Codependency is a term that was given birth in the addiction recovery community. It originally gave clinicians a way to get a handle on the remarkable similarity they often saw in the troubled family members of addicts. Over time another and perhaps better term was coined by P. Melody, developmental immaturity. She provided us a frame on which to arrange the deficits we saw in self-esteem, boundaries, reality, interdependence, and affect regulation. Others noticed associated problems, such as resentment, manipulative control, being “enmeshed” with another, and trying to find one’s worth through satisfying the needs of others.
But the above thinking was missing the more recent insights from adult attachment theory that sees some dependency as an inevitable and natural part of bonding in close relationships. The attachment luminaries made a distinction between a functional dependency which comes by way of secure attachment and gives us the safe haven and secure base we need to develop ourselves and explore life versus an unhealthy dependency that allows neither. Codependents had no working models of self and other that were in balance, no secure attachments, and scarce little comfort or support. Indeed, as we got to know them, their orientation to the world made sense as we learned of their shaky start, the shocking amounts of abandonment or neglect they’d suffered; childhoods clipped short because of overwhelming family circumstances. It is through that lens that I see them and will describe them further.
Real participants are not textbook examples, but persons of complex mixtures, with tinctures of various traits. There is a lostness and an inability to think for oneself. A woman might be running a company by day, making all sorts of crucial judgments, but in the context of her intimate relationships she loses her way as she submerges herself in someone else’s reality. She wants to be taken care of in a total way even as she tries to totally steer someone else’s life; she can cite chapter and verse on another but may lose the ability to express any sort of preference of her own and, at the extreme, seems to vanish as a person in her own right. A guy might back away from any confrontation, take all sorts of continuing abuse, and dutifully go on mopping up after an out-of-control person in his life out of the belief that it is up to him to hold all things together.
Both may look to others to literally decide the steps to take in their life or for “the answers” about what they should do next. It is as if thinking or planning for oneself is an exhausting and noxious chore. These folks tolerate aloneness poorly, and often go into a deep funk upon the ending of a relationship. But then they don’t waste much time before jumping right into the next one. They have an uncanny blindness for signs of obvious danger and keep picking wounded partners, the worst candidates to return the intimacy they crave. Unable to see their own part in creating an unlivable environment of gullt and unending obligation, they are often angry or sad, befuddled as to why their relationships fall apart while those of others seem to work. He or she may complain of having done everything for family, made every kind of sacrifice, only to go unappreciated, and hold a deep resentment for being cheated on the deal. There is the sadness of unrequited love, but an even deeper sadness for having given up on their own becoming, for having abandoned their own unfolding potential, a kind of perpetual mourning for a self that has not yet lived.
For these lost boys and girls of the world, the experience of being seen, or more accurately, being found, is life-changing. We want to reverse the experience of invisibility and not mattering. In Rapid Resolution Therapy we know how to do this. Jon Connelly, the method’s creator, emphasizes that traumatized individuals need to have powerful, impactful new experiences in the present and that therapists can create these sensory-specific experiences through enhanced connection throughout the therapeutic process. By demonstrating a lively interest in the participant’s experience, we create an impact whereby they feel felt and seen. By creatively using metaphor, we create a new experience in the present moment that can shift mind into more adaptive functioning.
One process we have is called changing perceived identity and internal geography, a process that bridges into a profound new apprehension of the self. The participant learns self, or essence, is not the many false things they’ve believed, and it is certainly not defined by others’ behavior. Essence is still intact, and no matter what has been lived through, she is still on her own journey to express her perfection in everything she does. This comes as exceedingly good news.
We introduce her to the precursors of stuckness, such as thinking from the negative or disappearing the present. She begins to learn how to first orient toward what is desired instead of what she doesn’t want, and how to get present with what is actually happening right now. As we go along we clear the ghosts of any major abuse/neglect episodes. We teach how to think as a scientist would rather than getting bogged down in moralisms or bemoaning how life should’ve somehow turned out differently. From there she naturally moves into being a more causative, active agent in her own life. She gets that if even bees can do this, that is, move adaptively toward new fields and flowers that give nectar, she certainly can do this in her own time and way.
We know how to wake up identity through expression of preferences and choices. We know how to build a model with each participant which includes taking the long view, i.e., taking no action that wouldn’t have a long term beneficial effect on self. She learns to aggressively seek out things that nurture her, casting a wider net, as opposed to pouring herself into one person. She learns, perhaps for the first time in her life, to balance giving with getting and that respect is foundational to any relationship. She is often in the middle of the latest crisis, so we anchor a movie to take care of any emergent situations or especially upsetting people. It’s a big tool box with many tools.
I’ve learned that the mind can generalize to a thousand other instances from a few well-framed specifics. So much that looks lost can suddenly shift, with an awesome efficiency and precision, into a newfound certainty and direction. It is the experience of being found that makes the difference. It is, indeed, an amazing inrush of grace. And I am so blessed to be part of it.
“I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.”
–John Newton
