Codependence | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

When someone is addicted to alcohol or drugs, that person's problems affect the entire family. The family members often share some of the addicted person's beliefs and behave in similar ways. The term "codependence" refers to these shared beliefs and behaviors. Codependence has become a popular topic of discussion, and bookstores are full of works on the subject. Many of these books deal with the emotional damage suffered during childhood and the need to heal the "inner child."

Although currently popular, the idea that alcohol and drug problems affect family members is not new. In a 1973 book called I'll QuitTomorrow, Vernon Johnson wrote that, "While there may be only one alcoholic in a family, the whole family suffers from the alcoholism. For every harmfully dependent person, most often there are two, three, or even more people immediately around him who are just as surely victims of the disease. They too need real help."

The people who live with an alcoholic or drug abuser have experiences that damage their sense of well-being. As the addicted person fails again and again to quit using alcohol or drugs, the family members also meet failure after failure. They may blame themselves for the other person's failure to quit. This failure may lead to feelings of fear, frustration, shame, inadequacy, guilt, resentment, self-pity, and anger. They may have a growing sense of worthlessness, and in response they may build emotional defenses against their feelings. Like the addicted person, they may begin to project some of the angry, negative feelings they have about themselves onto other family members, including children. They take the anger and disgust they feel about themselves and apply it to others, acting as if these other family members deserve the same feelings of anger and disgust. They do not see that this behavior makes them weaker rather than stronger, or that they have become out of touch with reality. Like the addicted person, they may deny that they need help.

The following six characteristics form the common thread weaving through the lives of many, if not most, family members of alcoholics, drug addicts, and people with other addictions such as gambling or eating disorders:

1. Codependents change who they are, and what they are feeling, to please others. Like the chameleon that changes its coloring to blend in safely with its current environment, codependents give up their own identity in an effort to get others to love them. They do this for two reasons. First, they fear being abandoned if people know how they really feel or who they really are. Second, they have so little sense of who they are that they need to be in relationships in order to feel complete. Unless they are in a relationship, they feel desperately lonely and worthless. As a result, codependents are split between the false version of themselves they show to other people, and the way they truly feel—chaotic, fearful, and empty.
2. Codependents feel responsible for meeting other peoples' needs, even at the expense of their own needs. Codependents are so afraid of rejection that they will do anything to keep other people happy, including sacrificing their own needs to keep people from leavingthem. They actually get more upset if others are disappointed or hurt than if their own problems go unsolved. This habit of focusing more on others often leads to the problem of enabling. Enabling means that the codependent person protects the addicted person from the negative consequences of his drinking or other addictive behavior. The enabler tries to keep the other person from having to feel any pain or embarrassment. For example, if an alcoholic's drinking prevents him from going to work, the enabler may phone the employer to say he is "sick." This kind of "protection" prevents the alcoholic from facing natural consequences for his behavior.
3. Codependents have low self-esteem. Most people who are dependent on drugs or alcohol feel ashamed of themselves. Other family members also begin to feel bad about themselves. For codependents, low self-esteem comes from having very little sense of self to begin with. By always pleasing others and taking their whole identity from others, codependents end up not knowing who they are apart from the relationships they are in. As a result, they do not respect themselves. Low self-esteem also comes from believing that they truly are responsible for someone's alcohol or drug use. Once they believe this, they will always feel inadequate when they fail to control the addict's behavior. This mistaken sense of what should be under their control is at the very core of both codependence and dependence.
4. Codependents are driven by compulsions, or a sense of extreme responsibility and urgency that a particular action be taken. The codependent believes that success or failure will depend on acting in a certain way or completing a particular task. Initially, the compulsion may appear to be a positive force for the codependent, such as making lists. However, the codependent cannot abandon the compulsion without feeling anxious or fearing failure. Codependents feel they do not have any real choices about what is happening to them. They feel compelled to do any number of things: keep the family together, stop the drinking or other drug use, save the family from shame, work, eat or diet, be religious, keep the house clean, and on and on. Compulsions create excitement and drama. As people battle their compulsions, simple decisions, such as what to eat or how much to work, are turned into life-or-death struggles. These dramas temporarily give the codependent a feeling of purpose and vitality. Compulsions also take up a lot of time and keep people from confronting their deeper feelings. Codependents often get locked into compulsive behaviors to avoid more painful feelings of fear, sadness, anger, and abandonment.
5. Like the addicts in their families, codependents deny reality. Alcoholics often deny that they are abusing alcohol and remain unaware of its impact on their lives and their relationships with family members, friends, and coworkers. Codependents show exactly the same denial. They often refuse to see that a family member is addicted, or they refuse to acknowledge that their children are being hurt. Shame and the compulsion to keep things under control cause codependents to deny the problem.
6. Like addicts, codependents are unwilling to accept that human willpower has its limits. Just as alcoholics believe they can control their own drinking problem, codependents think they can control their loved one's alcoholism if they just use enough willpower. They keep trying to control the situation through their own force of will, not admitting that they need help with their problem.

Codependents firmly believe that their failure to cope is caused by their personal inadequacy. When they cannot control the drinking, drug use, or other addiction of someone they love, they blame themselves for not trying hard enough—or for not trying the right way. When codependents take too much responsibility for another person's recovery, it keeps the alcoholic or addict from seeing that only he or she is responsible for his or her own recovery. In this way, codependence actually increases the likelihood that a drug or alcohol problem will continue.

Codependence can be a serious problem for children. In all families, children must balance two competing childhood needs: (1) Children need to be unconditionally loved by their parents and to feel that they are at the center of things and (2) children also have the opposite need to rely completely on powerful and good parents; or in other words, to have others be at the center of things. Parents who have problems with alcohol or drug addiction are often unable to put their children at the center of family attention. They cannot tolerate not being the center of relationships, even at the expense of their children's needs. Children then sacrifice their own need for attention, allowing the parent to remain at the center. In this way children can become codependent.

Professionals who work in the field of addiction agree that huge numbers of people have found help for their problems through the concept of codependence. By understanding the concept, they can learn how to cope with their own problems and stop blaming themselves for the problems and failures of a loved one.

Many support and self-help groups incorporate efforts to break people of their tendencies to be codependent. Some groups include Adult Children of Alcoholics,ﾀ Al-Anon,ﾀ Alateen,ﾀ and Nar-Anon.ﾀ

%See Organizations of Interest at the back of Volume 1 for address, telephone, and URL.

People at high risk for becoming codependent are:

spouses of substance abusers

children of alcoholics

individuals who grew up in highly dysfunctional or troubled families

professionals who work with addicts

Adult Children of Alcoholics (Acoa); Al-Anon; Alateen; Families and Drug Use.

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