Power Tool: Interdependence vs. Co-Dependency

A Coaching Power Tool created by Elizabeth Sabet
(Life Coaching, UNITED STATES)

The indigenous understanding has its basis of spirituality in a recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things, a holistic and balanced view of the world.
Rebecca Adamson

Codependents may be some of the most challenging and difficult clients a coach can come across in their practice, however they may also produce some of the most rewarding coaching outcomes for the clients in terms of the level of healing, transformation, and major goal attainment of any other clientele. In this relationship a coach has a wonderful opportunity to help the client get reacquainted with their whole and perfect spirit which has all the wisdom, courage, and ability they need to live a creative, loving, and fulfilling life free from codependency.

THE CODEPENDENT

Codependency is the antithesis of interdependence.  A codependent may be concerned about others, however, they are concerned about others to the extent that it affects their own sense of security and sense of self-worth.  Instead of relating to others, the codependent gets enmeshed or entangled in another person’s process.  They are not in relationship with others, they are in objectship to others. Important people in a codependent’s life become objects of self reference rather than individuated others with their own responsibilities and capabilities. They lose sight of the holistic and balanced view of the world and relationships.

Objectship as opposed to relationship means that a person can no longer clearly empathize, relate to, or understand clearly who others are in the moment.  It means people see others through their own story or filter of their own experience of who they think they are and what they want to be true about themselves and their lives, on a subconscious or even conscious level.  For example, if a co-dependent picked a partner, friend, co-worker, or boss that doesn’t reflect back to them their story of who they think they are, then their subconscious mind will either project their story onto the other person or attempt to provoke them to engage in a way that keeps their story alive, positive or negative, helpful or unhelpful.

This prevents a co-dependent from seeing people clearly.  They may attribute an ideal onto people that they may not be able to live up to, or they may attach erroneous meaning to people’s behavior in order to keep the current story of themselves alive. Instead of respected individuals that they can live a collective experience with, people become objects to support a co-dependents inflated or deflated ego constructs.  to the observer of a codependent and to the codependent themselves, it may appear and even feel like others are more important than themselves, however, when the underlying belief structure is closely examined, it becomes obvious the world or self view that the codependent is protecting by making others more important is really self-serving.

There are many contributing factors to codependency which are usually specific to each individual’s life experiences. However here are some common major contributing factors to consider:

• They have an unbalanced perspective of their responsibility for other people
• A person perceives (either consciously or subconsciously) their spirits to be wounded or damaged
• They are confused as to the difference between pleasure and pain, security and futility, and of course their own sense of self-worth and the worth of others
• Their sense of compassion is incomplete because it does not include themselves
• There is a history of self-destructive or highly dysfunctional people in their lives
• They harbor hidden guilt and shame, which may be buried deep in the subconscious or active in the conscious mind
• They may be empathic

Early childhood brain research shows that a child’s brain stays in the Theta stages from birth through the age of six.  This means a child’s brain is in constant “record mode”.  The Theta brain state records everything that happens around it even if the conscious mind does not recall it.  The implications of this are enormous for an adult who was neglected and raised around highly dysfunctional, self-destructive, abusive people.  Codependents usually are helped by techniques that “rerecord” over the initial unhelpful imprinting.

Codependents often believe they are acting from compassion and love but if they embark on a self-discovery journey they discover their motivations stemmed not from love, but from fear, insecurity, and an internal sense of futility. They frequently make other people’s needs and desires more important than their own instead of holding themselves as equally important as others. Someone deeply steeped in codependency could be offering compassion and caretaking to others on a subconscious level to secure their own self-worth.