in our expanding universe.
Children learn cruelty, self-destructiveness, apathy, anger, fears,
shame, anxieties that not only prevent the continuation of learning
and seeking, the enjoying of the but it begins a legacy of cruelty, greed,
narcissism, judgments, parochial defensiveness, covert manipulation,
violence, abuse, neglect and carelessness. This spreads like a fire,
burning and destroying the potential and the gratitude, the chance for
more awareness, to achieve new heights of conscious being.
The real parent of this precious, aware, unique form of life is the
beautiful blue planet we inhabit. We spring from the waters and are
nurtured in the soil of the Earth itself. All of life on Earth are our
cousins and siblings. The Earth is a parent without consciousness,
without a conscience. We are the eyes, ears, voice, awareness, sentience
and conscience of our planet - our parent, the Earth. Our primary
responsibility and goal should be as guardians, not only for our
children who we participate in the creation of, but of our parent, the
earth itself, the vehicle of our creation. The first priority in our own
awareness must he to protect the basis for and of our existence, to look
at the consequences of our behavior, to be gentle and supportive of all
life itself and to insure the survival and balance of our planet. Earth
is the source of the continuing nurturing of life. It is the life giving
vehicle of the Creator and our continuing quest must be to ensure its
protection. Accepting the challenge of guiding and loving children, the
lives that we produce, involves a teaching and modeling of love and
respect for life itself and for the place of life spring, Earth.
We live in a garden. We did not fall from the garden. With our growing
awareness we became more than "of the garden." We became the keepers of
the garden, the guardians of all that grows there. Our survival now
depends upon taking the message of this guardianship seriously.
Recently, with our growing awareness of the need for personal healing
because of past hurts, addictions, relationship problems or poor
self-esteem, there is awareness of the processes of recovery. From this
awareness, a recognition of the impact and concepts of co-dependency is
also developing. Most of co-dependency has been described in the
context of its symptoms - relationship with alcoholics, painful patterns
of living, dependency problems and other definitions. We hope we've gone
beyond the symptoms and immediate consequences and opened up some of the
core issues of family and culture that create co-dependency. We hope we
have helped expose the continuing impact of co-dependency in our lives
and on our planet.
The concept must move beyond the enabling spouse of an alcoholic and
must be seen as a basis for intimacy problems, our addictive and
self-destructive behaviors, including the crimes against each other and
our planet.
Co-dependency is an issue of planetary existence, survival
and health. Co-dependency becomes a destructive force because it
involves an absence of self-respect, a lack of respect for life,
manipulation and denial of consequences. It involves the absence of
boundaries that enables and creates violence. Co-dependency involves
collusion and the enabling of inappropriate activities, the violations
of environment and of people. Co-dependency brings with it a sense of
helplessness and unwillingness to make the changes we need to make. In
healing our co-dependency we may be taking the most important step in
the healing of our planet. We have become the collusive enablers and
participants in the destruction of our planet, in the ignoring of
vulnerable life on our planet and in the neglect of self. This is
co-dependency.
This co-dependence prevents us from accepting the interdependence of all
of life, and of life with the planet that gave life. Recovery is the
healing of relationship, first with self, then others and then our
environment.
Co-dependency goes beyond the lack of identity. It goes
beyond child abuse. It goes beyond family systems. It goes beyond lost
intimacy. Co-dependence threatens the survival of all of us. It is the
basis of the victim/offender relationship, the need for control and
power to destroy and hurt. Co-dependency is the inability to stand up
for what we believe and feel. In the face of crazy, destructive courses,
it is the feeling of helplessness to effect change and bring about
peace.
INTERDEPENDENCE: A NEW APPROACH
interdependence values cooperation and nurturing as much as independence
and assertiveness. Caring for others is as important as asserting
individual needs and goals. It is based on a nonhierarchical model.
Rather than focusing on one side as better, this model recognizes interconnection between opposing or different sides of life.
Our concept of interdependence concerns family, community and the world
at large as well as the individual. It is concerned with the "isms"
resulting from social hierarchies such as class, race, disabilities,
sexual orientation and body size. We believe in helping people value all
sides of themselves, using different characteristics to meet different
challenges and learning to value the differences in other individuals
and groups.
With an interdependence perspective, we work toward transforming
hierarchical relationships into more egalitarian ones, beginning with
counselor-client and teacher-student relationships. The teacher or the
counselor is not there to dominate, have power over or demean in any way
the student or client. Egalitarian, however, does not mean sameness. The
teacher and the student, counselor and client, are not the same. Each
has a different and valuable role.
The counselor's role is to empower people so they can gain more
self-confidence and experience more choices in life. The client's role
is self-exploration. The teacher's role is modeling rather than telling,
directing or dictating. The student's role is to adventure into new
territory and make choices and mistakes. The counselor must also
self-explore and acknowledge that the client empowers and teaches. The
teacher and counselor must also be the student and learner, while the
student and client must also be the teacher. No role is superior. What
is true for the counselor and teacher roles is also true for our role as
parents. Often counselors and teachers fulfill the sacred functions of
parenting. They are called on to provide the parenting so many of us
missed in childhood. Too often therapists, teachers and parents operate
from a position of arrogance and ignorance, belittling their students,
clients and children.
Interdependence counseling is a process, not a technique or theory. It
adopts and adapts the strengths, tools and techniques from various
therapeutic models. The counselor or therapist must be authentic and
congruent with feelings, sharing what they are attempting to do with the
client. The interdependence process includes the following:
. offering gentle, prodding, specific questions as the most
powerful confrontation.
· providing a safe environment for the debriefing of specific
details of past hurts and traumas.
· learning to accept and even see the "good" in the shadow.
· limited use of catharsis work.
· using a group process whenever it is appropriate.
· being active rather than reactive.
· being non-ritualistic while respecting rules, boundaries and
rituals
· sharing and using one's own life history, without overwhelming
the client
· using physical and emotional responses without projecting or
losing the counselor role.
· sharing one's feelings in a mild way to reflect connections but
not drowning the client in those feelings.
· respecting and maintaining boundaries around sex, money,
friendship and time.
· supporting honesty more than confronting dishonesty.
· noticing, labeling and affirming feelings more than confronting
behaviors.
· linking consequences to behaviors and linking destructive
behaviors to the client's feelings and history of past hurts.
· supporting people through recovery in a nonjudgmental,
non-shaming manner.
· always envisioning the preciousness of people.
· being creative and eclectic rather than structured and
single-focused.
· working toward a goal of "growing up" as an integration of
child-ness and adulthood.
· acknowledging, affirming and cherishing the differences in
women's and men's systems without losing the importance of shared
humanity, needs and vulnerabilities.
· using other community resources and referrals that share a
common belief system.
RECOVERY: THE INTERDEPENDENCE WAY
Interdependence recovery involves taking present realities as seriously
as past influences. It means trusting the process of growth and taking
risks. Our interdependence approach is not a search for blame. It is
about recognizing feelings toward other people and situations realizing
that most offenders have also been victims and have also been deeply
affected by trauma and enabled by the world we live in. Self-empowerment
comes from a non-blaming posture of reconciliation and allows us to first
accept and assign responsibility and then forgive.
As interdependence counselors, teachers and parents we respect the
objective realities of a person's life as well as the more subjective
inner thoughts, feelings, values and premises. We value and affirm a
person's view of his or her own experience. We are concerned with both
external changes in behaviors and internal changes in feelings, thoughts
and premises.
Self-deception is a tool that enables us to survive. All
of our defenses, even our addictions, are coping mechanisms. We prescribe a
gentle approach to reality acceptance, breaking the distortion of past
and present. We must accept that both our perceptions and the reality of
our lives have an impact. Simply changing our perceptions does not heal
the hurt from the reality of the past. We cannot think and affirm our
way through recovery with unresolved hurts and trauma buried in the past
or continuing in our present, nor can we process and deal with the hurts
if we are actively involved with addiction.
The interdependence perspective allows us to see the addictive nature of
many self-destructive behaviors. Addiction is about despair, trauma,
neglect, poverty and isolation. Co-dependency is a cultural issue that
manifests itself as a chronic syndrome in certain individuals and
organizations. Crime, drugs, violence, relationship and environmental
problems have a core cause, with roots planted in our view of children
and each other. We see children as extensions of ourselves, as ways to
fill the emptiness and give meaning to our lives. We use our children to
meet our needs for affection and nurturing, and they become the objects
of our pent-up anger and frustrations. Instead we need to accept that we
do not own our children and they are not of us or about us. As Kahlil
Gibran says, "Our children are a miracle of the gift of life itself." We
cannot appreciate the miracle of our children until we embrace the
miracle of our own childness.
True interdependence recognizes that all creatures and creation are
interwoven and that we all have a place to belong. Humans, with our
capacity for imagination, creativity and industry, have been granted the
guardianship of our planet. This stewardship requires embracing the
interdependence of creation and living a life of balance. It requires
taking responsibility for our excess dependency on externals and our
over-consumptiveness. We must notice the intricacies and fragility of our
world and its inhabitants. It is a process of knowing ourselves and
gaining self-respect, which in turn can lead to respect and protection
of vulnerable groups and our environment. The process is a gentle one
-gentle with ourselves, our choices, our mistakes and others.
Self-gentleness allows us to be gentle with our home, the earth. |
