Breaking the Cycle of Codependency

Though my great-grandmother had the smallest home out of anyone in the family and couldn’t do any of the cooking, for every holiday everyone would pack up the entire meal and drive over to cram themselves into her tiny cottage by the bay.

It wasn’t that someone wouldn’t drive her to a party elsewhere, or that she was too physically infirm to leave her house.

It was that she was earthquakingly paranoid that “someone” would break in and deface her home the moment she left.

She believed her next door neighbor had installed a device that would allow him to know the moment she left the house and that he was lying in wait at all times, ready to seize his opportunity to invade her home.

She believed that numerous other people in the neighborhood were working with him in collusion, and that there was a whole network of nefarious evildoers just poised at any moment to intrude upon her little world. Because of this, she could never be too careful.

The family members at the gathering would tightly smile and nod at these stories that had to be shared every time- as justification as to why we were all indeed crammed and spread weirdly throughout this tiny home not at all designed to host a crowd.

But no one ever challenged her distorted worldview.

As a child, this was my known normal and it went completely unquestioned.

As I grew older, I began to wonder and even speculate aloud to other family members- why doesn’t anyone tell her she is wildly off-base from reality? Why doesn’t anyone get her some psychological help, even?

Any such statements would be swiftly rebuffed.

And so, as the youngest member of the family without much leverage to create change among people who are adamantly resisting it, instead I withdrew- but always observed.

My family of origin is a masterclass in codependent enabling, and I watched it consume the potential of every individual that came before me.

It cost me rebelling against my entire way of life, leaving that family dynamic and living essentially the life of an orphan, but I saved myself and my children from that same fate of smiling and nodding at other people’s paranoid delusions.

I realize, of course, this is why none of them are willing to let go of that dynamic themselves.

If they are no longer willing to nod along to their codependent partners delusions, then of course, the partner would no longer be willing to nod along to their own.

It would require introspection, growth and change- all frightening topics that they run from at the first hint of depth entering a conversation.

People who look within, they are not.

That is what sets us profoundly apart.

My ability, and inherent calling, to look deep within, continue to learn and change, rendered me fully incompatible with my family that has a dynamic built upon mutual enablement of maladaptive traits.

For them and so many others who are locked into this vicious cycle, enabling looks like love, but in reality, it is just a mask pulled over an expansive body of unresolved fear, control and dysfunction.

Enabling is the act of shielding someone from the consequences of their own dysfunction- often done under the guise of love, loyalty or care. Enabling behaviors might include over-accommodation, minimizing the severity of maladaptive traits and behaviors, making excuses, doing tasks that the other person could do themselves and many more.

I saw all of these displayed within my family, and not just in regard to my great-grandmother.

As a child, I was passed around three very dysfunctional households like clockwork. I observed their behavior patterns and because there were very severe boundary issues, was deeply entrenched into all of their personal business.

My parents home, where my existence openly ruined their lives and I was treated as a persistent imposition. My grandmothers house, where I was treated as a therapy pet as she chronically over-shared all of her complex adult woes. My great-grandmothers house, where I was held high like a fat little queen, taught to binge eat, fear the world and trust no one.

Now that I am an adult, and one that is interested in psychology to boot, it is fascinating to me to reflect on the web of interpersonal dynamics that I existed within. There were profoundly dysfunctional exchanges in every direction and one unspoken expectation and commonality: I won’t complain about your toxicity if you don’t complain about mine.

What do people get out of this type of dynamic?

In both directions, there is a very clear exchange of power.

For the enabled, it’s fairly clear.

They get to continue to live life the way they have chosen to live it, maladaptive or not. They are comfortably uncomfortable, deeply entrenched in their own personal pit of despair, and there they remain, unchallenged.

Living life this way is obviously extremely restrictive. My great-grandmother left her home about three times that I can recall in the 26 years that we shared this earth, each time kicking and screaming. Her entire life was her own little domestic bubble and whatever came through the TV, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Her worldview was warped, static and insidious. She spewed fearful narratives constantly because the idea of what existed beyond her four walls was fully incomprehensible to her.

And yet, she was accommodated: her enablers dutifully bought her whatever groceries she wanted, found physicians that would make house-calls and spent countless hours sitting in her home with her so she wouldn’t be lonely.

What the enablers felt was an act of kindness was really the construction of a prison around her. With no push to function in the world, she didn’t. Her life was essentially invisible, her impact minimal. Whatever greatness she could’ve achieved was completely left on the table because she never even tried.

She existed in a state of chronic dependency, perceived to be incapable of independent survival. Because this is how she was treated, it proved to be true. She never knew an independent or secure day in her entire life.

What does the enabler get out of this?

How can they look at someone they love who is clearly abusing themselves and manipulating others endlessly to maintain their carefully constructed existence and say, “I want to do what I can to keep this going?”

Well, sometimes they wind up doing it because it’s all they know.

When behaviors go unquestioned and questioning is regarded as rude, intrusive or threatening, literal generations of people can go on living some wild pathology that got established due to dysfunction that eventually just becomes a part of their family’s creed.

“It’s just the way we do things” winds up being a fair answer, and life goes on… for a long time.

Sometimes though, the enabler can recognize that what’s going on isn’t quite right, but they still uphold their end of the bargain.

Why is that?

This situation is a little more complex. Though these aren’t conscious thoughts, being an enabler points to a serious avoidance of self-work for their own inner journey.

People will say, “I lost myself to caring for them,” when they spend years as a long-term caregiver.

Sometimes, this is the goal.

For people who have not do their own inner work and don’t want to, being an enabler can be a very delicious situation because it does a few things.

One, it fluffs up their own ego in a very big way.

This is a very positive dose of self-regard, that is being doled out fully at the enabled persons expense if the situation is more closely analyzed.

Additionally, being so wrapped up in the care of others is a great way to avoid working on their own issues.

Being the enabler also provides a massive dose of control that can be absolutely irresistible to some.

Though my great-grandmother wore the official hat of “Matriarch” in my family until her death, my grandmother (her enabling daughter), really ran the entire show.

Though she was bogged down with caregiving, my grandmother also made every major family decision for decades. Because my great-grandmother was so mentally infirm though, she was always there to blame as a scapegoat for why things were done how they were.

There is also a severe degree of emotional infantilization that takes place by enablers.

Though my great-grandmother was in no way a dumb woman, she was treated as if she was incapable of overcoming the fears she lived with.

My grandmother would coo and dote on her in a sickening manner as she justified her wild anxieties. No encouragement to grow or transcend was ever provided.

Ultimately in the end, the enabler walks away each day feeling both morally superior and fully loaded with martyrdom.

Truly, the enabler lives their life in a delusional state.

They perceive their grasp on the world to be vastly superior and never stop to assess their own shadow.

They may grapple with perpetual resentment, burnout and isolation as a tradeoff for the control that they cannot release and then look to the next generation to provide them with an enabler of their own as retribution for all of their years of “service” to the family before.

After all, they earned it.

This can continue perpetually in a family line for many generations as a form of emotional inheritance.

The children grow up seeing this as their modeled behavior pattern and uphold it, not wanting to betray those that came before them, not able to step out of the cycle.

Hopefully though, someone in the family line eventually wakes up and questions this dynamic along the way.

This happens by being openminded, observant and willing to change and grow.

How do we interrupt the cycle?

When we see this kind of pattern become defined, we name it to ourselves. Observe how all of the parties behave and what the outcomes are. Recognize the toxicity and come to truly understand it.

When others try to draw us in, or expect us to continue forward with our assigned role, we need to refuse and set new boundaries.

With my refusal to take on that role, my grandmother stepped forward once again, ready to repeat what she did for her own mother years ago, forever the savior, martyr and enabler.

I stepped away to live my own path and they are there now living the consequences of their own choices.

I tried to draw their attention to this dynamic and was swiftly rebuffed.

Tried to draw the parallel between my own mother and my great-grandmother, how it isn’t healthy, how toxic patterns are being repeated.

A million excuses, a million reasons why things have to be this way.

Okay, continue along as you wish to be, deranged.

I stepped away.

To keep myself from recreating toxic codependency patterns with my own children, I’ve delved deep into inner child and shadow work, finding my own identity as a person outside of the family I came from.

Without a doubt.

I feel adrift at sea without a raft at many times.

After being raised in a codependent culture where I was taught that to be alone is to be endangered, of course I do.

But I accept this discomfort over the discomfort that would’ve come from taking up my oar on their ship.

Healing this generational cycle isn’t an act of cruelty, though my family would tell you I’m very cold and cruel.

It’s about choosing freedom to grow over the upholding of toxic routines.

It’s about choosing to live truth over illusion.

***

It’s Christmas sometime in the late 90s and I’m sitting in my great-grandmothers bedroom.

It’s stiflingly hot and stuffy and all around me, people are awkwardly perched with paper plates on their knees, some sitting on the bed, folding chairs, someone even on a commode that is draped with a bedsheet as my great-grandmother holds court from her battered recliner.

I knew, even back then as a child, that my family was warped.

I just didn’t quite realize how severely.

While I do hold a crushing amount of love for these people in my heart, I refuse to carry this manic and maniacal way of life into the future in any capacity.

I will not earn love by disappearing into someone else’s brokenness.

I will not call entrapment care, and trade away my potential to uphold their comfort.

Though my heart breaks, I choose my own growth.

Because I know that my evolution fuels the revolution.

And ultimately, I’m doing it for all of us.