As someone who has been through her fair share of codependent relationships, I’ve spent a lot of time researching the concept of codependency, and let me tell you, if there was a cure to be found, I would drink that juice in a heartbeat no matter how awful it tasted.
However, codependency is not something that can be cured, because it is not a disease, disorder, syndrome, or disease.
You may be wondering what is interdependence?
It’s a dynamic relationship, and an abusive one at that.
This means that in a codependent relationship, there is an abuser and a victim of abuse. Abusers in these relationships often have an underlying mental health problem, such as an addiction disorder or personality disorder. Victims may or may not have their own disorders, such as anxiety disorders or depressive disorders.
But codependency itself is not a disorder, and adding the label “codependency” to someone who already suffers from anxiety, depression, and potential trauma now not only provides the abuser with an excuse for his or her unjustified behavior; He re-victimizes the partner, increases his trauma, and requires intensive treatment and repair.
To illustrate my point, here’s an example of how this label was used against me:
A while ago, I met a guy who I enjoyed and who seemed to love me too. Turns out not much. Which was totally cool with me. No one can be the type that everyone likes, and I don’t take it personally if a guy then decides he’s not into me. We only went out a few times and he told me respectfully, no weirdness, and the silence was long, no harm no foul in my book.
Until a week or so later, when he randomly decided to send me an article about the well-known Gottman Institute study of newlyweds and its findings about predictors of marital success. It’s an interesting study and I have a lot of opinions about it, but this guy and I had never discussed it, and I wasn’t sure why he was sending it to me, since we weren’t a potential newly married couple. So I asked.
It turns out that he was trying to “help” me by sharing his own interpretation of the study, which was as follows:
If you want to have a happy marriage, you have to marry a “happy” person.
Since I have been in codependent relationships in the past, it is clear that, according to him, I lack the inherent self-esteem necessary to be “happy” at all.
So I’m a poor candidate for a relationship with him…and most likely for anyone else at all.
Well, that’s not what Dr. Gottman said at all, but it gets me to my point…
It turns out that this nice guy, who actually gave indications of both alcoholic and narcissistic tendencies, had read a great deal of material about codependent relationships over the years, simply for the purpose of validating his victim-blaming hypothesis that emotional abuse would never happen. It would exist if it weren’t for the fact that these weak fools lack the self-esteem to stand up for themselves and just be happy.
His world view is so beautiful in its absolute simplicity, namely that there would be no abusers if no one ever allowed themselves to be mistreated.
Below is an analysis of just six ways of referring to individuals as “codependent” that are incorrect and dangerous.
- Codependency has already been proposed and rejected for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
In 1986, Dr. Temin Cermak wrote a book called Diagnosis and Treatment of Codependency: A Guide for Professionals, in which he posited that codependency should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) as a distinct personality disorder. His proposal was rejected, and for the next 30 years, no one has yet made a convincing case that it should be recognized as a category of mental health disorder.
Cermak’s book led to the creation of a twelve-step program called Codependents Anonymous (CoDA), which has certainly served as an effective healing mechanism for some people working to better understand what they have struggled with in their relationships, how they got there, and how they can Learn, grow and trust themselves again. But the support group does not diagnose.
- A codependent relationship is always a two-way street, as the word itself implies reciprocity.
If someone has obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, social anxiety disorder, etc., the symptoms present themselves regardless of whether or not that individual is in a healthy relationship, an unhealthy relationship, or no relationship. Launch.
It is impossible to be dependent in isolation.
The diagnoses do not apply to couples, families, or friends. It applies to individuals and their personal performance. Codependency does not and cannot apply to any person in particular, only to the type of relationship someone is in, and only at the time they are in it.
- Assigning a wrong diagnosis to someone may prevent or delay their acceptance of treatment for the appropriate diagnosis for which they can receive effective treatment.
Social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, or specific phobia may or may not apply to any victim of an abusive relationship.
These are very real medical conditions, and they can all be treated effectively with medication, therapy and a variety of other interventions, but only if the professionals providing support to these men and women look beyond the superficial display of someone who can’t. They seem to be defending themselves.
- Assigning a wrong diagnosis to someone may prevent or delay the abuser’s acceptance of treatment for an appropriate diagnosis for which he or she can receive effective treatment.
Conduct disorder, alcohol or substance-related disorder, or personality disorder may or may not apply to any abuser in a codependent relationship.
Labeling a victim as dependent is like calling a rape victim a “molester,” a “slut,” or even a “fucking boy.” The behavior of victims cannot be allowed to hide or justify the actions of attackers.
- Not everyone who engages in a codependent relationship does so because they lack self-esteem or because they have a mental health disorder.
Many people who engage in emotional manipulators do so because they have high self-esteem, high levels of empathy, and want to be of service to others. They enter the relationship with a healing mindset, either because they overestimated the power of their best intentions or underestimated the degree of illness in the person they fell in love with.
This does not occur as a result of some genetic or behavioral defect related to development. This happens because emotional manipulators are very well skilled at emotional manipulation. It is their survival mechanism.
