Robert Todd Carroll
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codependency
You're codependent for sure
if, when you die,
someone else's life flashes in front of your eyes.
Codependency is a term used to describe a kind of addiction, a
relationship addiction. A person is said to be suffering from codependency when they
exhibit caring for a loved one who is suffering from a real addiction to drugs or alcohol.
The behavior of the caring individual is said to hinder recovery of the real addict by
enabling the addict to continue the addiction. Codependency makes it seem as if all caring
for addicts is pathological.
....the codependency movement...does not recognize or confront the social
and economic realities in people's lives. It does not distinguish the dependencies that
are healthy and desirable (loving and needing others) from those that are economically
imposed (such as not having the financial resources to leave a violent marriage). It
speaks of self-esteem as if it were air in a balloon, something that can be inflated and
deflated with sheer willpower, unrelated to anything that people do, to their experiences
in the world, to the context of their lives. --Carol Tavris
This model of codependency has been made popular by the writings of several people,
especially Melody Beattie (Codependency No More), Pia Mellody (Facing
Codependency), Robin Norwood (Women Who Love Too Much) and Anne Wilson
Schaef (Codependency, Misunderstood, Mistreated). According to these people, the
codependent suffers from low self-esteem due most likely to child abuse, and is caring
mainly to keep the addict addicted so she (it is usually a woman) can feel worthwhile by
caring for the sick one. The codependent, they believe, can be helped, as can other
addicts, by the
12-step plan
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Some see codependency as pathological itself, indicative of a trend among certain
therapists, especially those who call themselves "family counselors," to see
child abuse as the root cause of most personal problems. The model these counselors follow
seems to be something like the following: child abuse causes low self-esteem, which leads
people to abuse drugs or alcohol and other people as well. If only one had a happy
childhood, free from abusers, one would have a wonderful life as an adult. The person with
problems--the drug addict, the relationship addict, the sex addict, the name-your-craving
addict--is a victim. Addict/victims need help. Insurance should pay for this help.
Counselors should never be without long lines of addict/victims covered by insurance
policies for treatment for their "disease." Society should support the work of
these counselors because they have good intentions and, unlike the rest of us, are not in
denial. They are especially not in denial about the likelihood that one model, the model
of the diseased addict, could adequately fit all alcoholics, all substance abusers, and
all other abusers of any craving.
See also substance abuse treatment.
further reading
reader comments
Babcock, Marguerite and Christine McKay, editors. Challenging
Codependency: Feminist Critiques (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).
Kaminer, Wendy. I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and
Other Self-Help Fashions (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992).
Tavris, Carol. The
Mismeasure of Woman (New York : Simon & Schuster,1992). |
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clustering illusion