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Co-dependency – The Emotional Puppetry

Addiction Affects the Whole Family

Addiction affects not only the individual afflicted by it but also affects loved ones closely associated with the person suffering from it. Addiction is thus a “Family Disease”, and treating one without treating the other can have disastrous consequences.

Co-Dependency: Behaviors and Losing Control

Co-dependency has a range of behaviours that manifest in relationships. In addition, the dependent lives his/her life around drugs/alcohol. The family and close friends base their lives around them trying to control their usage, in the bargain, losing their identity.

The co-dependent who has thus lost control over a chaotic life searches for a semblance of control by taking on responsibilities of the house, often the business, the children and the affairs of the dependent.

Insecurities and Manipulative Behaviors

They give the dependent more Love, care and respect than they will ever receive back. They are ridden by insecurities and low self-esteem, making them believe they cannot live without another person. They think “love” turns out to be clinginess, emotional dependency, possessiveness and the like, thereby stifling themselves and their loved ones.

There is a huge amount of resentment that accumulates. Some manipulative behaviours consciously or unconsciously surface to get the Love, care and respect they crave from others.

Co-Dependents and Their Manipulative Tactics

Co-dependents can be passive or active. The passive co-dependents dread and fear conflict and will do anything to maintain the peace. This probably arises from the fear of being alone, low self-esteem and low self-worth. They would be abject people pleasers who never can say no, even if it hurts them or inconveniences them. They manipulate the dependent subtly and subversively into receiving Love and care from them. It could be by:

Giving them money for their alcohol/drug usage to avoid a fight

Buying alcohol/drugs for them out of fear

One co-dependent who had visited us wanted her husband to continue to drink because only when he was drunk would he be nice to her and not be violent towards her!

Creating a wedge between other constructive relations and the dependent, thus isolating him from others for oneself.

Playing the victim consciously or unconsciously, blaming the person addicted for their miserable state of mind /life, thus emotionally manipulating the other through guilt.

The children, too, are often emotionally manipulated and controlled as the dependency shifts to them.

Thus their methods adopted to manipulate are covert and subtle, and the usually intelligent person addicted to the substance fails to see it.

Active Co-Dependents and Their Confrontational Behavior

The active co-dependents can appear to be domineering and are not afraid of confrontation. They would often be confrontational when the person afflicted is intoxicated, resulting in a fight that can take ugly turns. They can pick up arguments and demand the Love, time, respect and care they feel is their right, that the person afflicted should be fulfilling, but is not, due to the all-consuming addiction to alcohol/drugs. Here too, the co-dependent cannot walk away or emotionally detach from the dependent and live their lives with the hope that someday this person shall look at them and see them and their Love and care and will change towards them.

They feel that they need this relationship to feel complete or to fulfil themselves. The belief is that the responsibility to care for their emotions, Love, and self-respect is on the other person. Their lives have been made a living hell because of the person using them. That garners sympathy from family and friends and puts them in the “right “only as a matter of relativity of the other using the substance, thus, being in the wrong.

Many times, the addiction of the dependent is kept in wraps, excuses made for, and violence hidden because of the feeling that I must protect him/her from the world and I can take care of him/her, I can make him stop his addiction. If I hide it, I am listening to him, and he will love me more and value me. Or, If I talk about it, I will have to face shame, blame and ridicule from society.

Thus, the co-dependent’s emotional manipulation, which is unconscious or conscious, often results in enabling the afflicted person’s addictions.

The Importance of Treating Co-Dependency

Sadly, if the co-dependency is not treated, the co-dependent does not realise that they are responsible for whatever is happening in their lives and are the result of their choices. When the person addicted goes into a rehabilitation treatment process and change happens, he takes control of his life. He starts participating in the family dynamics from which he/she had been isolated due to the addiction, taking responsibility for the children, work, etc. Here, the co-dependent, if untreated, feels threatened and insecure again, and the happiness at the sobriety of the afflicted is short-lived. The resentment and bitterness boil over, and they try to control the situation again, which leaves them baffled. Being in the “right” as a matter of relativity is also absent.

The Co-dependent can become the right kind of enabler to get the dependent into accepting help by following the guidelines below:

  • The right time to speak is in the morning when you know the person is sober, clean, and remorseful.                                  
  • The right thing to share is what one feels and experiences as a consequence of the other’s drinking/using without blaming and shaming the individual for it.
  • Say that if he needs help, get him to meet the experiential addiction counsellor who can motivate him to enter residential rehabilitation treatment.
  • Once the person comes into the treatment of his own free will, in a non-medical residential facility, then it is primarily through sharing, self-disclosure, writing, meditation and other alternate therapies that would be the apt therapeutic modalities that would get him to understand himself, increase his awareness of self and reach to a stage of not finding the need to use.

When the individual who is addicted comes into treatment, the family needs to come into Counselling and receive parallel treatment themselves with the family therapist. They need to realise through therapy that they are solely responsible for their emotions and feelings; it is a choice. This realisation and sense of responsibility make them self-reliant and not emotionally dependent on the person who suffers from addiction.

Effective Communication After Treatment

The communication after the loved one comes back home after the right treatment:

It is very natural at this time for the co-dependent to feel that this individual who was an absentee father/mother, an absentee son/daughter, or an absentee husband /wife suddenly wants to take on and participate in all these roles. It takes time for the co-dependent family to accept and acknowledge this sudden paradigm shift. It is not easy for them to leave their control over the house, children, business, and finances. That happens due to their past experiences with the individual while drinking and using. If they have not received help and worse, if they have not accepted help for themselves, the dependent’s spouse, parent or children continue to look at the addict who is now recovering with “old eyes”. The past is brought up frequently and thrown at them in arguments and conversations.

Expectations also increase with the person back home as though going to rehab has been a miracle turning point and everything will be fine. Far from reality, life issues surface and must be faced head-on with emotional stability.

Effective Communication Strategies

The right communication post-treatment:

– Do not throw the past at each other’s face

– Face a new issue as a fresh one.

– As Dr Jerajani says, “Stop Comparing, Criticising, Complaining and Questioning each other” What remains is only the doorway to communication.

– Let the language change to sharing, being transparent and honest.

However, the above is possible only when the spouse/family are willing to work on themselves too, as much as the person addicted to the substance does, with the writing, the Counselling and the meditations.

Recovery and Healing

When the individuals in residential treatment and the co-dependent become self-reliant, they can meet on a common platform of friendliness and compassion. Dysfunctionalities dwindle, and a life that is truly fulfilling beyond drinking and using surfaces. This process requires patience, effort and compassion between all parties involved.

Treatment and Support

Treatment involves Counselling with an experiential co-dependent counsellor and possible residential treatment in a loving, compassionate, understanding, non-judgmental environment where the co-dependent gets the time and space to look at oneself and learns to detach emotionally from the other and recognises that responsibility of one’s happiness lies within oneself. The process involves meditation, Counselling, reflective writing and other therapies to reconnect with oneself.

Anatta Humanversity provides an in-house facility for Co-dependents, a loving conducive environment through Meditation and Counselling to realise their true self, love themselves and live joyfully!

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