257 - Codependency
Codependency 101
Codependency is defined as “excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction.” First gaining traction in the late ‘70s, countless books on the subject were published throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s until its peak in 1995.
Am I codependent?
Although the only way to truly know if you’re codependent or not is to be diagnosed by a licensed professional, there are some behaviors that people associate with the subject. An article from Mental Health America lists a range of characteristics that may help pinpoint whether or not someone is exhibiting codependent behavior:
An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others
A tendency to confuse love and pity, with the tendency to “love” people they can pity and rescue
A tendency to do more than their share, all of the time
A tendency to become hurt when people don’t recognize their efforts
An unhealthy dependence on relationships. The co-dependent will do anything to hold on to a relationship; to avoid the feeling of abandonment
An extreme need for approval and recognition
A sense of guilt when asserting themselves
A compelling need to control others
Lack of trust in self and/or others
Fear of being abandoned or alone
Difficulty identifying feelings
Rigidity/difficulty adjusting to change
Problems with intimacy/boundaries
Chronic anger
Lying/dishonesty
Poor communications
Difficulty making decisions
A harmful subject
Within the psychology and research community, the subject of codependence is often heavily debated, and often viewed as something harmful. This is largely due to the lack of agreement between medical professionals concerning characteristics that identify codependency; almost anyone can fall into the category since there are so many qualities and definitions. Currently, there is only one psychometric index of codependence, the Holyoke Codependency Index, but even this tool has limitations, and until medical and psychological professionals can agree upon a definition and comprehensive way to diagnose, the critiques remain.
Many feminists also critique the term, since often, women are labeled as codependent, particularly those who have relationships with men who suffer from substance abuse, and responsibility and enablement are attributed to them. Mislabeling actions as codependent can pathologize nurturing behavior, and as such, it may be better to approach how some behaviors may seem codependent but actually are not.
What are your thoughts on codependency? Let us know in the comments!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about codependency in relationships. This is a subject that we've discussed for many years in other episodes but we were actually really surprised recently to find out that we've never dedicated an entire episode to this subject. In this episode, we want to cover what does it mean to have a codependent relationship? Why is it thought of in such a negative way? We're also going to explore in-depth, some very valid criticisms of the whole model of codependency and some problems actually that come from that.
We're going to divide this episode in half where, in the first half, we're going to talk about codependency and explore how understanding it can be helpful to you. Then in the second half, we're going to talk about basically how codependency as a concept could actually be a problem. It might not be helpful. It might actually be causing some harm to think about it. We'll look at both so that you can get that information and make those decisions for yourself.
Emily: Yes, I was very surprised to find anything out there that wasn't just the normal. Codependency is something that you need to-- That you probably have or have had at some point in your relationships and it's something that you need to get rid of in your life and here are the ways to do it. That's fully what I expected this episode to be when I started researching it. It did turn into something else entirely but we'll go down, as Jase said, that one path for a little while and then go on another path a little bit later in the episode. Yes, I am a child of the 90s. I grew up with a mom who talked a lot about codependency as I was growing up.
Jase: Really?
Emily: Yes. Definitely.
Jase: I didn't realize that that was a common household conversation for you.
Emily: Very much, yes. I think just simply because my mom had some relationships as I was growing up, but eventually, just stopped having relationships with men because she felt that she was codependent and really couldn't break free from her codependent nature and really have a relationship where she didn't, as she would say, lose herself within the relationship, trying to do things that the men would want her to do and just to be the person that these men wanted her to be, et cetera, et cetera.
She felt like she just wanted to please everyone and she was a doormat. If she couldn't overcome that, then the best thing to do would just simply to be not to have a relationship with anyone anymore in a romantic sense and just continue her relationship with her friends, with me, and her family members but that was it. That's really interesting. I heard the word so much growing up and I think it's interesting to know that the term really became prevalent in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.
Jase: Right. I guess late '70s and then especially in the '80s is when it started gaining popularity?
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Jase: Then I guess you were hearing about it from your mom probably during the '90s.
Emily: Totally. Yes and I think Dedeker, even I'm sad that she's not with us today, but she definitely had talked to me about that as well. That her mom also threw the term around at a time in relation, I guess, to her romantic relationships and talked about being a codependent person. Did you hear that ever when you were growing up?
Jase: It definitely was a term that got thrown around. I think for me, I didn't really hear it as much maybe until maybe high school and college and it more would have been from friends and things like that.
Emily: Interesting, okay.
Jase: Growing up, my mom had lots of the various pop psychology books like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
Emily: Classic, totally classic. I feel like we should do an episode on debunking that book at some point or something.
Jase: It's barely even worth acknowledging at this point anymore, but yes, totally. She definitely read those sorts of things, then honestly, I would be super surprised if she didn't read some of these titles but I think that it at least didn't become as much of a commonplace term in my household as it sounds like it did for you.
Emily: Oh my gosh, yes, it still is one that's thrown around. I had a long conversation with my mom after doing the research on this episode just about it and about the things that people speak about now and how they want to continue trying to make a term that's better than codependency because it has such stigma attached to it.
Jase: I see. Right?
Emily: Yes, exactly. I looked up just in the dictionary what codependency is. It's a noun and it means excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner. Typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction.
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: Definitely, sometimes what I hear in relation to this, although, I guess, yes, my mother was with a partner who was an alcoholic for many years and he lived with us and eventually, she kicked him out, which is great. I think in a lot of ways that that was the right thing for us to do and for her to do, but I think that she also relayed the word to just herself in relationships that doesn't have anything to do with having a partner who is ill or addicted to something.
Jase: Right. This is something that actually surprised me in the research. I guess maybe it shouldn't have but that this idea of codependence started as specifically talking about partners of people with substance addiction. Since then, it has broadened and-- Because when I think of codependence, just in general, if you toss out that term like what is it? I tend to think of the phrase, these two people are codependent with each other. I tend to think of it more as that thing that I think romance in movies and stories tends to teach us is this idea of you're not complete without this specific other person.
As soon as they're gone, even if they just leave for a little trip or something, you're really depressed and you don't have an identity of your own. To me, that's what comes to mind. It was interesting seeing that, actually, this got its origins in dealing with more of this cycle of substance addiction and the people who are supporting them or enabling them. yes.
Emily: Yes, exactly. Can we talk about some of the book titles? I wrote some of these down because some of them are pretty amazing and I didn't realize that specifically, it was so prevalent in Christian culture too that there were a lot of books written about it within the Christian community, I guess.
Jase: Yes, I've actually noticed this with a lot of relationship books in general, particularly from the '90s. I think still today, but there tends to be a lot of Christian messages or very overtly Christian titles in relationship books. I think that part of that is that in at least American society, there has been so much of this bond, this connection made between good romantic relationships and Christianity. The whole idea of Christian marriage being the ideal, it's the thing everyone should want, the thing that needs to be protected, stuff like that.
Let's hit you with some of these titles here. Here are some examples of titles like Beyond Codependency or Please Say You Don't Need Me: Biblical Answers For Codependency. Can Christians Love-
Emily: Please don't say you need me, that's it, yes.
Jase: Can Christians Love Too Much? Breaking The Cycle Of Codependency and the number one, the Bible of codependency. Look, I even worked a Christian metaphor into there.
Emily: There you go, well done.
Jase: This one is Codependent No More: How To Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring For Yourself.
Emily: That's interesting, how to stop controlling others. That one, I guess, was referenced in a lot of the articles that I read is that being the big one that people went back to over and over again, that was bought the most during this time, and is seen as the codependency Bible. Yes, that is interesting. I wonder if the Christian community sees people starting to write books on specific topics for self-help relationship type things and they're like, okay, we need to do this now from the Christian perspective. Perhaps that's why.
Jase: I feel like a lot of it starts from the Christian perspective. We think about God Doctor Gary Chapman, and the love languages. If we talk about Boundaries and that the authors of the Boundaries books, also very overtly Christian in those books. I actually feel like it almost comes the other way more. It's like within the Christian world, that's where people are writing these books or trying to figure these things out some of the time, at least, or maybe the ones who do it from a Christian standpoint get more popular, then become more widespread culturally versus the ones who are researching it not from a Christian perspective. I don't know. That's maybe another episode.
Emily: No, totally. Yes, that's fascinating and something that generally, I wouldn't have been privy to just simply because I didn't grow up in a Christian household at all. I would go the opposite direction and being like something starts and then becomes Christian rather than it starting in the Christian community and then branching out to more secular community. It is so fascinating.
I saw that you can look on Google and chart the timeline in which these books became really popular. I guess it started right around 1979 and then shot way up, way, way up through the '80s and then early '90s. Then it reached its apex in 1995. Then, it's been on a steady decline ever since. One of the things to think about with this is that there was the time in the Reagan, was it the Reagan era where the war on drugs was happening?
I think that this kind of-- If you look at it from the perspective of codependency first came onto the scene talking about illness or addiction and how to treat a partner who is staying with another partner who has those things, then I guess that would make sense why in 1979, around the Reagan administration and stuff like that, it was making this huge increase in people being interested in it in that way.
Jase: Interesting. Sure, yes. I wouldn't have even put together that political aspect to it, I guess.
Emily: Well, it's like the drug part of this is something that people are trying to combat in certain ways and that drugs become this big thing that's uber-prevalent in our society and that everyone's freaking out about. We've got to start writing these books and stuff now. I don't know. That was in some of the research that I read and I found it interesting.
We alluded to this before but there are two different camps of people out there surrounding this issue. One camp believes that codependency is this very real, very treatable issue that a ton of people suffer from. Then there's this other camp who thinks that it's essentially just a cultural phenomenon that has been way over-diagnosed.
Some people believe that it's something that happens in relationships that doesn't need to change. It's a nurturing quality or it's something that people just simply do and it's not something that needs to change at all within a relationship. That was very interesting to me. Again, yes, it's like pathologizing this idea that people are being sweet and kind and nurturing and saying that that's a bad thing and stigmatizing it, I guess, is the better way to put that.
Jase: We'll explore that more later. Let's start with-- Let's really talk about codependency and how this can be useful to understand how this might be affecting us in our relationships. Let's go from there first.
Emily: I found a article in Mental Health America that had a nice, just overarching definition for what it is. It says, "Codependency is a learned behavior that can be passed down from one generation to another. It is an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual's ability to have healthy mutually satisfying relationships." Interesting.
Now, that as you said, is more what I thought of when I thought of codependency. Not that it was also this thing that had to do with substance abuse and stuff like that, but rather that it affects an individual's ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship.
Jase: Yes, it's interesting. Then in that same article, they go on to talk about the ways that you can identify if you're codependent. There's a bunch of traits and there's also, online, there's questionnaires. There's all sorts of ways that you can self-diagnose yourself but we're just going to run through a number of the things on this list here of traits that you might be like, I might be codependent if I feel these things. I'm just going to go down a few of these. An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others. A tendency to confuse love and pity with the tendency to love people that they can pity and rescue. This one I thought was interesting.
Emily: Interesting, yes.
Jase: I think another term I've heard related to this is calling someone a rescuer. I think that-
Emily: Yes, I've heard that before.
Jase: -that term probably grows out of similar ideas and similar research of trying to find someone that you think you can fix, rather than finding someone who meets you as an equal or things like that.
Emily: I just feel these things that they're saying and will continue on the list of characteristics, but so often it's not something that anybody necessarily knows that they're doing. I think that's part of this whole thing. It's very intrinsic, it's very within them. It's hard to step back from that and say, wait a minute, "Why does everybody that I want to be in a relationship with, they need fixing in some way?" For lack of a better word. "I need to help them or I need to pull them up by their bootstraps or something along those lines." That's interesting that that lists it as one of them, a tendency to confuse love and pity. Fascinating.
Jase: Let's see. A tendency to do more than their share all the time. It's interesting how you define what your share is, but yes.
Emily: Yes, I know.
Jase: A tendency to become hurt when people don't recognize their efforts. Well, I've felt hurt if people didn't recognize my efforts. An unhealthy dependence on relationships. Okay, hang on. I got to call them out here. I got marked down for this in papers in high school.
Emily: What does that mean?
Jase: You can't use the term to define itself. It's like what is codependency? It's an unhealthy dependence on relationships. Come on, you can't do that. They go on to say-
Emily: Well, Mental Health America bring that up with them, okay?
Jase: I'll write them a strongly worded letter. Well, I will not do that. They say the codependent will do anything to hold on to a relationship to avoid the feeling of abandonment. That fits more with what it comes to mind for me of the codependent if just I need this just because I'm going to do anything to keep it even if it's not good. That makes sense from what I would have guessed. An extreme need for approval and recognition. A sense of guilt when asserting themselves. I feel like I've definitely wrestled with that. I feel like most of us have.
Emily: Me too, absolutely.
Jase: Let's see, a compelling need to control others. Which is interesting too, that it's like, are you being controlled or are you doing the controlling?
Emily: It flips. I think maybe that's the flip side of this. Is that a codependent can be either the one being controlled or the one doing the controlling perhaps. This is going to, I think, go more into that side of things with the rest of these characteristics. A lack of trust in self and or others. Fear of being abandoned or alone. That was back up there or to avoid the feeling of abandonment was in another one. Difficulty identifying feelings. Fascinating.
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: That's interesting.
Jase: I never would have put that in the same boat as codependency but that I definitely-- That's an ongoing joke between Dedeker and myself. Where I'll be like-
Emily: You don't know what you're feeling.
Jase: No, where I'll be like, I'm feeling something and I don't know what it is.
Emily: That’s funny.
Jase: Yes. She's said that maybe I don't know what excited feels like and I think that when I think I'm feeling anxious, maybe I'm actually just excited. Variations on that or I don't know if I'm feeling sad, yes. I know, we've heard that one before. Anyway, yes, that idea of not being able to tell what your feeling is.
Emily: I love when you're like, "Oh, crap." I can see myself in some of these. That's the thing. Who can't see themselves in many of this, honestly? Let me just finish up here. Rigidity in difficulty adjusting to change. That's often me. Problems with intimacy or boundaries. Chronic anger, lying/dishonesty, poor communications, and then difficulty making decisions.
Jase: Jeez, again, I wouldn't have thought of that as related to codependency.
Emily: I think from what it had said, essentially, that if you find that you do these things, you are more likely to be a potentially codependent person. They're just like characteristics of somebody who might potentially be more codependent than another person who doesn't have difficulty making decisions or something, I guess.
Jase: I think that is something that we should keep in mind here because, again, there's ways, different tests and things like that, that therapist or psychologist can use to help diagnose things because with almost anything that you could be diagnosed with, if you look at the list of potential symptoms, you probably have some of them to some degree.
I remember in college, I was worried that I might have some form of ADD and went to a psychologist, and he did a test for that. Basically, it was like, while I answered yes to a number of the questions, my total score was not enough that I would be put in that category to the point of needing medications or things like that.
I think that what I took away from that was that it's this. We all experience those things. We all experience that sometimes it's hard to sit still, or sometimes it's hard to focus on something or you know what I mean? I think the same with these, it's like, sometimes we're all going to feel these things. It's just are they out of balance? Are they to the point where it's harming your quality of life? I think that right there is the interesting question.
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: Research on this has shown that those who had abusive or neglectful parents, or parents with substance abuse issues, are more likely to be codependent as adults. The statistics are staggering. Some saying like 40 million people suffer from codependency. Others saying 50% of Americans have some form of codependency.
Emily: I was blown away by that, 50%. It's just like you're blindly throwing a number out and then being like, well, probably about 50% of all people have this thing. That was amazing to me. That led me into this idea of, well, let's look a little bit further into this because I wonder, is that actually true? Is that actually something-- It's just everybody in America is freaking codependent. What is this? What is this number actually about?
Jase: Let's talk about-- We have a rough overview now of what codependency is? Some ways that you might determine, "Hey, maybe this is something I should look into. Maybe this is something that's affecting me." Let's talk about, how is this helpful then? How could this information be helpful to you? Go ahead.
Emily: It's just like my mother said many years ago essentially, if you are finding that you continue being in relationships where your ability to be your own person and not be a doormat or not be walked all over, I guess in the ways that she talks about back then, that if you find that you are continually doing those types of behaviors within relationships, then, thinking about codependency and what perhaps these different diagnostic or, I guess, tests or whatever, questionnaires or any of those things, what they say might be the case. Then, that's something to think about and look into.
I do think that it's incredibly important to go see a professional instead of just maybe self-diagnosing this thing because I think that it can be challenging, perhaps to just be like, "Shit, I do a ton of these things, that means I'm definitely a codependent." Then trying to just fix it on your own. I don't know. That's why I think having a licensed professional or having someone who really knows what they're doing in terms of this, maybe that's the best bet when talking to someone about this and trying to fix it.
Jase: I understand that. I think there's a difference between being I want a diagnosis, whether that's something I've given to myself or something that I want a professional to give me. I think that can definitely be there too but even if you're more looking at it from the point of view of, I want just tools and advice that I could use. Then I do think like Emily was saying, let's have a little bit of caution and just jumping to be like, "I'm definitely this." Any advice toward this category of person, I should do that. That's definitely the right advice for me.
It reminds me of when we talked before about the empaths and narcissists. That there's a similar thing of the armchair psychologist at home being like, "Aha, definitely, I'm going to identify this thing." Maybe in doing that, you can find some useful tools that can help you, some useful advice because maybe you go, "Yes, this makes a lot of sense. I would love some tools and some ways to stop doing these things as much." I think that can be really useful.
Same if you're reading stuff about narcissists and empaths. If you're reading it from this point of view of like, "Well, I'm just in this category, therefore, I can't ever have these things or I can't ever do these things," or they're in this category. They are by definition this way and they'll always be that way. I think that's where it can become problematic.
Emily: That makes sense, absolutely. It is the challenging armchair psychologist thing of being like, well, I know because Pinterest or the internet or whatever told me that this thing is the truth and the case. It is fascinating because I have on Pinterest, relationships as one of my things that just tends to come up and codependency on there comes up a lot. It is generally the you are a codependent, you might be a codependent if you have these symptoms and then ways in which to break yourself free from codependency and things like that.
Most of them are just asserting yourself. If you are in that role, trying to assert yourself, trying to allow your voice to be heard in various ways when your partner potentially isn't hearing it and things along those lines. That's not to say that that's not great advice because it can be in certain situations but if we go back to the root of what the word meant back when it became a thing in the '70s, then, just to say, well, I'm definitely a codependent because of X, Y and Z. It may be taking away from the initial stuff that what it was going for back then.
Jase: Maybe taking away some of the value from the people who this was really meant to help.
Emily: Yes, perhaps. Maybe.
Jase: Before we go on in talking about the other side and then going on to talk about, what do we do now that we've seen these two sides? Before we go on to that, we want to take a quick moment to talk about ways that you can support this show to keep it going because this is something that does cost a lot of time and money for us to do and it's something that we want to keep growing and we've been able to do so much because of all of you. Please take a moment, listen to this, keep it playing and visit some of the sponsors because honestly, that does directly go to support us just like joining our Patreon does.
Emily: All right. Let's now talk about the other side of this issue. This is more the side where psychologists and researchers have some questions and some issues with the term codependency and where that's gone over the last, I guess what? 40, 50. How many years has it been since the '70s?
Emily: I still look at the seven days as being like 30 years ago but it's definitely not anymore, it definitely isn't.
Jase: 50 years ago now, wow.
Emily: I know. Wow. That's really unbelievable to me, 50 years ago. It's not 30 anymore, no way. I wasn't born in 1970, no, I was not. Just saying that there's this great critique out there from Kimberly A. Calderwood and Rajesparam. I said that wrong but it was fantastic.
The origin of codependency is this term, codependency as a term is talked about in a critique from Kimberly A. Calderwood and Rajesparam. They say in this critique, codependency is a concept that initially emerged in the addictions field in the 1970's to address unhealthy family relations that occurred as a result of substance dependencies. That is, again, as we said before, very specific to a specific thing that was the reason why this term and this idea of codependency was even initiated, it started I guess in the past. That's something to think about in regards to what we're about to go over.
Jase: Right. One of their major critiques of it is just a lack of agreement on a definition of codependency among those in the medical field. Essentially, arguing that there are so many definitions and characteristics like the ones that we talked about before that basically anyone could be diagnosed as codependent and to them, that's a major problem.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. There's also only one psychometric index of codependency out there. Psychometric, I believe it just means that you actually have a tool for measuring if somebody is this thing or not. .
Jase: Talking about with ADD. There's various psychometrics.
Emily: Psychometric indexes, yes, exactly. For codependency, as big as that is and as many people as those, if 50% of all people or whatever. Some people think that that's how many people out there actually have this. There's actually only one psychometric index and it's called the-- Oh gosh.
Jase: Holyoake.
Emily: Holyoake. That's it. No, you're right. The holyoake codependency index, but even the authors of this index have stated that there are several limitations with the tool. That's really interesting.
Jase: It's interesting that there haven't been other tools developed. I feel like often in psychology, you'll get multiple different tools that you can then compare to each other and use those to reinforce or get a second opinion essentially, and that there's not for this.
Emily: I think that would be awesome. No, there's not. Yes, and because of that, there's just a lot of back and forth regarding how to even look at and diagnose codependency. People see it even as different things. Some people see it in terms of a disease framework, that it actually is a disease that is diagnosable and treatable. Some people see it as a personality disorder. Some people see it as that some people just have issues with social interactions.
My question with all of that is how well can it actually be treated if there is so much debate on how to view the issue in the first place? Let's talk about another issue which is that feminists dislike the codependency label because they see it as sexist and pejorative against women. This is really interesting.
Jase: This one I thought was really interesting. Yes.
Emily: Definitely. It's because it's often given to women or mothers who are in relationships with men who suffer from substance abuse and it often attributes responsibility and enablement to them.
Jase: Let's take a moment and break that down and pause for a second here. That while I think the creators of this concept of codependency were doing it from a place of, we want to help people who feel trapped in these relationships or who are suffering because of their partners' substance abuse and are unable to get out. I think that that's a good intention, but this is a fascinating point, though, that as this concept grew, it got to the point where we're now saying, okay, you again, often women, wives or mothers or girlfriends were saying, "Well, actually, his problem is partly your fault because you're codependent."
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: That's yikes. When you put it that way, we didn't realize that that's what you're saying with this and that's troubling.
Emily: Absolutely. You and I talked about this a bit before as well, but you said some to the degree of, we're essentially telling people to get out of relationships and be more. You said something like, be more like the guy would be. Can you explain what you were talking about there?
Jase: Right, yes.
Emily: Which again, this is hard because we're talking very on the binary here. We're talking about like social structures of how men and women act in what people think of as male behavior versus female behavior or something along those lines. That's not necessarily the case at all here, but yes, please explain.
Jase: Right. We've talked about this before a little bit with this idea that-- Like in the world of business. Generally, the approach that's taken both by many feminists and people who are pro-gender equality is to say, "Okay, well, clearly, we just need to make it more okay for women to act like men in the workplace and that women should take on more of these traits." Which means playing yourself up, bragging more, being more confident, being more assertive, yada, yada, yada. That that's the conventional advice that's given in the world of business.
A critique of that that Dedeker likes to talk about a lot. I wish she was here to talk about it more, is that the irony is that in saying, we're approaching this being critical of the current norms and the domination of men in the workplace, and or domination by men in the workplace, I guess I mean, and yet, our solution is based on this assumption that the way men do things is the best way.
Emily: Exactly, yes.
Jase: I don't even mean to say the way men do things but the way we think of as masculine ways of behaving.
Emily: Yes and that's the thing to strive for in the workplace and also within the-- It's like the best thing to do is to rid yourself of these feelings of wanting to nurture or wanting to be loving and caring, and therefore, a partner in these ways. That to me, is a very interesting critique that all of a sudden, that becomes a bad thing and you are enabling your partner's behavior in their substance abuse just simply because you're trying to be helpful.
Jase: We've taken yet another thing that we tend to associate caregiving with women and not with men. We're finding a way to say that the caring and the caregiving is itself the problem or it is a problem. It's something we're going to pathologize and call it a disease or a disorder. Again, what we're doing is we're saying women be more like men, then we're also saying men definitely don't you be carrying because that's this problem that women have. I know we're speaking very gender binary like Emily pointed out.
Emily: We are.
Jase: The point of that is not-- The whole point is to say that that's not reality, but unfortunately, that's so baked into our culture-
Emily: We still live in a world where--
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Exactly. I looked up and found this really great YouTube video by the name of The Myth of Codependency and it talks about this very thing amongst others. Where the feminist critique of codependency just says that the label of codependency denies male accountability and continues this further oppression of women that that's the feminist critique of it. That it denies male accountability.
Again, women can also be substance abusers obviously, and they can be the ones who maybe put a man or female partner or whomever in non-binary or whatever, in these different situations. That's not to say that it's only an issue for a man and a woman or for people within these types of situations, but it is something to think about. I agree that one should look at this critically in terms of a feminist critique because there are issues here with how it's being presented.
Jase: Yes. Let's go back and explore a little more this idea of pathologizing caretaking because that's also part of the concerns about codependency. I think this one's interesting because on the one hand, as we talked about before, I think that understanding codependency and maybe seeing, "I have some of these traits," and finding ways to have better boundaries or be clearer with what's harmful for you and your life, I think that can be really useful. I think that can be life-saving.
I think that's incredibly important but when taken too far, in terms of over-diagnosing codependency, we're essentially saying that any type of caretaking is a disease. I know that's a bit of an exaggeration but that's where it can start to go.
Emily: When saying that codependency is a disease, that's an interesting place in which to take it and one that I didn't even realize that it had been thought of as a disease in addition to maybe just a personality trait or a behavior that somebody might have.
Jase: Right. Whether it's a disease or a disorder or whatever, I still think the same thing though, that we're pathologizing it. We're saying it's a problem. Something that I thought was an interesting way of looking at this too because, again, this is coming from the framework of substance abuse. It's interesting because we also talked about addiction as a disease.
Yet, the caretaking that someone might do for someone with the disease of alcoholism or drug addiction, we're much quicker to pathologize that into saying, that's codependency or that's enabling when you're trying to care for that person versus if they had cancer. Where if they had something else, the same types of caretaking. It becomes this weird thing of if we're going to understand substance abuse and substance addiction as a disease, why then are we still not treating it like that in terms of the stigma that we put on to supporting people like that?
Emily: We're saying one disease then is better than the other in terms of well, this disease is worthy of being treated in a way that's loving and caring and giving versus this other disease. Well, that's a bad disease that you essentially brought on yourself and we need to look at it as this thing that your partner's around you or people around you need to let you hit rock bottom or whatever.
We are going to get into that a little bit more, slightly later, but that is something within all of this research that I found truly fascinating. Something to think about because we say the word disease, and to me, disease means one thing and yet it's being turned into a more pathologized idea later on. When you talk about it.
Jase: Like a more commonplace idea.
Emily: Well, when you're talking about it in terms of codependency, it's like, well-- and substance abuse. If you have a substance-- If you are someone who is addicted to a substance and that is a disease. That's something that's bad and you're bad for having that kind of thing or for doing that.
Jase: I do want to give a little caveat real quick there about-- We've talked about this before in episodes about saying that substance abuse could be a red flag issue, a deal-breaker type of just you don't want to be in that situation. I think that it reminds me a little bit of some conversations we've had about mental health too where, say you have a partner who has the type of anxiety that with what you have going on, causes you then to also be very anxious or to be very withdrawn or to be very depressed or something. Those two things together, then causes you to not be supportive of them in a very good way, and it also causes a lot of harm to you.
Yet, if we over-glorify the caregiving or you've got to be self-sacrificing for your partner, if we over-glorify that, we can end up encouraging those people to be stuck in that relationship. Even though it's causing both of them harm, arguably.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: On the other hand, if you're someone who is equipped and able to offer support without it ruining your own life to a partner who has anxiety or who has depression or something like that, that's what we're talking about here. That if you are able to do that, we shouldn't pathologize that and say that something's then wrong with you if you want to be supporting that partner.
I think most people would understand that if we're talking about depression or anxiety, but when it comes to substance abuse or other things, sometimes there's more stigma there and it's harder to accept that same thing of maybe some people could be equipped to support and shouldn't be shamed for it but then other people maybe should get out of that situation because it's going to cause them more harm and they're not ultimately going to be as supportive of that partner as they think they are.
Emily: Basically, what you're saying is that it is very dependent upon you and the other person, and what you are able to deal with in the moment and in that point in your life, due to a variety of circumstances. Again, to just blanket statement everything, if you're in this type of relationship, you need to get out of it and that's it. There's more to the whole story than that and I appreciate you saying that.
Let's just talk slightly, a little bit about attachment styles and how it can weave into this idea. It might be more beneficial to look at attachment styles and see how we love and how some of those behaviors may seem codependent, but perhaps, they're actually not. There was a psychology today article that talked a little bit about this and I thought it was very interesting. I'm just going to read a little bit from it.
It says, 'Some adults who did not feel safe or attached to their parents as children, may have an ongoing struggle with insecurity in their relationships. They may feel unwanted, uncertain of their attachment to others, worried about possible rejection, or afraid they will lose someone they love. When they find themselves with a partner who is abandoning or inconsistent for whatever reason, they respond and behave in a fearful way. They may become hyper-vigilant dwelling on the problems of the people they love or angry, isolated, jealous, possessive or obsessed with trying to change or help their partner or child. In the process, they begin to lose their way and find themselves hurting and alone. Since the late 1970s, this was called the codependency."
This was really interesting to me because I think it's exactly the type of thing that we were taught as kids. The rationality behind why my mother, for example, kept getting into shitty and emotionally abusive relationships. Essentially, just saying, maybe just because of the way that she viewed her parents' relationship, she used that is a model for her relationships later on. Also, that fed into the way in which she existed in her romantic relationships later on in life.
Jase: You're saying that maybe that we're confusing codependency with attachment styles, is that what we're saying here?
Emily: Yes, I think so just because, again, it did talk about in this article, how some people may have more of the attachment style of, I think sometimes I do that I'm more of an anxious attachment style. I will have behaviors of come towards me, please and love me in these ways. I'm worried about you leaving and et cetera. That can be conflated as well, you're being codependent or you are codependent because of that style of loving that you do essentially when they may be two separate things.
Jase: It makes a lot of sense.
Emily: I'll just read just a little bit more from this article. "The term became commonplace, meaning codependency and evolved into a caricature of a passive victim, compulsive caretaker, controller or enabler, often blamed for causing the problem." This is interesting. "Because codependency is often misunderstood. Many professionals are seeking a new way to describe this pattern of loss of oneself and difficulty with regulating emotions, one that does not have stigma or cause shame.
Jase: Wow. That is really interesting that they bring up the fact that the label, codependent, does have all this stigma and shame associated with it.
Emily: Absolutely.
Jase: Potentially, like we talked about before, this lack of accountability being given to the other person and then blame being put on to the person who is trying to help them, it is really interesting, just all the--
Emily: Yes, it's a weird cyclical thing.
Jase: I think this is a good case for the way that psychological principles or things that are being researched when brought into pop psychology, some I think more than others can very quickly become problematic. It seems like this might be one of those.
Emily: Yes. Well, there is .
Jase: They can cause problems.
Emily: Totally, just because there is-- Not to say again that these things can't be helpful, but there is this big pop psychology/self-help thing that happens now. Again, if you're saying it's a disease that needs to be treated, then perhaps pop psychology/let's just go read a self-help book is not the best way in which to actually deal with these issues especially if it's one that stems from intense, deep trauma as a kid from your parents or from the traumatic things that occurred to you.
Those are not something that you can just read a book and it's gone forever. It's something that really, I think that requires the help of a medical professional to really get to the root of the issue rather than just let's go and read a bunch of books and listen to a bunch of podcasts about this issue, kind of thing. I appreciate all of you out there listening to this. I just found it very interesting that I see so many Pinterest things of, well, do these five steps and you're not going to be codependent anymore and it's like "Yikes" I think actually, there's a lot more to it than that.
Jase: Right. The last critique that we wanted to cover here, we've talked about this a little bit already, but essentially, that critics of the codependency model are also worried that a fear of codependency and maybe the pathologizing of the behaviors that are associated with codependency are actually causing people to become too independent and diminishing their need for others. When as humans, we actually do need that and those things are important to our health.
I've heard this before with other sorts of critiques of our very Western individualist societies too. That we are overvaluing something that's actually not healthy for us, which is this extreme independence. I think that's interesting and then with issues of substance abuse, like we talked about, the answer is usually just cut off that person entirely. The Gottmans say something effectively like that.
Emily: Really?
Jase: Yes, not in so many words, but essentially, this idea of well, substance abuse is, no, there is no way that you can-- That always should be a deal-breaker. At least, that's one that they put into that category and we talked about this a little bit. Gosh, I don't even remember what episode that was but it is interesting that there's just that assumption of we've just got to cut that person off entirely. That's the other critique here, is that the death rate to drug addiction specifically, opioids is going up still, right?
Emily: Yes, it's skyrocketing right now.
Jase: This war on drugs has been epically unsuccessful but this idea of being fearful of codependency and being fearful of being an enabler, and cutting people off with the hope that they hit rock bottom and then can get better on their own may actually be leading to more relapse and more death and that is interesting. I'm not someone who works in that field, I don't know the specifics of that but it is a compelling argument, I think.
Emily: Yes, there was an article on vice.com that just said why the codependency myth of drug addiction needs to die, it's all about this essentially, just yes, and it said that thing that you were stating before, which is if it is a disease and if cancer's a disease, you're not going to pathologize the loved ones of a cancer patient, taking care of them and really trying to help them get better but you might do that when it's a person who abuses substances.
That is something to think about and again, these are all such specific to the situation. Things that one has to think about and deal with because, gosh, if you're the mom of someone who is addicted to heroin, I don't know how you freaking let them just hit rock bottom like that. Very well mean, that's it. I don't know but I think there are caveats here absolutely though with all of those that we're talking about.
Jase: That's mostly to say that if you find that you are in an unsafe situation, or a very clearly unhealthy situation because of trying to support someone with substance abuse problems or addiction, take care of yourself. We're not saying , "Oh no, you just got to tough it out." That's not what we're saying, it really varies case by case. It's more that we don't want to be essentially pathologizing and socially punishing the people who do choose to care for their family members or their partners or people in their lives who may really need that support.
Emily: Absolutely, yes. Just in conclusion with all of this, maybe before you start labeling yourself or others codependent, just ask yourself if there might be more to the story than just a simple label. This is an idea, as we said before that emerged out of the West and out of people coming back from the Vietnam War, having substance abuse issues because of that, because of the traumas that they endured over there but special consideration should be made for cultural and ethnic context regarding all of this. Absolutely because it is a very Western idea. The idea of codependency is a very Western thing.
Jase: Well, it goes along with that Western idea of independence being the ideal, yes.
Emily: Exactly. Absolutely. It is sometimes best to explore different alternatives. If you are in an unsafe situation, as Jase said, and you need to get out of it, then absolutely do that but sometimes it's good to look at the critiques and challenge the idea that this word codependency has so much power simply because it's super popular, and it's just blown up in popularity over the last 50 years. I guess now 50 years, wow, that's amazing.
It's still as super prevalent. It's prevalent all over the place. You type in the word codependency and millions and millions of hits come up just because it is so popular but something that struck me about doing the research on it is just how little I knew about the other side of the story and so I hope, even though I know we went all over the place today, but I hope that for some of you, it's something to think about and that just the narrative that you've heard forever isn't necessarily the entire story when it comes to codependency.