Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is significant that many of these songs become part of our lives during adolescence, an age when we are first testing our identity and starting to explore relationships with others.
Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse has, I think, done more work on co-dependence than anyone in the country. In an unpublished work, she defines co-dependence as “an addiction to another person or persons and their problems, or to a relationship and its problems.”10
A co-dependent is a person who is currently involved in a love or marriage relationship with an addict, had at least one alcoholic parent or grandparent, and/or grew up in an emotionally repressive family. According to Wegscheider-Cruse, co-dependents make up about 96 percent of the population.
Co-dependence is a very interesting disease in itself. Not only is it supported and encouraged by our culture; it is seen as the positive way to function within it.
The co-dependent is invariably a Good Person. Co-dependents are devoted to taking care of others within the family system, and often beyond; many become professional caregivers (nurses, doctors, counselors).
Co-dependents frequently have feelings of low self-worth and find meaning in making themselves indispensable to others.
Co-dependents are sufferers—Good Christian Martyrs. Their goodness is directly related to their suffering and the rewards they expect (and receive) because they are willing to sacrifice so much.
Co-dependents are selfless to the point of hurting themselves. They work and care for others to such an extreme that they develop all kinds of physical and emotional problems. Then—and only then—do they allow themselves to be cared for and nurtured. Co-dependents tend to have ulcers, high blood pressure, colitis, back pain, and rheumatoid arthritis; they are at high risk for cancer. Co-dependents who are children tend to develop allergies, skin problems, asthma, bed-wetting, and learning disabilities and are frequently accident-prone or suicidal.
What else do co-dependents get in return for their efforts? The answer reveals another fascinating side to the story: The people they care for become dependent on them!
Alcoholism and other addictions are viewed as negative and bad, but co-dependence is actually fostered. The co-dependent receives little encouragement to get well because the disease supports the culture and is supported by it.
Another characteristic common to co-dependents is gullibility. Co-dependents believe that people are telling them the truth even when they are obviously lying.
As a result co-dependents do not respect others. Since many of us are confused as to what respect really is, I shall illustrate this with an example from my own life.
The Addictive System invites us to be co-dependents, to refuse to see people and things as they are. In doing so we are fundamentally disrespectful of them. It is only when people are seen as they are that they can accept and honor and take responsibility for themselves. It is only when they own who they are that they have the option to become something else.
I have said the White Male System and the Addictive System are one and the same. It follows, then, that if the Reactive Female System supports the White Male System and co-dependence supports the Addictive System, there must be some relationship between the Reactive Female System and co-dependence. In fact, there is: they, too, are the same.
What this means is that we can no longer label one, or treat one, or see one without acknowledging the presence of all the others. It is not enough to treat alcoholism or drug dependency or even co-dependence. If we are to change our orientation from nonliving to living, we must treat the system as a whole.
Addicts are notoriously self-centered. They may claim to care about the people around them, but their fix begins to overshadow everything else.
Still another aspect of self-centeredness has to do with what clinical professionals call ego boundaries. Self-centered people do not know where they begin and end and anyone else begins and ends. Self-centered people cannot respect others, because they literally are unaware of them as separate entities. (We can clearly see this on an international level.)
Later I will discuss the illusion of control, but for now it should be evident why self-centered people tend to be very controlling. They feel that they must be in order to protect themselves from a universe that they perceive may overpower them.
In the Addictive System the self is central. Everyone and everything else must go through, be related to, and be defined by the self as perceived by the self.
In the Living Process System relationships are central. Living Process System persons are in a constant state of transcending the self.
Another aspect of self-centeredness is arrogance. The Addictive System is quite arrogant. Like the White Male System, it really believes that it is possible to be God as defined by that system.
In an addictive system everyone tries to control everyone else. The family tries to control the addict, the addict tries to control the family, the spouse tries to control against being controlled; everyone is involved in some sort of manipulative behavior. The worse the addiction becomes, the more desperate the need for control. The belief that anyone can get a handle on it is an illusion.
Many people are convinced that they are not loved unless the loved one is trying to control them. They define love as either controlling or being controlled. This attitude is particularly obvious in adolescent girls, some of whom literally do not know what to do unless their boyfriends tell them.
They were riding in his car when he asked her what she wanted to do for the evening. “Whatever you want,” she said.
We often confuse control with responsibility. When we talk about “taking responsibility” within a relationship, we often mean taking control over all of the decisions made about it (such as what to do for the evening).
In the Living Process System responsibility is the ability to respond. In the Addictive System responsibility involves accountability and blame.
In an addictive system the illusion of control starts with an attempt to control the self with a substance or a process.
For instance, a lot of people firmly believe that they can make someone love them. They forget that love is a gift that must be freely given. Instead, they get involved in saying the “right” things, wearing the “right” clothes, and behaving in the “right” ways. They think that they have the power to change someone else’s mind and arouse the desired feelings in that person.
Addicts and their families live from crisis to crisis. Every event or issue is perceived as a major turning point, and one barely ends when the next one begins.
Actually, crisis orientation is also a very subtle form of control. Creating a crisis feeds our illusion of control because the crisis is something we have created.
The illusion of control is a setup for depression. When we believe that we can and should be able to control our world and it turns out that we cannot (which is always the case), we experience failure, and this is depressing. We then try even harder to gain control and fail even more miserably.
almost all stress is a by-product of the illusion of control.
“We cannot play God.” Agreed again. But God does not play God, as that phrase is generally understood. God does not interfere directly in our affairs as the primary causative agent of our births and deaths.
The God of the Addictive System, who is the God that religion teaches and who in truth has little in common with the God of the Old and New Testaments, is God the Controller. It follows, then, that if it is possible to be God as defined by that system, one must try to control everything, and we do!
Because our system envisions God as God the Controller, and because we believe that it is possible to be God, we pattern our lives around the illusion of control.
For the past fifteen years I have been developing an approach that I call living process therapy. This therapy bypasses the cognitive and works with other parts of the brain and the being, and then brings everything back to the cognitive for closure. I believe that this process is where healing (not mere adjustment) occurs.
Unfortunately, none of these therapies, traditional or contemporary, are doing what they are supposed to do. They are not healing people. Instead, they are fostering co-dependence and preparing people to fit into an addictive society. They are not alleviating the problem; they are perpetuating it.
Recovering addicts know that they must relinquish their illusion of control in order to recover. If we are to recover, we must effect a system shift.
We must admit that our society is based on the illusion of control and recognize that the system in which we live is an Addictive System.
I have learned that the first level of lying is lying to oneself. Any addiction, whether substance or process, has as its main goal that of keeping people out of touch with their feelings and thoughts. When people do not know what they feel and think, they find it absolutely impossible to be honest with themselves.
Dishonesty in an addictive system reveals itself in the three “ifs” of the addict: if only, as if, and what if. The “if only” is dishonesty about the past, the “as if” is dishonesty about the present, and the “what if” is dishonesty about the future.
I have several clients who are at various stages in their recovery from addictions, and one thing is true for all of them: Even the smallest lie or dishonesty will push them back into their disease and threaten their sobriety. There is no such thing as a harmless falsehood.
What I have since realized is that lying does not have to make sense. Addicts, people raised in addictive family systems, and co-dependents do not need a reason to lie. Frequently they do not know the difference between dishonesty and truth. They may not even know when they are lying.
Dealing with even small-scale dishonesties is exhausting. Everyone involved must expend enormous amounts of energy simply clarifying interactions. Communication becomes a web of lies. Asking a question when one does not want to know the answer is dishonest. Asking a question when one really wants to make a statement is dishonest. Dishonesty is subtle and universal in our culture.
What I realized is that “on time” and “late” are Addictive System concepts based on a control system. What I became fascinated with was the lie inherent in the airlines’ saying when a plane would leave. What they are really saying is that the plane will not leave before the designated time.
We accept the basic dishonesty of this statement as normal in the Addictive System, but it really is dishonesty.
Of course, this dishonesty is not of major importance; it is important, however, to see how ordinary and acceptable dishonesty is in the system.
In Women’s Reality, I talked about the Good Christian Martyr, the woman who sacrifices and suffers for others, thereby gaining power over them.
When we consider our advertising, our businesses, the quality of the materials used in our bridges, and even what our parents tell us about the way life is, we cannot ignore the fact that we live in a system where dishonesty is the norm. We cannot believe what people say. A person’s word of honor is as worthless as a drunk’s promise to reform. We have systematized dishonesty and assumed it is normal.
Perhaps schizophrenia is a result of living in the Addictive System. I suspect so. It would be interesting to find out how many diagnosed schizophrenics are nonrecovering addicts or members of addictive family systems.
