2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
I am placing an excerpt from the book by B. and J. Winehold "Liberation from Codependency".
“Recovering from codependency is a process whose individual steps can be predicted. The sequence of these steps will undoubtedly be different for each individual. However, most likely, everyone will have to come into contact with all the stages before he is free of codependent patterns. much more than just getting in touch with certain stages. For example, the first step, which involves realizing the prevalence of codependency patterns in your relationship, can take a long time and a lot of effort. What makes it so difficult? That codependency is so pervasive that you may not be aware of it as a dysfunctional behavior.”A friend of ours, when we described the codependent pattern to him, asked,“So what's wrong with that? Isn't everyone doing that?”Other steps may also require intense work. it is usually possible to express them fully and more effectively, but for this wow, there is some pretty hard work to be done.
Awareness of codependent patterns
There are many ways to prevent you from realizing your codependency. It looks like a dream. You dream that something is going on as usual. Even if this is not the case, then you continue to remain in a state of sleep. Almost everything you have experienced in life has had some kind of codependency, so you may not know that there is something better. For some, denying one’s feelings and needs can be an internalized survival or security mechanism. If you were really aware of or discussing what happened in the family where you grew up, then maybe you would not have survived your childhood. You may have been taught not to notice what is happening to you and to other members of your family in order to maintain the illusion of a “big, united and happy family” among those around you. Of all you have been taught to ignore, it is the repression and refusal of expressing your feelings that has the most devastating effect on you and your relationships. Codependency, like most addictions, is a disease of the senses.
Understanding the causes of the problem
There is confusion in the literature on the real causes of codependency. Some authors argue that this is the result of a genetic predisposition, others that codependency originates from contacts with alcoholics or an alcoholic family. The main thesis of this book is that codependency is evolutionary and is learned dysfunctional behavior. At the same time, it is viewed as a systemic problem associated with education in a dysfunctional family and in a dysfunctional society.
Unraveling codependent relationships
Once you understand that the causes of codependency are rooted in the dynamics of relationships that have not been completed, you will immediately see these dynamics going round and round in your current relationship. Completion of the process of your psychological birth is, first of all, the realization that you have been in a codependent relationship all the time. When you realize what important stages of development you missed in due time, then, using additional support and acquiring new skills, you can consciously complete this process.
Rejection of their projections
When you try to become detached, believing others to be wrong or bad, you develop a projection-based lifestyle. You can distort reality in such a way that it meets your need to always be right, and justify your behavior by considering others wrong. Rejection of these projections often requires gentle confrontation and support from the group or family members, friends and partners, spouse (s), or therapist. Projections are the building blocks in the wall of denial. They tend to fall slowly until much of the wall of denial is shattered and finally exposed the truth about who you are and who others are.
Eliminate self-loathing
If you have not become detached from your mother or family, but have tried to detach yourself by believing them to be wrong or bad, you are likely to come to the conclusion of your own failure. You can try to take the path of denying or suppressing these negative feelings, but they will most likely rule your life. It is necessary to reveal, realize and transform these negative self-images. They are based on misperceptions and illusions, and are also the result of weak object permanence. By realizing that these projections are the source of your low self-esteem, you can correct them.
Elimination of power games and manipulation
With the lack of natural strength that comes after the completion of psychological birth, you are more likely to resort to strength games and manipulation to get what you want. The “dramatic triangle” (prosecutor, rescuer, and victim) is a common way to manipulate others while remaining very passive. Once you find more effective ways to partner with people, the need to manipulate and control others will diminish.
Ability to ask for what you want
The easiest and most direct way to get what you want is to ask directly and politely. Then your request will be satisfied with pleasure (if it is possible for the other side). Usually, it happens like this: people do not ask directly (“Perhaps I will need a car in the evening”), and then they are disappointed when they are not understood. Some ask with anger or with great indignation (“Damn it, I need a car in the evening! Can I take it?”), Which causes resistance from the person to whom they are addressing, and he says “no”.
Learn to feel again
Children raised in dysfunctional families very early on begin to hide their feelings and thoughts about what is happening in their home. Anger is most often hidden, although people in codependent relationships are angry most of the time. Anger must be “justified” in some way before it can be expressed. Someone has to be the culprit or the scapegoat for all the family misfortunes. Children often find themselves in this role. As an adult, you will need to restore the feelings you were hiding in order to help yourself relive your childhood. A person cannot recover from codependency without restoring their feelings.
Healing your “inner child”
If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you have been taught to focus on what others are doing, not what you are doing. You were forced to turn your “I” into a false one in order to please others. You have also been made to hide your true self, including your innocence, your inner child. Your “inner child” suffered from wounds inflicted by supposedly caring people who love you, who might laugh at you, tease you, be disrespectful to you, not listening to you, physically punishing you, or ignoring your most important needs. To hide the pain caused to you, you were forced to hide part of your “I” from the whole world. During this process, you hid this part of yourself and from yourself. Recovery involves restoring your personal integrity and healing your “inner child”.
Defining your own psychological boundaries
Each has its own psychological territory. It consists of your thoughts, feelings, behavior and body. For most people from dysfunctional families, this territory was disturbed so often when they were children that, as adults, they do not realize how it happened. Most codependents are poorly aware of their personal boundaries and have little or no skill in defining and defending their boundaries. It is essential for codependent people to learn how to define and effectively defend their own boundaries if they want to abandon their codependent models.
How to learn intimacy
Codependents are both afraid and desire intimacy. They often fear that loved ones will control them, offend them, subjugate and suppress them. With the destruction of codependency, the need arises to establish a connection with another person. People often need new parental involvement, whether it is a therapist or another older person who can provide missing information, be an interlocutor and educator, become the necessary support for creating object permanence and forming self-esteem.
Exploring new forms of relationships
Most people who have lived codependent patterns for a while have little or no knowledge of the multicolored life they so lack. Sometimes there is some kind of vague realization that “real life is more than what it is now”, forcing the codependent person to take the risk of changing the situation. Codependency is replaced by interdependence when two or more people have learned to live autonomously enough to build a life together and strive to maintain the manifestation of all the best qualities in each other."
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