Last week two of my friends sent me this New York Times article. They know my philosophy well on the subject matter related to substance use and addiction in a family system. They knew it would resonate with me. My friend Beth Macy said, “This is Shelly 101!!!” She writes about how I bucked systems, societal conditioning and traditional responses to addiction in her new book, “Raising Lazurus” while facing my son’s substance use and ultimately changing the way addiction was treated in a family system.
What I appreciated in the New York Times article was the explanation of the origins of “codependency” as a “diagnosis” by clinicians, mutual support groups and family programming at treatment centers as related to parents and loved ones of people with substance use disorder. Here is where I see a place where the system of care fails families. For too long the onus of addiction has been placed on the individual, then the family rather than where it should be, on the toxic substance and on the systems that perpetuate addiction. The best example of placing the onus on the person rather than the toxic substance is how the Sackler family blamed addiction to oxycontin on the individuals rather than the medication and went so far as to corroborate their own lies within their marketing, therefore stigmatizing people into silence and perpetuating addiction. That’s a big topic to unpack and we are going to do that here in another essay but for today, let’s talk about the system failure around codependency and why we have to get curious about codependency as it relates to us, mothers of people with substance use disorder/addiction.
Why we have to talk about codependency as mothers is that there isn’t a black and white here and it’s not a “diagnosis” in the DSM but it is abused by the system of care as a blanket statement about someone’s behavior and that word, that “diagnosis” alone can shame people into silence, inaction, withdrawing from relationship or withholding love and compassion. Those behaviors lead to disconnection and isolation. Disconnection and isolation cause emotional harm and are linked to substance use and addiction.
The best description of codependency I’ve heard came from a woman named Jen Hatmaker on Glennon Doyles podcast We Can Do Hard Things. “The central definition of codependency is that you just do not allow another person to sit in the consequences of his or her choices. You just won’t allow it. You don’t either. You don’t want them to feel the discomfort of it. You don’t want other people to observe what’s true.” She went on to describe her personal understanding of it, “You shape shift around somebody’s volatile personality just to steady the waters right? So that you’re just not constantly having explosions all around you. You’re basically taking on the effects of somebody else’s choices and you are crafting an environment around someone else so they don’t have to feel their own pain, their own discomfort, their own trauma, their own consequences, or even their own responsibilities.”
She called herself the clean up crew. That’s relatable to me. Call it what you want but I admit to paving the way and cleaning up the messes so that no one could see or experience the truth of what was happening inside our family system, not even the people in the system. I was a peacekeeping, facade creating supermom to the detriment of my own body and my spirit.
I don’t know about you but I read “Codependent No More,” at the suggestion of my therapist back at the beginning when I showed up on her sofa and plowed through an entire box of tissues (for years) describing the current situation in my family where people were overusing substances, getting in trouble and causing me great distress. This is what I recognize about myself in that narrative. My life had been about everyone else’s life, in service to everyone else’s happiness and peace and the show I was putting on was causing me physical, mental and emotional harm. I was depleted. What I needed wasn’t a name/label (you’re codependent) that shamed me into inaction and disconnection. This made me feel like it truly was my fault and I’d failed as a mother. What I needed was a mirror, then an orientation, then support and then actions (I work well with cues) that would break the behavior patterns in our family system and create the conditions for connection and communication so that everyone could experience the natural outcomes of their actions and receive proper care and treatment for toxic substances affecting brains and bodies.
Maia Szalavitz writes, “When someone is ill with any other disorder, relatives are not shamed for obsessively caring or rearranging their lives to help. Instead, those who abandon suffering loved ones are stigmatized. But when it comes to addiction, parents are told that their loving kindness is pathological because they somehow benefit psychologically from keeping their children addicted.”
What I want to get away from is labels that keep people from getting proper care and treatment. I want to get away from clinicians, treatment programs and TikTok’s cloaking mothers in shame when their behaviors make sense when someone they love is at high risk of physical, mental and emotional harm. I want to get away from pointing at mothers and saying, “you’re codepedendant” (your fault) and then “you didn’t cause it” (not your fault) at the same time. That doesn’t make sense. That causes harm.
I’d like to see more understanding of the interdependency of families and that many of our behaviors especially as mothers are instinctual and our natural bonds are influential. I’d like to see more of an emphasis on the ways in which a mother can support recovery from addiction just like families learn how to support recovery from cancer or support the remission of auto immune disorders like ulcerative colitis or lupus. What I’d like to see more of mothers being treated with the kind of care that identifies what specific behaviors and patterns need disrupting so that individuals can experience the natural outcomes or consequences of their own actions and learn ways to communicate when those actions are causing harm.
This is “way of being” work. The old “way of being” with addiction/substance use has not worked for a very long time to the detriment of families and an enormous loss of lives. If all that tough love, rock bottom and disconnection because you’re codependent worked, we wouldn’t be in the addiction crisis we are in. Psycohologist, Carrie Wilkins says “Studies show time and again that families are the biggest reason why people want to change and do change over time.”
If that means interrogating labels and getting curious about how said label may be causing harm, stigma, disconnection, isolation or perpetuating systemic harm, then let’s try it. If that means striking “codependent” from our vernacular to save our kids lives, support recovery and heal ourselves then let’s do it. Codependent no more, for sure.
Let’s try “Interdependent” instead.