Facing Codependence

1. Codependence is a Disease with Five Core Symptoms

We believe that these suffering people are in the grip of a serious underlying disease called codependence (or codependency).

Defining Codependence. Codependence is presented as a serious disease stemming from dysfunctional childhood experiences, impacting both self-relationship and relationships with others. It's characterized by intense, often overwhelming or absent, emotional reactions and a compulsion to control or please others. This internal turmoil and external behavior sabotage health and relationships.

Five Core Symptoms. The disease is structured around five primary symptoms that manifest as difficulties in key areas of life. These difficulties are often experienced at opposite extremes, lacking moderation.

• Experiencing appropriate levels of self-esteem (low/nonexistent vs. arrogant/grandiose)
• Setting functional boundaries (nonexistent/damaged vs. walls)
• Owning and expressing one's own reality (denial/delusion vs. hiding)
• Taking care of one's adult needs and wants (too dependent vs. antidependent/needless/wantless)
• Experiencing and expressing one's reality moderately (chaotic/extreme vs. overly controlled/absent)

Beyond Addiction. While initially observed in families of addicts, codependence is recognized as a widespread disease existing independently of chemical dependency. It can even underlie and fuel addictions, meaning recovery from addiction often requires addressing underlying codependence.

2. Core Symptoms Sabotage Lives Through Negative Control, Resentment, and Impaired Intimacy

During my recovery process I realized that the five core symptoms described in the previous chapter were sabotaging my relationships with others and with myself.

Sabotaging Relationships. The core symptoms manifest externally, damaging relationships with self, others, and a Higher Power. These secondary symptoms include negative control, resentment, distorted spirituality, avoiding reality (through addiction, illness), and impaired intimacy. They are direct consequences of the internal core symptoms.

Negative Control. This involves attempting to determine another person's reality (body, thinking, feelings, behavior) for one's own comfort, or allowing others to control one's own reality. It stems from impaired boundaries, difficulty with self-esteem, and issues with needs/wants.

• Trying to control others' opinions to feel good about oneself.
• Blending one's reality with others due to poor boundaries.
• Manipulating others to meet unacknowledged needs.

Resentment and Impaired Intimacy. Resentment is holding onto anger and a need for revenge, often fueled by perceived threats to fragile self-esteem and skewed thinking. Impaired intimacy, a hallmark of codependence, is the inability to share oneself authentically or truly hear others without trying to change them. This is blocked by:

• Fear of inadequacy (low self-esteem).
• Walls or nonexistent boundaries preventing connection.
• Inability to own one's own reality to share it.
• Dependency issues turning adult relationships into parent-child dynamics.
• Extreme emotional expression overwhelming others.

3. Codependence Stems from Dysfunctional, Less-Than-Nurturing Childhoods

I have come to believe that dysfunctional, less-than-nurturing, abusive family systems create children who become codependent adults.

The Roots of the Disease. Codependence is not an inherent flaw but a learned response to childhood environments that fail to nurture a child's natural development. These environments are characterized by dysfunctional parenting, often involving abuse or neglect. What is considered "normal" parenting in society may, in fact, be less-than-nurturing.

Beyond Overt Abuse. Abuse is defined broadly as any experience in childhood (birth to seventeen) that is less than nurturing. This includes more than just overt physical or sexual violence. It encompasses emotional, intellectual, and spiritual forms of abuse, as well as neglect.

• Hitting, slapping, screaming, name-calling.
• Requiring children to parent themselves or others.
• Neglecting basic hygiene or emotional needs.
• Denying a child's reality or feelings.
• Overprotecting or being inappropriately intimate.

Delusion of Normality. Many raised in such homes believe their experiences were "normal" because their caregivers encouraged this view. They internalize the idea that their problems stem from their own inappropriate responses, not the parenting they received. This delusion traps them in the cycle of codependence.

4. Functional Parenting Nurtures a Child's Natural Value, Vulnerability, Imperfection, Dependency, and Immaturity

When children are born, they have five natural characteristics that make them authentic human beings: children are valuable, vulnerable, imperfect, dependent, and immature.

Inherent Child Nature. Children are born with five core characteristics: valuable, vulnerable, imperfect, dependent, and immature. Functional families recognize and support these traits, guiding children toward mature adulthood. They also possess self-centeredness, boundless energy, and adaptability, tools for growth.

Nurturing Development. Functional parents foster healthy development by:

• Value: Esteeming children for their existence, not performance, teaching self-esteem from within.
• Vulnerability: Protecting children while teaching them to set boundaries and choose safe vulnerability.
• Imperfection: Accepting their own and the child's fallibility, teaching accountability and making amends, pointing to a Higher Power.
• Dependency: Meeting needs (food, shelter, emotional nurturing, etc.) and wants, teaching interdependence and how to ask for help.
• Immaturity: Allowing children to act their age, guiding them toward age-appropriate behavior without pushing them to be mini-adults.

Modeling and Guidance. Functional parents model healthy behavior, set clear and reasonable rules, and provide guidance on problem-solving and a philosophy of life. They are accountable for their mistakes, creating an environment of trust and respect where children can learn and grow safely.

5. Dysfunctional Parenting Warps Natural Traits into Codependent Survival Mechanisms

As a result the children lose their own sense of value (since they can’t see that the fault might lie with the caregivers).

Warping Natural Traits. Dysfunctional parenting attacks or ignores a child's natural characteristics, creating intense shame. Children develop survival traits to cope and maintain the belief that caregivers are right, even if it means distorting their own reality. These traits become the core symptoms in adulthood.

Survival Traits & Symptoms:

• Value: Attacked/ignored value leads to feeling "less-than" or "better-than" (empowered abuse), resulting in difficulty experiencing appropriate self-esteem.
• Vulnerability: Lack of protection/boundary teaching leads to being "too vulnerable" or building "walls" (invulnerable), resulting in difficulty setting functional boundaries.
• Imperfection: Attacked/ignored imperfection leads to being "bad/rebellious" or "good/perfect" (perfectionism), resulting in difficulty owning one's reality and imperfection.
• Dependency: Needs/wants mishandled (enmeshed, attacked, ignored) lead to being "too dependent," "antidependent," or "needless/wantless," resulting in difficulty acknowledging and meeting adult needs/wants.
• Immaturity: Pushed to be overmature or allowed to be immature leads to being "controlling" or "chaotic," resulting in difficulty experiencing and expressing reality moderately.

Misdirected Tools. The child's natural self-centeredness, energy, and adaptability, meant for healthy development, are misdirected towards survival in the dysfunctional system. This depletion makes recovery harder in adulthood when these tools are needed for growth.

6. Emotional Damage, Especially Carried Shame, is the Core of Codependence

I consider shame to be both a gift from God and a legacy of abuse.

Emotional Sabotage. Dysfunctional parenting's most profound damage is emotional, leading to overwhelming or absent feelings. Healthy emotions (anger, fear, pain, guilt, shame, joy) have purposes, but cultural messages often label some as "bad," hindering healthy expression.

Shame: The Core Feeling. Shame, distinct from guilt, is the primary feeling influencing self-worth. Healthy shame brings humility and accountability. However, dysfunctional caregivers, often out of touch with their own shame, induce overwhelming "carried" shame into the child during abuse.

• Caregiver denies/is irresponsible with their shame -> Child absorbs it.
• Child's natural shame + induced shame = overwhelming worthlessness ("shame core").
• This shame core constantly tells the child/adult they have less value.

Carried Feelings. Other feelings (anger, fear, pain) can also be induced if caregivers deny or are irresponsible with them during abuse. These carried feelings manifest as overwhelming adult reactions (rage, panic, depression) that feel irrational and out of control, distinct from healthy, moderate emotions. This emotional damage is central to codependence.

7. Abuse Perpetuates Codependence Across Generations

Whenever the shame core gives its message of being “less thaif to a person, that person is automatically thinking, feeling, and behaving as a codependent.

The Cycle of Codependence. The shame core, induced by abusive caregivers, becomes the generator of codependence in the child. This shame drives the core symptoms in the adult, which in turn lead to dysfunctional parenting, planting the roots of abuse in the next generation. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle.

Dysfunctional Parenting Manifestations:

• Lack of self-esteem leads to inability to appropriately esteem children, teaching otheresteem and shaming imperfection.
• Impaired boundaries lead to transgressing child boundaries and failing to teach healthy ones, potentially setting up the parent as a false Higher Power.
• Difficulty owning reality prevents allowing children their own reality, shaming their thoughts, feelings, or appearance.
• Difficulty meeting needs/wants results in neglecting or abandoning children's needs, teaching unhealthy dependency patterns.
• Difficulty with moderation creates unstable, chaotic, or overly controlling environments for children.

Family Secrets. Unresolved issues and "secrets" from a parent's abuse history (e.g., sexual abuse, addiction) can unconsciously be acted out by the children. This is linked to impaired boundaries and the transmission of undealt-with trauma across generations, perpetuating family dysfunction.

8. Defense Mechanisms Like Minimization, Denial, and Delusion Hide Abuse and Symptoms

But as we grew up, these helpful and lifesaving defenses often moved beyond the necessary function of protection and turned into unyielding barricades that keep us from seeing the ego-threatening adult symptoms of the disease of codependence in ourselves.

Protecting the Child. Defense mechanisms (repression, suppression, dissociation) are vital tools children use to survive overwhelming abuse by blocking out painful memories or experiences. Without them, children might suffer severe mental or emotional breakdown.

Sabotaging the Adult. While protective in childhood, these defenses become barriers in adulthood, preventing codependents from seeing their symptoms, their history of abuse, and the impact on their lives and relationships. They contribute to the sense of feeling "crazy" or disconnected.

• Repression: Unconscious forgetting of painful events.
• Suppression: Conscious choice to forget painful events.
• Dissociation: Psychologically separating from the body/experience during trauma.

Minimization, Denial, Delusion. These defenses distort current reality and past history:

• Minimization: Reducing the significance of one's own dysfunctional behavior or past abuse ("it wasn't that bad").
• Denial: Believing there is nothing wrong with one's own dysfunctional state, even while seeing it in others.
• Delusion: Believing something contrary to clear facts, often about one's own behavior or the harmlessness of past abuse.

Body and Feeling Memories. Despite defenses, the body and emotions often retain memories of abuse. Sudden physical symptoms (body memories) or overwhelming emotions (feeling memories/attacks) can serve as doorways to retrieving lost history in a therapeutic setting.

9. Physical Abuse Attacks the Body and Undermines Self-Respect

Whenever a caregiver attacks a child’s body in some way, by beating the child with an object, slapping, pinching, pulling the hair or banging the head, physical abuse takes place.

Disrespecting the Body. Physical abuse involves attacking or ignoring a child's physical person, teaching them their body is not worthy of respect and they have no right to control who touches them. It can be overt (visible attacks) or covert (neglect).

Forms of Physical Abuse:

• Overt Attacks: Beating with implements (belts, objects), slapping the face (particularly shaming), hair pulling, head banging, pinching, shaking.
• Disguised as Discipline: Using implements or excessive force under the guise of discipline, going beyond appropriate, non-injurious correction.
• Sexual-Physical Abuse: Physical beatings used for the caregiver's sexual stimulation.
• Tickling into Hysteria: Holding a child down and tickling them to the point of feeling out of control of their body.

Neglect and Abandonment. Physical abuse also includes failing to meet basic physical dependency needs:

• Insufficient or unbalanced food, inadequate clothing, unsafe/unclean shelter.
• Lack of necessary medical or dental care.
• Lack of appropriate physical nurturing (hugging, holding) for infants, or too much physical enmeshment as the child ages.

Witnessing Abuse. Watching physical abuse inflicted on someone else, especially a sibling or parent, is also profoundly abusive to a child due to underdeveloped boundaries. It instills fear and emotional pain.

10. Sexual Abuse, Physical or Emotional, Confuses Identity and Boundaries

Although a child has a natural capacity to respond to sexual stimulation in a childlike way, whenever an adult is being sexual with a child, the experience is abusive for the child.

Adult-Child Sexual Activity is Abuse. Any sexual activity between an adult and a child is abusive, regardless of whether it involves physical contact or if the child appears to consent or even initiates it. The adult is always the responsible party due to their lack of control and the child's inability to cope emotionally.

Forms of Sexual Abuse:

• Physical Sexual Abuse: Intercourse, oral/anal sex, mutual masturbation, sexual hugging/kissing/touching (fondling). This is incest if by a family member, molestation if by a non-family member.
• Nonphysical Overt: Voyeurism (sexual stimulation from looking at a child) and exhibitionism (sexual stimulation from exposing oneself to a child), often masked as carelessness or humor.
• Nonphysical Covert: Verbal abuse (sexual innuendos, jokes, name-calling, grilling about dates) and inappropriate sexual boundaries (lack of privacy, adult nudity around children).

Emotional Sexual Abuse. This occurs when a parent's relationship with a child of the opposite sex becomes more important than the relationship with the spouse, drawing the child into the parents' intimate world. The child is used to meet the parent's emotional needs for affection or a romantic substitute.

• Child becomes a confidant for marital problems.
• Parent shares inappropriate details or puts down the other spouse to the child.
• Child is taken on "dates" with verbal messages of being preferred over the other parent.

Impact on Identity. Sexual abuse, especially emotional sexual abuse, creates confusion about sexual identity, preferred sources of affection, and sexual preference. It can lead to difficulty forming healthy adult intimate relationships and perpetuate cycles of abuse.

11. Emotional Abuse Includes Verbal Attacks, Social Interference, and Neglect

Emotional abuse is probably the most frequent kind of abuse.

Attacking the Child's Being. Emotional abuse damages a child's sense of self-worth and emotional well-being. It is often less visible than physical or sexual abuse but equally damaging.

Forms of Emotional Abuse:

• Verbal Abuse: Screaming, name-calling, sarcasm, ridicule. This attacks the child's identity and can be deeply shaming. Listening to verbal abuse directed at others is also damaging.
• Social Abuse: Interfering with a child's access to peers, either directly ("don't bring friends home") or indirectly (creating an unsafe home environment due to parental issues like addiction or illness). This hinders the child's social development and sense of belonging outside the family.
• Neglect and Abandonment: Failing to meet essential dependency needs, especially emotional nurturing (time, attention, direction). Neglect means needs were met poorly; abandonment means they were not met at all (physical or emotional absence).

Impact of Parental Issues. Parental addictions (chemical, sex, gambling, work, love, eating disorders) or physical/mental illness often lead to neglect and abandonment as the parent's focus is diverted away from the child's needs. The child is left to parent themselves or others, losing their own childhood.

Parental Codependence. Codependent parents, due to their own unresolved abuse and symptoms, may be unable to nurture their children appropriately. They might be overly focused on pleasing others outside the family, spread too thin, or emotionally unavailable, resulting in neglect or abandonment.

12. Spiritual Abuse Replaces a Healthy Higher Power with Abusive Authority

Spiritual abuse includes experiences that distort, retard, or otherwise interfere with a child’s spiritual development.

False Higher Power. A newborn initially sees parents as a Higher Power. Functional parents model fallibility and point to a true, non-human Higher Power. Abusive parents, however, act as if they are God, demanding perfection, setting inhuman rules, and using their power to control and shame the child. This taints the child's concept of a Higher Power.

Forms of Spiritual Abuse:

• Parent as God: Any serious abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual) is spiritual abuse because the abuser's attitude ("I'm God, my will prevails") replaces a healthy Higher Power. This leads the child to hate or worship the parent, hindering a relationship with true spirituality.
• Overcontrolling: Preventing children from developing their own thinking and way of doing things, demanding rigid adherence to parental beliefs, stifling spontaneity and creativity.
• Inhuman Rules/Demanding Perfection: Setting impossible standards, leading to constant failure, shame, lying, and the belief that God is a punishing figure who expects unattainable perfection.
• Abandonment: Children left to parent themselves may become their own false Higher Power or distrust any Higher Power due to lack of caregiver interaction.
• Lack of Spiritual Information: Failing to teach children about spirituality or provide a healthy philosophy of life.
• Parents Refusing Accountability: Modeling that one can offend others without shame or accountability, hindering the child's ability to be accountable and spiritual.

Religious Addiction. Parents addicted to religion use it to control, empower, and avoid reality. They neglect children, use God to threaten, quote scripture without explanation, avoid responsibility by "turning it over to God," and teach that problems mean one is not "right" with God. This creates fear and judgment, hindering true spirituality.

Abuse by Religious Representatives. Physical, sexual, or emotional abuse by spiritual leaders is profoundly damaging. It can lead to intense anger towards God, distrust of spiritual authority, and severe psychological consequences, making recovery and connecting with a Higher Power extremely difficult.

Last updated: June 8, 2025