Real Life Matters

Growing up in our house, my mom made a collection of cassette mix tapes and labeled them “Company Music.” These tapes were played whenever guests were visiting our home. They were recorded from various relaxing albums, like “Perhaps Love” by Placido Domingo and John Denver, and “You Don’t Bring me Flowers” by Neil Diamond. Company Music also included music by every evangelical band that came through town and performed a concert at our church. Our favorite was the Common Brothers Band, with its creepy hit, Revelation. Some of you have known me long enough to remember visiting our family in Livonia. Company Music was always played loudly enough to enjoy, but softly enough so that my mom could entertain our visitors while we feasted on supper time hot dishes like crescent rolls stuffed with tuna and cheese.

My mom was a formidable host. Company visiting our home were regaled by whimsical stories, many of which were exaggerated for effect. My now brother-in-law, Scott, went on a mission trip in high school. He also got his pilot’s license. Ingrid conflated these facts, and bragged to everyone that Sheri was dating a missionary pilot.

Christmas in our home was over the top. As soon as we finished eating the pumpkin pie for dessert on Thanksgiving Day, our family tore into numerous boxes labeled “X-mas,” which had been carefully pre-staged in the front hallway. For a few weeks, Christmas Music enthusiastically replaced Company Music. All season long Ingrid blasted holiday tunes from our stereo. We still groan when we hear Deck the Halls by Mannheim Steamroller, which we all love to hate.

There were many happy times in my home growing up. Happy times do not cancel bad times. They stand on their own – like opposing bookends in life. As for the icky stuff, as a kid, I didn’t really know that there was any other way to live.

Children are not co-dependent, they’re just needy and dependent. For little children, approval-seeking is a normal behavior. As children, we lack the ability to be independent. But as emancipated individuals, we have a choice and so to choose the co-dependent path is to choose freely. Only adults, then, can truly be co-dependent. They have a choice. Children are the victims in a troubled family, adults are volunteers.^[1]Subby, Robert C.. Lost In The Shuffle: The Co-Dependent Reality (p. 25). Health Communications Inc. Kindle Edition.

I am 100% certain that my family relationships were co-dependent. But what does this really mean?

Co-dependency is a term that has been widely used within the chemical dependency field over the past several years. Originally, “co-dependency” was used to describe the person or persons whose lives were affected as a result of their being involved with someone who was alcoholic or chemically dependent. The “co-dependent” spouse or child or lover of someone who was chemically dependent was seen as having developed a dysfunctional pattern of coping with life, a constricted and often self-destructive pattern inexorably linked to someone else’s drug or alcohol abuse. The now familiar co-dependent strategies of minimizing, projection, intellectualizing or totally denying problems were seen as classic coping reactions to the chemically dependent person’s maladaptive behavior.

But now many professionals are coming to understand that co-dependency can emerge from any family system where certain overt (spoken) and covert (unspoken) rules exist — rules that interfere with the normal process of emotional, psychological, behavioral and spiritual development. Rules that close off and discourage healthy communication, rules that eventually destroy a person’s ability to form a trusting relationship within themselves or between others. Co-dependency is a pattern of living, coping and problem-solving created and maintained by a set of dysfunctional rules within the family or social system. These rules interfere with healthy growth and make constructive change very difficult, if not impossible.^[2]Subby, Robert C.. Lost In The Shuffle: The Co-Dependent Reality (pp. 15-16). Health Communications Inc. Kindle Edition.

Over twenty years ago I practiced law at a big law firm based in Detroit. Our small group of international business lawyers included a former naval aviator, whom I will refer to in this post as Bob. He was a huge man with a combustible temper and a short fuse. He was demanding and quite impossible to please. A healthy person would have kept their distance. As they say, “the best armor is to stay out of range.”^[3]Italian proverb.

As an ambitious young professional on an unhealthy quest to please everyone all of the time about everything, I was completely flummoxed by Bob. I tried in vain to jump through every hoop I could find to make him happy. No matter what I did, it was not good enough. In my family growing up, it was unacceptable for anyone to be upset, especially Ingrid. So when Bob was upset, I was also upset. I couldn’t handle any disapproval.

I asked my group leader what I could do to make Bob happy. In his wisdom, my group leader looked at me and said, “why are you so upset? You should be happy that Bob doesn’t want to work with you!” This is the co-dependent paradox. A co-dependent person cannot relax until everyone is happy, even if this means sacrificing their own needs in a quest for peace and a sense of normalcy that can never be found.

Until I began learning to have healthy relationships, life was often miserable. I spent enormous energy (and I still sometimes do) building my identity from the outside in, instead of from the inside out. I was highly reactive and oversensitive. Until I began the slow process of getting better, I simply acted out the co-dependent way of life that I learned as a kid.

See if you recognize any of these traits of co-dependence:

1. Difficulty in accurately identifying feelings: “Am I angry or sad or hurt or what?” “Am I truly depressed, or disappointed, or appropriately sad?” “Am I really frightened, or is my fear just an act?”

2. Difficulty in expressing feelings: “I feel angry, but it isn’t safe to let other people know.” “Anger is not okay.” “I feel depressed, really down, but I can’t talk with anyone — they wouldn’t understand . . . They might think that I was weak.”

3. Difficulty in forming or maintaining close or intimate relationships: “I want to be close to others but I’m afraid of being hurt or rejected.” “I’m not bright enough (good-looking enough, rich enough) to run with that crowd.”

4. Perfectionism — unrealistic expectations for self and others: “I never do anything right, I just screw up everything I do.” “If I can’t paint a perfect picture (write a poem, dance perfectly, and so on), then I just won’t do it at all.” “If he/she really loved me, they would have done it better.”

5. Rigidity in behavior and/or attitudes: “I’m too old to change.” “Even though I’m not happy with my life, I don’t know any other way, so why change.” “There’s only one right way to do things (like being a man, being a woman, raising a child, having sex, or getting to heaven), and that’s my way.” “It was good enough for my parents and it’s good enough for me.”

6. Difficulty in adjusting to change. “I’ll never forgive him for making me move away from our old house.” “He’s not really going to stay sober, so I’m not going to open myself up again.” “I don’t know why things have to keep changing anyway.”

7. Feeling overly responsible for other people’s behavior and feelings: “It’s my fault Sue killed herself. If only I had …” “I can’t leave her — she’ll never be able to handle it.” “I should apologize to my friends for what Frank said to them yesterday.”

8. Constant need for other’s approval in order to feel good about self: “Just tell me what you want from me and I’ll do it if it will make you happy.” “I’ll never be able to show my face around here again if I don’t get accepted to the university.” “Maybe if I become a doctor like my Dad he’ll be proud of me.”

9. Difficulty making decisions: “I can’t decide, I don’t want to make mistakes.” “When I have to make hard choices, my mind just freezes up and my brain feels numb and paralyzed.”

10. Feeling powerless, as if nothing I do makes any difference: “It’s a no win situation. No matter what I do, I lose.” “What’s the point in putting myself out, no one will remember.”

11. A basic sense of shame and low self-esteem: “When I make a mistake, it’s just another example of what a worthless person I really am.” “I come from a screwed up family, so there must be something wrong with me.”

12. Avoidance of conflict: “If I tell him how I feel, he might leave me.” “I have to act as if I agree, or they will get angry at me.”^[4]Subby, Robert C.. Lost In The Shuffle: The Co-Dependent Reality (pp. 16-17). Health Communications Inc. Kindle Edition.

About ten years ago, with the love and support of my extraordinary family, I embarked on the path of recovery. One of the most important things I have learned is that feelings are neither good nor bad – they simply need to be acknowledged and experienced.

Now, instead of running from conflict and trying to escape pain using one futile device or another, I take a deliberate, deep breath and remain present in whatever experience life has to offer in this moment. This is a cause indeed worth celebrating. Fire up the Mannheim Steamroller!