What Drives Addiction? What Drives Codependency is the Real Question?
There is more to it than you might think.
By
Jon Daily, LCSW, CADC II
http://www.recoveryhappens.com
(2014)
The term “codependency” has always been tethered to
addiction. It is used to describe a person in a relationship with
someone who is active in an addiction. In the 1940’s the term given for
the addict was “alcoholic.” As a result, the label given for the person in a relationship with the alcoholic was the “co-alcoholic.”
Years later, society and the clinical community at large realized that
chemical addiction was not limited to only alcohol. While the sixties
era was in full swing, many people were using a variety of drugs ranging
from marijuana to LSD. During this time, the people using were viewed
as “addicts” and the people who were in relationships with them were called the “co-addicts.” Eventually, the clinical community moved away from referring to someone as "addicted", instead referring to them as “chemically dependent." It was then the term “Codependent” emerged.
What is codependency?
Codependency is defined as a psychological condition or a relationship
in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is
affected with a pathological condition (typically narcissism or drug
addiction). In broader terms, it refers to the dependence on the needs
of, or control of, another.[a] It also often involves placing a lower
priority on one's own needs, while being excessively preoccupied
with the needs of others.[b] Codependency can occur in any type of
relationship, including family, work, friendship, as well as romantic,
peer or community relationships.[b] Codependency may also be
characterized by denial, low self-esteem, excessive compliance, or
control patterns.[b] Narcissists are often considered to be natural
magnets for the codependent.
How is codependency developed?
We are born inherently vulnerable and totally dependent on our
caregivers for food, safety, and regulation, thus making an infant’s
attachment-bonding to one or more caregivers critical for physical and emotional survival (1). Because the infant must attach,
the infant adapts for better or for worse to the needs and
vulnerabilities of the caregiver. Infants integrate behaviors, feelings,
and desires that can be contained within the caregiving relationship,
but they defensively exclude, dissociate, and disown behaviors that
threaten the attachment bond (2). When caregivers lack the capacity to
help children feel safe, loved, lovable, and validated for their
uniqueness, the development of codependency may then serve the defenses
these children adopt.
During early years of life, the personality and uniqueness of a child
blossoms within the space created by the relationship between the child
and the caregivers. When infants experience the stomach pains of hunger
they cry out to be fed. If their caregivers respond promptly with food,
then the infants learn that they can trust their biological experiences
and emotions. They also learn that along with their power to cry out
for help, they can trust that help will be provided. Over time, when
attuned caregivers respond predictably, consistently, and warmly in
response to an infant's needs, a sense of trust within the self and
others builds.
For example, a child might want to be physically close, held, and
touched in play or in comforting. If caregivers have the capacity to
meet these needs, this reinforces the child’s sense of self-trust. From
infancy children begin to integrate the notion that it’s okay to
approach others to have their needs met. In addition, children learn to
recognize both their own needs as well as what others offer to meet
those needs. This ongoing stream of information and feedback are
therefore integrated into the attachment relationship, which in turn
underpins the development of the self.
This attachment process becomes even more sophisticated as children
develop a broader range of needs, interests, and personality traits. It
is at this point that a child's attachments play out in behavior. This
can be seen in a curious child becoming interested in something new and
having a need for a parent with the capacity to engage with her, or
conversely, a child becoming distressed or sad and having a need for a
consistently warm and attuned caregiver to sooth him. We see this
process throughout early development as children begin to discover their
unique interests, traits, and gifts. Children may be artistic, prone to
intellectual pursuits or emotionally sensitive. They may be
relationally oriented, mechanically inclined, and/or right- or
left-brain dominant. It is when caregivers have the capacity to meet,
validate, and attune to these needs, that it becomes more likely that
those individual traits and gifts will be integrated into the child's
sense of self and learn that it is safe to be who they are.
When validated, children recognize and honor their own needs,
experiences, and interests. In addition, they build an ability to
recognize others who are affirming, soothing, stimulating, and
regulating. This in turn, allows children to feel safe approaching
others and forming relationships that will regulate both their needs and
emotional states.
It is essential that children are able to integrate a consistent
sense that their needs and traits will be warmly acknowledged and met by
their caregivers. When this integration does not occur, it is then that
children are more likely to split off from the parts of themselves they
perceive are unacceptable to caregivers and others. A lack of
integration may manifest in a mistrust of others as well as a lack of
trust of their own thoughts, feelings, desires and traits.
It is clear that the development of the bond, along with the process
of integration, is important for general wellbeing (3). It is important
to also note however that this bond also builds the template and
expectation for all relationships throughout one's life (4). Beginning
in infancy, children mentally represent their attachment figures and
construct ideas and expectations for relationships with both these
original figures and others. Bowlby called this the internal working
modelundefinedIWMundefinedof attachment. While still in infancy a child internalizes
patterns of relating to people, and most generally the parents, and
therefore forms ideas about ways to relate to others based on these
representations (5). These representations also are thought of as the
underlying structure that shapes the nature of sensation, perception,
memory, feeling, thought, and behavior, and are likely to become
consolidated as personality and/or personality disorders. In other
words, children understand their range of relationships based on early
interactions with caregivers, which they have internalized and organized
(6). Each attachment relationship shapes the child’s mental schema,
which then shapes expectations for future relationships and
interactions.
In the first 18 months of life, the brain is blooming and pruning
billions of neurons. It is during this stage of neurological
development, that the brain is right-hemisphere dominant (7). In
addition, we have twice as many neurons in the brain during the first
year of life than we do as adults. In this early stage of development,
the brain builds neural networks that serve as memory, representations,
and routes to process the flow of information received both from the
body and the external environment.
To some degree, genetic inheritance is a predetermined blueprint of
neurobiology; however, the environment is responsible contributing or
inhibiting neurons in forming neural networks. Moreover, during the
period of right-hemisphere dominance, which is an experience-dependent
stage of brain development, these neural networks shape what we now know
to be our unconscious. The right hemisphere of the brain involves
creativity and the development of language, visual perception, patterns,
and impressions. In these early years, impressions and perceptions are
not guided by capacities for reason and logic, which later attempt to
explain behavior and allow us to understand and interpret the nuances
and complexity of relationships. During our first 18 months, within the
regions of the right brain, we build a significant piece of the way we
see ourselves, how we feel about ourselves, approach or avoid others,
and regulate our affective states, which we then play out unconsciously
in our daily lives (8) (9) (10).
To some degree, the explanation of the neurological process, the
forming of and dying off of neurons, matches Bowlby’s statement: "Those
behaviors, feelings, desires which can be contained in the relationship
of the infant to the caregiver will be integrated by the infant; those
that threaten the attachment bond will be defensively excluded,
dissociated, disowned" (11). Perhaps without knowing it at the
time, Bowlby used psychological language to describe the biological
development of neural networks through which personality, affect
regulation, and the mind emerges and becomes structured.
Unfortunately, not all caregivers have a broad capacity to nurture a
child's blossoming self and encourage the development of a favorable
IWM. We know for certain that when caregivers do not respond to a
child's needs appropriately or the response is inconsistent, this lack
of an appropriate response impedes the development of a positive sense
of self and a healthy internal regulatory system within the child. As a
result, a child may learn to both mistrust internal experiences and
mistrust others as a resource for co-regulation. Sadly, children in
negative or inconsistent circumstances often split off from aspects of
themselves and mistrust others. Further, they may overly rely on
themselves and experience avoidance for regulation which sadly, inhibits
their psychological and neurobiological regulatory systems to be
properly built.
Two Case Studies:
In the first case study, the present, but passive and distant father
says little and doesn’t shoulder responsibility for being uninvolved and
incapable of attunement. In the second case study the father was not
around for me to question, let alone enlist in helping his child.
We cannot know for sure how either of the children discussed below would
have fared in infancy and early childhood if a father or grandparent
had been either a primary or co-primary caregiver. However, with more
and more fathers becoming actively involved with their children during
infancy and early childhood, new research may reflect the more equal
roles of parents in society.
Case #1: Jason (Insecure Attachment: Dismissive-Avoidant)
Parents Who Avoid the Developing Self in their Child Leads to a Child
Who Avoids his own Internal Self and Avoids Others: "I'm okay, you're
not okay"
Fifteen-year-old Jason was a quiet, shy, and passive adolescent, but
was also an original thinker and a mechanically gifted young man. Always
ready to take on the challenge of fixing things others couldn't, Jason
preferred being by himself while he worked on motorcycles, go-carts, and
other creative mechanical projects in his garage. Introverted,
strong-willed, and stubborn, Jason's behavior left his parents confused
about how to direct him after he started sneaking out, skipping school,
using drugs, and ultimately, becoming expelled from school for selling
drugs on campus. Jason violated every limit his parents set, and
continued doing as he pleased despite his parents’ attempts to implement
boundaries. As an introverted, quiet person, and socially inept in many
ways, using drugs served as his social lubricant and selling drugs
reinforced his sense of belonging to an accepting group.
When I evaluated Jason, I was struck by his preoccupation with trying
to figure out the therapeutic process in order to avoid engaging.
Instead, of cooperating, he searched for the path of least resistance
out the door. With each question I asked, he became quiet as he looked
away and stared at his lap, the couch, the walls, and back to his lap.
He looked anywhere but at me. After these long silences, he would glance
up at me as if he forgot what I just asked him. When I reiterated the
question, he came up with one or two word answers and started looking
around the room again.
During early treatment, I thought Jason was simply expressing his
resistance and frustration about being forced into counseling, hence,
the passive-aggressive silence and slow, minimal responses. I believed
that as counseling progressed Jason would soften up, as others do, and
see our sessions as a safe place to explore his life, thus being able to
grow and find relief. However, because Jason wasn’t verbally skilled
and insightful, I moved away from the typical talk therapy. Instead, we
went for walks along the river or played ping-pong or checkers. However,
it soon became clear that he wasn’t actually walking or playing
checkers with me, but rather, was absorbed within himself and just
happened to be next to me, much as toddlers might "parallel play." In
contrast with early treatment, where he resisted and showed frustration
through non-engagement, I now saw his lack of capacity to engage in and
negotiate relationships as the result of his early childhood
experiences. It accounted for what could be called “odd” social
relationships.
Left brain dominant, Jason might have been viewed as anxious or
depressed, or suffering from schizoid personality disorder or having
Asperger’s. Perhaps he was simply a very resistant teenage boy.
Although I could have easily put him into any of those categories, those
labels would have limited my understanding of Jason and wouldn't
effectively inform the direction of his treatment. To discover what he
needed, I had to understand what it felt like to be Jason, including
what it felt like to be Jason as a child growing up in his family. I
needed to know what was it like to be nurtured and guided by his father?
How had he experienced his mother's affection, care-giving, love, and
nurturance? Why was Jason avoidant of others and his own internal
experiences? What purpose has his substance abuse served?
I asked Jason's parents, Patty and Rick, to meet with me so that I
could gather Jason's developmental history. Patty was an educated,
professional woman, who was dressed to fit her role as a university
professor. She appeared assertive, but at the same time I sensed
weariness in her. Rick, a blue-collar, hardworking contractor, came to
the appointment in his work jeans and a T-shirt. Like Jason, he
presented as quiet, shy, and passive. Rick wore his sunglasses during
the first half of the session, as if hiding behind them for safety.
I asked Patty and Rick about what their life was like when Jason was
born: stresses and supports, unexpected events, such as the deaths of
friends or family or job losses. With each question, Patty first glanced
at Rick to see if he wanted to answer, but he passively shrugged as if
he didn't care who responded or as if he didn't have a ready answer.
Patty then turned to me and answered the questions.
Perhaps she was tired, I speculated, because she was doing all of the
interpersonal and emotional work in their family. When Patty answered
questions about Jason's first year, she immediately looked even more
tired. Then she mentioned that Jason and his older brother were only 17
months apart, so she had been exhausted by caring for an infant and a
toddler.
Patty had spent much of her life climbing the academic ladder as a
university professor and researcher, ultimately having her children in
her mid-30s, a situation that proved more difficult than she’d
anticipated. Already worn out from parenting her first child, she became
depressed when Jason was born.
I asked about family and community support and learned that Patty’s
family lived about 1500 miles away. As a private person, and admittedly
socially anxious, she didn’t like to share her personal life with
professional friends. In the early years of her children’s lives, Patty
received only minimal emotional support from Rick, who also did not
share in the care of the two young boys. She was forced to become overly
reliant on her own exhausted internal resources to cope with life's
ongoing and new demands. Viewing her job as a source of emotional
respite from the family demands, Patty longed to go back to work when
Jason was three months old.
When I asked how she responded to Jason when he was upset or hungry,
she was candid in her answer: “I know there were times when he needed
soothing and I just let him cry, and there were times he was hungry and I
just didn't care to respond right away."
Jason's developmental history provides a plethora of information
about the course of his development. Jason certainly carries the genes
of his father's shy, quiet, and avoidant personality; Jason’s receptive
mirror neurons might have picked up his father's affective state and
avoidant behavior and integrated it into his own neural networks. I also
believe more telling variables exist. In actuality, Jason grew up with
tired and avoidant parents. As a result, he did not experience others as
a source of consistent, warm, and predictable soothing or attunement.
Rather, he experienced inconsistency at best, and more commonly, his
life was a place in which he received no response, leaving him to go
inward and to overly rely on himself to get his needs met. When turning
to others, Jason found that they didn't acknowledge and nurture his
developing self and meet his dependency needs. This meant that Jason’s
affect regulation system never fully developed. His internal working
model, his IWM, of himself and others left him feeling unworthy of
nurturance and support from others. This then becomes a pattern of
mistrusting others to be sources of help to stimulate and soothe
affective states.
Jason grew up believing that he needed to stay out his mother’s hair.
In addition, his father only engaged with him when a mechanical issue
was involved. No room existed for Jason to connect to his own internal
emotions; when he expressed them in his early years, he was left alone
with the unregulated emotional state. With no one attuned to him, shame
was created and therefore a strong need to be "unseen."
Over time, the negative experience repeated, leaving Jason's opiate
and dopaminergic systems contracted and unable to thrive (12) (13).
However, when Jason used street drugs, these deficient systems are
activated to fire. Moreover, because others did not attune to his
emotional states, Jason was left believing, "Others don't feel what I feel. Because they don't feel it and only I do, then something must be wrong with me." This belief system is core to codependency.
Jason’s expression of affective states did not promote attachment.
Instead, he seemed to be a source of his mother’s stress, which led him
to think he had to disown his internal experiences and distrust them
when he felt these experiences physically and mentally. It became clear
that his father Rick lacked the capacity to attune, and his passivity
indicated a missing component in his own development that left him
unable to connect with his own internal processes and emotions.
Consequently, Jason had learned not to trust others as a source of
support, soothing, and safety. Because his affect regulation system was
not fully built, he had a limited range of affect and limited capacity
to cope emotionally (14). His personality was narrow, turned inward, and
brittle because of his parents’ lack of capacity to nurture and develop
their son’s full range of self in his early years.
Finally, Jason learned that relief came from avoidance and
over-reliance on himself to get his needs met. As a teen he found that
street drugs and alcohol reliably and consistently served to medicate
his emotional states. Furthermore, his drug dealer and drug culture
responded to him every time he called out to them.
As stated earlier, caregivers with a limited capacity to nurture their
children’s developing self can lead children to split off from parts of
the self. They suffer from insecure attachment and avoidance, but they
may also take on characteristics of another insecure attachment type,
such as anxious-preoccupied children. These children
effectively become the caregiver and must attune to their parents’
emotional state and needs, making this situation again a set up for
codependency.
Case Study #2: Sarah (Insecure Attachment: Anxious-Preoccupied-Hyper-vigilant)
A Child Who Must Attune to the Caregiver and Loses her Self in
her Preoccupation With Others’ Emotional States: Codependency: "I'm not
okay, you're okay"
Fashionably dressed, but anxious and depressed, Sarah was
19-years-old, and a straight-A college student with a passion for
snowboarding, at least when she wasn't busy studying, volunteering in
the community, and tutoring the youth in her church. In other words,
Sarah appeared to be quiet, respectful, non-confrontational and
compliant - overall, the perfect kid, student, and member of her community
and church. Referred to my program from the psychiatric hospital where
she had been hospitalized for a week, Sarah had stopped eating and had
begun cutting her arms, thus leaving self-inflicting wounds. During that
hospitalization her psychiatrist also discovered that she had a history
of using vicodin, marijuana, alcohol, and Ecstasy.
Sarah had been using drugs on and off for five years, although her
mother had just discovered she was using. During our initial evaluation
with Sarah and her mother, Kate, I was struck by how quiet and withdrawn
Kate appeared, as if we were in the same office, but she was actually
somewhere else.
"Kate, can you tell me a little bit about what is going on for you right now?" I asked in a gentle voice.
As I asked the question, Kate became withdrawn and her head and upper
body collapsed forward, allowing her to hide her face in her lap as she
began to cry.
"It’s all my fault that she’s using drugs,” Kate said. “I’m not a good
enough mother for Sarah. Her father was never in the picture and I tried
to do it all myself. I never knew that she was depressed or cutting
herself. I’m overwhelmed, so depressed and confused.”
I realized immediately what just occurred. We’d started out focusing
on exploring and understanding Sarah's issues and needs, but within
minutes, the focus shifted to containing Kate's emotional state. This
likely had been happening in their home for years. I then turned to
Sarah. "Can you talk a little bit about what’s going on for you right
now?"
In a soft voice, Sarah said, "I don't know..."
I then said, "You look like you might be feeling depressed or sad.”
She lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. "My mom is depressed and that makes me depressed."
To the world, Sarah appeared as the perfect girl - nice looking,
excelling academically, giving back to her community, and overall, hard
working. However, underneath her "I am doing great" veneer she struggled
with feeling depressed, empty, exhausted, and alone. Like most
experienced clinicians, I knew that diagnoses of codependency,
depression, anxiety, or a substance use disorder by themselves would not
be adequate to help me to understand Sarah. These diagnoses would not
allow me to fully gain insights into her development, how her mind
works, and the reasons for her anxiety and depression, along with her
drug use. I needed a developmental history to understand her and help
her feel understood.
When I met with Kate alone she described growing up with an alcoholic
mother and abusive father as “hell.” With a mixture of sadness and
anger, Kate told me that she hated her father and referred to her mother
as a bitch. “I worked my ass off to get out of that life and leave it
behind me,” she said with a defiant tone, “and I don't ever want to see
them or revisit those memories again."
I asked how she thought her childhood influenced her development and
the way she interacts with Sarah, and she instantly looked deflated and
defeated, but just as quickly began crying in a desperate, animated way.
From this hypo-manic place she kept talking about how hard she’d worked
to give Sarah what she needed. During the interview I observed her
complete exhaustion. It took considerable energy to contain her
emotions - it was always a fight, always a struggle, yet the emotions
continued to hijack her in extreme ways.
Kate also had a history alcohol and marijuana abuse, but she thought
she’d hidden it well from Sarah. "Sarah is the love of my life,” she
said. “Since the day she was born, we would cuddle and she was the one
thing that made me happy. I was severely depressed for the first year of
her life, and Sarah was and still is my teddy bear."
Later that week, I met with Sarah so I could gain a better
understanding of her childhood. Right away, she mentioned that her mom
had always been depressed, moody, and unpredictable, which led to
Sarah’s constant fear that her mother might leave or hurt herself.
According to Sarah, Kate becomes angry when she drinks, although she
doesn’t hit Sarah. Still, these moods and angry talk frighten Sarah,
making it impossible to relax when her mom is upset. As Sarah had said
before, when her mom is depressed, she’s depressed, too.
“With such an intense connection to your mother's inconsistent moods,
how are you able to do so well in school,” I asked, “and find time to
help out in the community and your church?”
"I feel alone at home,” Sarah replied. “My mom doesn’t understand how
depressed I’ve been, but when I do well in school and in my activities,
it makes her happy. It puts a smile on her face and other people give me
a lot of love for what I do.”
With Jason, his caregivers lacked the capacity to help him reach his
full range of self, which damaged his development. In Sarah’s case, the
full range of her developing self was not only unmet, but she had to
attune to her mother's emotional needs. This led to her preoccupation
with her mother's moods in the moment, while also anticipating the moods
to come. Hyper-vigilance, needed at times for emotional survival, was
repeated so often that over time it became more of a state than a trait.
She built her life around doing what others needed or wanted her to do.
Whereas the avoidant-dismissive person is hyper-vigilant, as if it’s
not safe to rest, codependent Sarah, with what Mary Main would classify
as insecure-anxious-preoccupied attachment, expended a great deal of
psychic and emotional energy to constantly scan the environment and
ensure it was emotionally safe to meet others’ needs and expectations.
Over time, that outflow of energy left her empty, tired, and depressed.
Sarah ended up caring for and fixing her mother's emotional state so
that Kate could “return the favor” and take care of Sarah’s emotional
state, or, put another way, "I need to fix you so that you can fix me." This
dynamic trapped and exhausted Sarah; ultimately, it damaged her affect
regulation development and gave her a tattered sense of self. This left
her vulnerable to peer pressure and subsequent drug abuse. Her drug use
served her need to relax and for once, let go of expectations to please
others.
Sarah’s codependency fueled her drug use. When immersed in the drug
culture, Sarah experienced others emotionally giving to her rather than
taking. Sarah also met more and more people in the drug culture and
spent time at their parties and gatherings. Consequently, this emotional
and social attachment to the drug culture became part of her hook to
drugs. The drugs were intoxicating and soothing; the drug culture came
close to meeting her interpersonal needs. This setup proved to be the
most significant challenge in addressing the addiction part of her
treatment. She was enmeshed with her drug using friends, and despite
recognizing how damaging they were for her, she resisted letting go of
that part of the experience. It was within that culture that she was
allowed to not get an A in every class or be involved in community, nor
was she expected to fix others’ emotional states in order to find
approval, acceptance, and belonging.
As previously described, a child experiences arrested development
when caregivers have limited capacity to connect, validate, nurture, and
respond to the full range of a child’s blossoming self. Lacking
consistent, responsive attunement, a child may split off from those
aspects of the self that the caregiver is unable to help develop. In
the concept of good fit/bad fit, when the parent can attune or match a
child in temperament and learning styles, there’s a good fit that serves
positive development. However, when caregivers lack the capacity to
attune or express emotion, then the good fit isn’t achieved. In these
situations, developing children may split off from disowned-parts of
themselves that are not within their caregivers’ ability to match.
Looking at the above examples, it also appears that
codependency/insecure attachment can be a trans-generational issue. In
other words, children might adopt the attachment inadequacies of the
parents. In these cases, the young people used drugs to sooth their
insecurity but their drug use was a consequence of and a solution for
failed relationships. If it wasn’t drugs, it may have been enmeshed
relationships, workaholic tendencies, eating disorders, gambling, etc.
to sooth and avoid.
Neurobiology of Codependency
I remember years ago telling a group of addictions counselors, “codependency is a brain disease.”They
looked at me as if I was trying to be tricky but I wasn’t at all. I
meant it. Simply put, everything mentioned about early childhood
experiences hitherto is not only about the development of the self,
relationships and the mind, it is also about neurobiology. Schema,
beliefs, learned behaviors; adaptive defenses are neurobiologically
networked for better or for worse. When relationships shape our minds
they are also shaping our neural networks in our brain.
Siegel (1999) states, that when we are “feeling felt” in early
childhood, our dopamine system (pleasure/motivation) expands, and the
psychological correlate tethered to this relationship experience is the
allowing or wanting to “be seen.” Conversely, he defines shame as simply
the absence of attunement. Sadly, most clinicians understand that shame
can be an even more explicit weapon in families. Siegel goes on to
purport that shame contracts the dopamine system and the tethered
psychological experience is a person who wants to be “unseen.”
In addition, Schore’s (2003) research has shown that in the attuned
moment between child and caregiver, both have the biological experience
of the opiate system firing. These systems serve to reinforce the
attachment and bond within the relationship. When people have healthy
relationships both the dopamine and opiate regulatory systems are built
and sustained.
This leads me to some final points, in 2007 William Harbaugh set out
to pinpoint what exactly would happen within the brains of people who
are given money and a choice to keep it or donate it to charity. In
2007, with his psychologist colleague Ulrich Mayr, he placed subjects in
an fMRI scanner, while a computer monitor in front of them presented
them with opportunities to donate to a food bank from a fund of $100 in
real cash they'd received at the beginning of the experiment. The
suggested donations could be as low as $15 or as high as $45. The
subjects' donation decisions had meaning, since they would be allowed to
keep whatever money was left over. What he found was that when people
donated to charity the part of the brain that was firing was the Nucleus
Accumbens (NAC). The NAC is the epicenter of dopamine in our brain.
Evolution may have hardwired us this way in order to keep our DNA passed
on, and certainly we are biologically hardwired to attach to others.
Connecting the dots, if lack of attunement and growing up having to
take care of your caregivers so that they can take care of you, or
experiencing toxic shame contracts dopamine, it makes sense then that
codependents are driven to give of themselves as it helps put their
dopamine back in balance. In essence, it helps them, for a moment, feel
they are loveable. Finally the hole in the self for the codependent is
not a food hole, not a drug hole, or a gambling hole. It is a deep
relational hole in relationship to self and others. Unlike other
addictions, codependent behaviors actually come the closest to filling
the relational hole. It is a complex issue with many layers, and is a
subject in which it is essential that the dialogue continues.
Notes
a"Codependency - Medical Definition and More from". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved
b Codependents Anonymous: Patterns and Characteristics
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Neural Responses to Taxation and Voluntary Giving Reveal Motives for
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(2014) By Jon Daily, LCSW, CADC II
Founder & Clinical Director for Recovery Happens Counseling Services, graduate school instructor for USF and author of (2012) Adolescent
and Young Adult Addiction: The Pathological Relationship to
Intoxication and the Interpersonal Neurobiology Underpinnings. (Most of the information in this article is from chapter 6)
www.recoveryhappens.com
916-276-0626
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