I finally understand what Co-dependence is.
I understand because I have been living it. But I did not know that was what it was, because, like many other people, co-dependence has been more common for me in my primary childhood relationships than healthy relating was. This means that my barometer for ‘normal’ was miscalibrated from my beginning to the point that co-dependence feels more normal for me than healthy relating. My triggers were set too high for unhealthy relationships and the way they manifest.
Co-depedence is…
Living contrary to what is healthy interdependence because you do not believe deep down that you can live without ‘it’ whatever ‘it’ is. It might be a person, an idea, a thing, a feeling, an action. A person can therefore be dependent upon many different entities in this life. These entities become an idol when they are allowed so much power over us that without them, we feel we cannot exist, when we become dependent upon them.
So co-dependence in its essence is idolatry. Because we should only be dependent upon God.
Now there are some things we depend upon which represent normal dependence. Like the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we need to sustain us, and the love we receive from our neighbor and kin. God provides us all with all these things, sometimes directly from Him and sometimes from Him through others, and He gives them equally to those who believe in Him and those who do not.
But co-dependence occurs when healthy dependence becomes defiled. Usually this happens during our tenure as children because we have learned in a dysfunctional family that we cannot depend on the normal things of life listed above. Perhaps our parents loved us with a conditional love, whereby we only felt loved if we did a certain act, or lived a certain way. We unconsciously learned that we could not depend on our needs always being met, and we learned that if our needs were not met, we would suffer somehow. The suffering of childhood is more devastating because children are innocent, and because we did not have the capacity to understand why we were suffering. If we go hungry as adults, it is generally a good thing unless it becomes chronic because God calls us to fast occasionally, and our bodies are not growing anymore, but merely needing enough sustenance to maintain us. But children that go hungry are going to quickly become malnourished because they are growing. If we go without love as adults, it forces us to turn to God for support and love, whereas children that have no love fail to thrive, and develop lifelong wounds and unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Childhood is a place and time when we need plenty to grow into healthy adults. Getting a spare amount of something healthy, too much of something unhealthy-or even none-is going to have a deleterious effect upon a young human being. As adults we can live without things more easily. We can fast and we can go without as much as we want to or feel led to and that helps us to cling to God, our heavenly Father, and it keeps us from becoming greedy. But children have different needs than adults. Most of us as parents understand this.
Sometimes people become parents without the proper knowledge or intuition to understand what a child needs to be healthy, and they cannot overcome their own lack to provide these things. Their children then go without what they need and maybe have too much of what they do not need. Their children therefore can become co-dependent upon wrong things and behaviors because they have never known what it feels like to be in a healthy family long enough for it to become a habit of knowing that their proper needs will be met. Indeed, they will likely not even know what proper needs are.
It isn’t just alcoholism that produces co-dependence but that is usually what we think of in today’s society because Alcoholics Anonymous has identified certain unhealthy adjunct behaviors in those family members of alcoholics and they have drawn attention to it. But co-dependence can exist in any person(s) who have known chronic amounts of lack in childhood, whether that lack comes from addicted parents, selfish parents, evil parents, pedophilic parents, satanic parents, stingy parents, neglectful parents, or sick parents. Co-dependence is a disease that stems from lack.
When we lack something vital as children, we cling to what we can to survive. Starving children dig up and eat roots (and dirt along with it) when they are starving. They might eat other people’s leftovers (that are rotten or infested with bacteria or viruses). Going hungry drives them to eat whatever they can find even if it is sub-optimal, because something is usually better than nothing. This defiles them. The same example goes for love. If a child lacks unconditional love in childhood, the child will seek love out in any form, or accept it in any form, because love is necessary for growth, and well-known animal studies have proven this. Studies have also shown that being abused is favored by children over being neglected because having something is usually optimal to having nothing.
Unconditional love is necessary for the healthy development of children. Unconditional love means that a parent loves their child over time independent of their actions or behaviors. It means that if a child acts out or does something the parents deem wrong, the child will still have its needs of food, clothing, shelter, safety, and love met. And this occurs over time. Sometimes a parent will punish a child and the child may go without dinner as a punishment and that will not result in co-dependence. It must be chronic lack which happens often enough for the child to develop a belief that if they do not adhere to some condition or state of being, they will go without their fundamental needs being met. This is an unconscious process. And this is the root of co-dependence.
Co-dependence means we settle for living on the wrong track because we either do not know that a right track exists, or because we get get drawn over onto the wrong track, repetitively. Something or someone on the wrong track magnetizes us and keeps us there. In our deep-seated belief system that was laid down mostly in childhood we really believe that without that thing on the wrong track, we will suffer. And maybe we believe deep down we will even die. We believe this because as children without our needs being met we likely could have died, and to a child’s undeveloped brain, suffering equates to feelings of death. Our primitive emotions which are the essence of our feelings, do not understand the difference. Therefore we function on automatic pilot, letting our false beliefs dictate lifelong practices and actions that might very well be unhealthy.
Co-dependence is very hard to break out of. This is the reason battered women continue to return to their abusive mate. This is the reason dysfunctional families cling to each other regardless of how much they hurt each other. This is probably the reason why children who have been abused continue to abuse as adults. It is a never-ending loop of dysfunction that blinds you from seeing any other way of existing. And you unconsciously believe the lie that without this thing, you will suffer and maybe even die.
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Of course there is a cure. And that cure is to become born again in Jesus Christ. When we are born again we become like a baby and are given a new life, created fresh by God in His image and replacing our unhealthy human family with God and His family. Our barometer for healthy relationships becomes perfectly recalibrated in Him.
The indwelling of Jesus Christ is the cure-all for any ailment. The only requirement is to give ourselves fully over to Him. Halfway will not do it. Praying once a week will not do it. It requires willful intentional submission to Him and only Him in our lives. Deep-seated false or even evil beliefs are very hard to get rid of, but it is possible with God. God is a jealous God and allows no room for idols between us and Him, because He knows how much as humans we can fall victim to idols. And this is the very place satan prefers to hide out in our lives and try to rule over us.
We can be truly blind to co-dependence and its rule over us, but God makes those scales fall away from our eyes and we can see anew. We can see truth. We want to not only get on the right track, but He helps us to find our way, and to stay on the right track. Even if it goes against those scared childhood feelings that drive us in a certain habitual and dysfunctional direction, seeking that eternal unconditional love we never knew. The irony is that we will never find the right track if we follow our self or our own messed up barometer.
We will only find that missing unconditional love in Him~
The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. ~ Jeremiah 31:3
May this train run on God’s tracks forevermore.
~Song of Mary~ 