by John Friel
Too often we Adult Children are not only victims of our unrecovering parents while we are children, but also when we are adults and our parents are old and dying. And yet, even the most dysfunctional parents can die with a sense of wholeness if they are open to it. Growth here on earth doesn’t stop until we die.
We are reminded of a friend of ours whose parents died recently. Both were chemically dependent and “recovering” in old age, primarily because of medical reasons. Both had had tremendous conflicts throughout their 51-year marriage, with the last 10 to 15 years being relatively peaceful. And it was not until the very last year of her life that his mother was able to attain that serenity which is encouraged by all of our 12-step programs. But attain it she did. At her funeral our friend read the following (excerpted from a longer eulogy):
“Mom, your life was a mixture of great joy and deep sorrow. For the joys that you experienced, I am very happy. For the sorrow that you experienced, I am sad now, but that will pass. Sadness allows healing; and I understand that those little deaths along the way give us depth and wisdom. The last year of your life was filled with a serenity that I shall never forget . . . I want to thank you for the tremendous dignity that you demonstrated this past year, in living alone, and in your dying, and also for the wisdom to fight to die in your own house. You went ‘gently into that good night,’ and I have hope now that I can do the same someday.”
We would like to end this chapter with a quote from Charles Dickens:
Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly on those who have used him well.
—Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, vol. II, 1840
Interlude
15
The Rabbit
Once upon a time not so long ago, a Little Rabbit was born in a burrow along the edge of a beautiful forest. Her mother and father cared for her diligently, and she was growing up healthy and strong.
Then one day as her parents were heading toward the burrow at the end of the day, a fox leaped from behind a tree, chased her mother down, and killed her and ate her. The Little Rabbit’s father ran as fast as he could until he got home, where he told the Little Rabbit what had happened. They were both very sad and very afraid, and the father did not leave the burrow for many days.
But they needed to eat, and so one day he left the burrow to look for food. He was very cautious and very nervous. As he was nibbling on some small green plants not more than a few steps from the entrance to the burrow, the wily fox leaped from behind a tree, chased him down and ate him right on the spot. The Little Rabbit was shaking inside the burrow because she knew what had happened. She crawled down as far as she could in the burrow, and cried herself to sleep.
The next morning the Little Rabbit awoke very hungry, but she was afraid to leave the burrow. Then suddenly, from a distance, she could hear the voices of two children who were passing through the forest on their way home. She crawled up to the entrance of the burrow and poked her nose out to sniff the air. There was no sign of the fox, so she peeked out of the burrow to see where the voices were coming from. The two children were walking right toward her burrow, but for some reason the Little Rabbit was not afraid. They looked liked such happy, gentle children.
When they got a little closer, they spied the Little Rabbit peeking out of her burrow. They walked a little closer and then sat down to wait for the Little Rabbit to come out. Finally she did.
“How are you, Little Rabbit?” they asked.
“Not very well,” replied the Little Rabbit. “My parents have been killed by an evil fox and I am all alone here in my burrow. I am afraid to come out and forage for food, and I fear that I shall starve if I don’t eat soon.”
“Well,” said the children, “why don’t you come with us? You can live at our house and we will feed you and keep you safe from all harm.”
The Little Rabbit was very happy. She trusted these children, and she said that she would love to live with them. She hopped out of her burrow and jumped into the arms of one of the children, and they took her home. They took very good care of her, and she lived with them for several years.
Then one day she decided to go into the forest to look for some food. While in the forest, she met three other rabbits, who were very excited to introduce themselves to her. They thought that she was very pretty.
“Hello, Little Rabbit,” said the first one.
“You are a very pretty rabbit,” said the second one.
“Would you like to go for a walk with us?” asked the third.
The Little Rabbit was confused, and then she blurted out, “I am not a rabbit!”
The three rabbits looked surprised, and then chuckled loudly to each other.
“If you aren’t a rabbit,” asked one of them, “then what are you?” “I am a person,” she answered angrily.
“A person!” laughed the second rabbit. They fell to the ground and began laughing hysterically.
“Do people have long ears and fur?” asked the third.
“Some of them do,” she cried. “I’ve seen them.” The tears began rolling down her face in rivulets. “I am not a rabbit!” she said again. By this time, the three rabbits realized that she was serious. They asked her where she lived and how she found food, and she told them that she lived with the other people in a house not far from where they were in the forest. Before they could ask her anymore questions, she hopped away and went home.
That night, she talked to the two children and told them what had happened. They didn’t have the heart to tell her that the three rabbits had been right. And so she went to sleep that night, secure in the reality that she was a person and not a rabbit.
The next day, she went into the forest again. Something told her that she needed to go, but wasn’t sure what it was. And so she went despite her doubts. She was in the forest for quite a long time, and a part of her was hoping to see the three rabbits again. After all, they did think that she was pretty, and they had been nice to her aside from their rude laughter. But they were nowhere to be seen. She nibbled on some fresh greens, drank from a babbling brook nearby, and then started home.
After hopping just a few yards, she stopped. Her heart began pounding, and her stomach knotted up. Her breathing became shallow, and she stood still, being very, very quiet. She smelled something ominous. “The fox! Oh, no!” She had never seen a fox, she thought. She didn’t even know what a fox was, she thought. Then how could I even say “The Fox,” she asked herself. Something strange was happening. And then she saw him. He was not more than 15 yards away, lurking behind a bush, ready to pounce on her and kill her. She was frozen with fear!
A split second before the fox leaped toward her, she spied something out of the corner of her eye. They were three rabbits, dressed in strange costumes and wielding three sharp swords with curved blades, known as scimitars.
A fourth rabbit jumped from behind a tree and shouted, “Here, take this and defend yourself!” He hurled one of the scimitars in her direction, and without thinking, she deftly caught it by the handle and reared up on her hind legs to face the fox.
The fox leaped toward her, mouth drooling and fangs bared. Her heart raced. Images of her dead parents flashed through her mind’s eye. The adrenalin coursed through her veins. The fox sailed through the air! She took one step to the side very quickly, disorienting the fox. And then with all the strength she could muster, she made the scimitar do its work. Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! The blade of the scimitar sliced through the air back and forth with graceful power! Whit! Whit! The tip of the blade cut into the fox enough to draw blood but not enough to kill him. Confused and frightened, the fox raced into the woods, where he could be left alone to lick his wounds.
“Three cheers for the Rabbit! Hooray for the Rabbit!” they cheered. Tears welled up in her eyes. They were tears of relief. “I am a Rabbit,” she cried, joyfully.
“Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” cheered the other rabbits. As she turn
ed to thank them, she was amazed at what she saw. Forty rabbits came out from behind all the trees that surrounded her. And then, a forty-first rabbit, dressed more fashionably than the rest, emerged.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The forty-first rabbit answered, “I am Ali Baba. And these are the 40 Robber Rabbits.”
“Robber Rabbits?” she asked.
“Well, not really. I mean, we don’t rob from just anybody. We help animals in the forest protect themselves from predators. The wolves and foxes called us Robber Rabbits and the name just caught on.”
“I see,” said the Brave Little Rabbit. And then she said, “I thank you for helping me to save my own life. But even more than that it has helped me to see that indeed I am a Rabbit. And I am proud to be a Rabbit!”
“Three cheers for the Brave Little Rabbit!” shouted Ali Baba and the 40 Robber Rabbits.
“And three cheers for me,” thought the Brave Little Rabbit. “Three cheers for me.”
Part IV
Beneath
the Iceberg
Whatever is hidden away will be brought out into the open, and whatever is covered up will be uncovered.
Mark 4:22
16
A General Model of
Adult Children and
Co-dependency
We have used the term “co-dependency” a few times thus far. It is likely that many of you who read this book are familiar with the term. Many of you perhaps use the word several times a day. Despite the fact that we are probably best known for our research and clinical work in the area of codependency, we felt that it was important to hold off on any discussion of it until this point in the book because there is a lot of confusion surrounding the term. We believe that the term “co-dependency” has been, and still is, in a state of evolution.
Co-dependency originally meant the spouse, lover or significant other of someone who was chemically dependent. At that beginning point in its evolution, it was simple to understand. Whether you had any symptoms yourself or not, if you were involved somehow with a chemically dependent person, then you were a co-dependent.
But since those simpler early days, “co-dependency” has taken on a life and an identity of its own. Many professionals now feel that co-dependency is a specific diagnostic term which refers to a specific set of emotional and behavioral symptoms.
Robert Subby and John Friel defined it as a dysfunctional pattern of living that was learned by a set of rules within the family system (Subby & Friel, 1985). Subby used a similar definition in his recent book entitled Lost in the Shuffle: The Co-Dependent Reality (Subby, 1987).
Noted psychiatrist and Chairman of the National Association of Children of Alcoholics Dr. Timmen Cermak makes an excellent case for defining co-dependency as a clear-cut psychiatric disorder in his book Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence (Cermak, 1986).
Co-dependency Symptoms
In listing the symptoms of co-dependency, we and others most often look at issues such as “caretaking,” “over-responsibility” to others and an inability to care for self appropriately, difficulty in identifying and expressing feelings, swinging from “too nice” to angry and abusive, over-focusing on others while under-focusing on self, identity development problems, and getting into abusive and/or confusing relationships.
In co-dependency we do not believe that we have choices, which produces a painful feeling of “stuck-ness.” Along with this symptom is a lot of compulsiveness, too. In our seminars we often say, “In our co-dependency we don’t know how to start and we don’t know how to stop.”
Our own work in this area began in 1982 when we likened codependency to a “paradoxical dependency” (Friel, 1982) in which we appear strong, competent and emotionally healthy on the outside but feel confused, lost, lonely and dependent on the inside.
This type of co-dependency, of course, is now seen as just one of many forms that the disorder can take, depending upon one’s role in their family of origin and upon the stage of co-dependency that one is currently in. The strong, responsible, hold-everything-together type of co-dependency can give way to an abusive, rageful, unpredictable, irresponsible form under certain conditions.
Confusion also develops over the concept because one of the common symptoms of untreated co-dependency is simply chemical dependency. In fact, it has been our clinical experience and that of many other professionals with whom we communicate that most chemically dependent and other addicted people are also co-dependent beneath their addiction.
In 1984, we began presenting a model of co-dependency which has served us very well in our clinical work, and which has been extremely well-received by the professional community and client populations alike. Clients like our definition and “iceberg model” because they make both “intuitive sense” and are easily understandable. The professionals in the fields of mental health, chemical dependency, medicine and law whom we have trained with the model, state that it is also easily understood, as well as clarifying the complex and confusing relationship between chemical addictions, relationship addictions, other addictions and co-dependency. We offer here our definition and conceptual model:
Co-dependency is a dysfunctional pattern of living that emerges from our family of origin as well as our culture, producing arrested identity development, and resulting in an overreaction to things outside of us and an under-reaction to things inside of us. Left untreated, it can deteriorate into an addiction.
The dysfunctional pattern of living is the symptomology that we have come to identify with being co-dependent, and includes depression, tolerance of inappropriate behavior, dulled or inappropriate affect, self-defeating coping strategies, strong need to control self and others, stress-related physical symptoms, abuse of self, neglect of self, difficulty with intimacy and/or sexuality, fear of abandonment, shame, inappropriate guilt, eventual addictions, rages, etc. In other words, all of the symptoms of Adult Children outlined in Chapter 3.
Where Does Co-dependency Come From?
When we say that co-dependency emerges from our family of origin, we are stating clearly that we do not believe that people become co-dependent because they have been living with an addict. Rather, we are stating that they are in relationship with an addict because they are co-dependent. Clients who say, “But I didn’t know she was an addict when I married her,” later discover through their own recovery that they indeed had chosen someone who fit the family-of-origin rules that they themselves had grown up with. In other words, water seeks its own level.
The next part of our definition, as well as our culture, means that we believe that our culture has many elements in it that foster and maintain co-dependent behavior patterns, These can include interpretations of religion that are rigid, dogmatic and authoritarian, and in which people are led to believe that they are bad if they ever think of their own needs prior to thinking of someone else’s needs.
Other cultural influences are our schools, in which children are too often expected to conform, be “nice” and be so much like each other that they lose their individuality and their ability to question life for themselves. Our American emphasis on technological “cures” and “fixes” for everything can also foster co-dependency because it increases our alienation from ourselves and each other and heightens our fears of abandonment.
The foundation for our definition is the notion of arrested identity development. Building on the work of Erik Erikson, we have argued that beneath our adult masks we are actually stuck in pre-adolescent identity formation stages when we have notable co-dependent patterns.
In our pamphlet Co-dependency and the Search for Identity: A Paradoxical Crisis (Friel, Subby and Friel, 1985) we likened co-dependency to the foreclosed identity state first proposed by Erikson. Thus, we are like wounded children wearing the masks of adulthood, frightened that someone will “find us out” or expose us for what we truly are—wounded children. Tim Cermak refers to our identity model as one of several major theoretical frameworks for und
erstanding co-dependency in his recent book Diagnosing and Treating Co-dependency (1986).
The over-reaction to things outside of us is the addictive and the denial part of co-dependency. We can help others in their crises; we can become work-addicted and super-responsible; we can focus on all the negative hurtful things that our alcoholic or addicted spouse/friend does to us; and we can blame others for our misery because these are all ways of avoiding our own internal reality and pain, which leads to the next part of our definition, which is an under-reaction to things inside of us. These things that we are avoiding are our feelings, our pain, our joy, hopes and dreams. These things inside of us are us. Co-dependency is thus a dangerous denial of self.
A Unifying Model of Co-dependency and Addictions
Our “iceberg model” that we have been using since 1984 is shown in Figure 16.1. It is borrowed from the psychodynamic notion that what is on the surface (in our model, the more overt symptoms of addiction, depression, stress-disorders, etc.) is tied to a much deeper inner reality of guilt, shame and fear of abandonment, which was learned in our family of origin. Mediating between our surface symptoms and this deeper reality is what we are calling “co-dependency.”
Thus, when we begin to remove the alcoholism, sexual addiction, eating/food disorders, migraine headaches or whatever, through primary treatment, what we are left with is our co-dependency. That co-dependency must also be treated if we are to avoid the risk of relapse. Our model also allows for the explanation of the various forms that addiction take and the various roles that we can cycle through, including the “offender,” “victim” and “rescuer” roles. Thus, some relationship addicts are victims, some are offenders and some are rescuers, but they are all co-dependent underneath it.
