Tribute to a healer, now healed herself...Codependency
Carole Smith was an instrumental contributor to my identity,
my path, and work as a therapist. She
was my supervisor during the early years of training to secure my license as a
therapist. Her skills, talent, humor, intuition,
and expertise in trauma healing were just a few of aspects that enriched me as
a practitioner. She was an example of
how to thrive through pain and live a full life no matter unmoved mountains
remain in our story. She was diagnosed with
Multiple Sclerosis when she was around 13. She was
confined to a wheel chair for the whole time that I had the blessing of knowing
her. Her personality was infectious: wit and humor found in the hardest of places,
her “I get it” sense of being present with struggling souls, her warrior like
approach to using just the right intervention to unwrap the stuck places.
She passed away this last December. I found out only recently. I comfort in the image of her carefree spirit dwelling in the carefree surroundings of God's eternal presence. In my process of saying goodbye, I decided to
honor her by sharing a piece of her writing.
This is a blog she posted when her counseling business was known as the
Epiphany Center. It is on the topic of
codependency. I think it is a sweet sample of the way she sought Christ’s image in the healing process. You will also see a poem she wrote and her photo that was included in her celebration ceremony.
As Codependents “we learned too
young and too well how to take care of everyone but ourselves. Our own needs for love, attention, nurturing,
and security went unmet while we pretended to be more powerful and less
fearful, more grown up and less needy, thank we really felt. And having learned to deny our own yearning
to be taken care of, we grew up looking for more opportunities to do what we
had become so good at: being preoccupied
with someone else’s wants and demands rather than acknowledging our own fear
and pain and unmet needs” --Women Who
Love Too Much
The above Scriptures and my understanding of codependency
echoed in my head as I thumbed through copies of Women Who Love Too Much and Codependent
No More and thought back over years of self-definition based on how much I
had given and done for others. I wanted
to throw away the books, close my eyes, and slide back in my pew at church as
though I didn’t know what I knew. And what
I knew was that the books rang true at many levels and that a life of molding
myself into what another needed had not turned out to be “Good News” after
all.
At root, I was not laying down my life for others: I was laying down my life for myself – so
others would stick around and, by needing me, keep me from sinking into my own
pain.
Somehow, I had come to identify this way of running from myself as
“being Christian”. Frighteningly, so
had many others. Once I recognized
myself as codependent, I began to realize that my Christianity was heavy on
presence and very slight on honesty and trust.
As a graduate student in both theology and psychology, I began to
seriously question whether it was possible to be psychologically healthy and
Christian. How could one recover from
codependency and be Christian?
An answer to this question emerged as I began to question my
definition of “Christian”. Adrian von
Kaam in Spirituality and the Gentle Life put words around what I had called
Christian, but he renamed it:
pseudo-Christianity. Pseudo-Christians believe that being
Christian means fitting a certain “saintly” image and that growing in
Christ involves determining by their
will, rather than God’s will, to change what is “unChrist-like” about them. It is a lifestyle of introspective reflection
in which the self is incessantly and scrupulously checked up on. Pseudo-Christians believe they are loved if
they live up to the “law” with the law being determined by whatever their own
Christian community defines as Christian—be that conservative, liberal,
evangelical, charismatic, etc. Beneath
the shadow of law, pseudo-Christians inevitably feel that others in their
community are somehow more Christian, and that it comes easy to everyone but
themselves. Feeling guilty that “God
isn’t enough” and assuming that the reason they still hurt or doubt is because
they haven’t quite gotten “faith” right, pseudo-Christians
push down all the feelings that don’t fit the “Christian image” and expect
themselves to be at the end of a process that God has only just begun with
them.
When denial and alienation from personal needs being the
name of the game, pseudo-Christianity does indeed become a breeding ground for
all kinds of mental and emotional illness.
In regard to codependency, recovery does mean that pseudo-Christian
pharisaic tendencies must be named for what they are. Though we are all pseudo-Christian to some
extent, using outward structure and self-discipline to cooperate in our own
growth—the difference between the outward
expression of our attempts to live for Christ and the heart of Christianity
must be understood.
Returning to the
basics, being Christian is not a result of what we do but of who we allow to
love us. I am a Christian when I accept the love of God offered to me in
Christ. I grow as a Christian when I
take myself as I am to God honestly and trust that God will transform me in
God’s time. Holiness is not
something I work myself into; It is a gift from God. Though the arrival of “holiness” and the
“pace of grace” may be slow, I can trust God to work in me and in others. Seemingly, “good works” can go undone and the
world will not tumble, my salvation will not be snatched away. If I cannot “pick up my cross and deny
myself” on a particular day or am not ready to “turn the other cheek” it does
not mean I am no longer a
Christian. It simply means that I need to take my inabilities, my anger, my
resistance, my confusion—all that I am –to God and invite God to change what
God wants changed.
With this understanding of Christianity, codependents can
let up and risk a more balanced way of living in which they care
themselves. As for Scriptural support,
Mark 12:31, Mark 6:31, and Luke 10:38-42 are helpful. In Mark 12:31, we are told to “love your
neighbor as yourself.” Codependents
typically hear the first half of this verse and kick it into gear—a
mission! Yet, the second half of this
verse is the priority for codependents.
Until codependents love themselves, their “love” for others will always
have a desperate and controlling quality to it.
Mark 12:31 clearly puts forth a balanced perspective: love yourself and your neighbor in the same
way.
In the sixth chapter of Mark, Jesus has sent the disciple’s
off in pairs to heal and teach. They
have worked hard and when they return, Jesus says to them: “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place
and rest a while.” (Mark 6:31).
Codependents can identify with the disciples working and helping others
but often miss the gentle, balancing call of Jesus for them to come away by
themselves to rest awhile following their work.
The driving “god” behind codependency would have instead said, “Did you
miss anyone?” Thank God such a “god” is only a codependent myth!
Lastly, it is important to look at the placement of two passages
in Luke, chapter 10. First, there is the
parable of the Good Samaritan which tells us to help our neighbor, with our
neighbor being anyone in need. Certainly
the parable could be a creed for codependents! What we often fail to notice,
however, is that the good Samaritan is immediately followed by the story of
Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) in which Mary
is said to have chosen the better part when she chooses to take for herself
what she needed even when doing so meant that work for others was put aside.
Keeping these two passages in context, back to back, changes the
“creed” of codependents into only one
side of a balanced call to care for self and others.
Recognizing this balanced call to care for self and others
as present in Scripture is an important step for Christians seeking to recover
from codependency. Actually, finding out
and living the balance is a subsequent, ongoing and difficult process. Early in recovery, balance is close to
impossible and most codependents swing from their familiar position of “only
you are important” to an uneasy position of “only I am important” for a
time. It is during this time that
codependents most often receive backlash from other Christians who perceive
them as becoming cold, uncaring, and selfish.
When this occurs, it is particularly important for Christian
codependents to hold onto the Scripture discussed above and know that they are
“in process”.
What appears selfish is a necessary step toward finding balance that
will make a fruitful Christian life possible. It is only as recovery continues to progress,
and the middle ground position of “I am important and you are important”
becomes more familiar, that the “Good News” of Christianity begins to make
sense; because God loves us we can love ourselves, and when we love ourselves
we are able to truly love others.
--Carole Smith, MS, LPC
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