Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

Co-dependency is a dysfunctional pattern of living which emerges
from our family of origin as well as our culture, producing arrested
identity development, and resulting in an over-reaction to things
outside of us and an under-reaction to things inside of us. Left
untreated, it can deteriorate into an addiction.
The dysfunctional pattern of living is the symptomology that we
have come to identify with being co-dependent, and includes
depression, tolerance of inappropriate behavior, dulled or
inappropriate affect, self-defeating coping strategies, strong need to
control self and others, stress-related physical symptoms, abuse of
self, neglect of self, difficulty with intimacy and/or sexuality, fear
of abandonment, shame, inappropriate guilt, eventual addictions,
rages, etc. In other words, all of the symptoms of Adult Children
outlined in Chapter 3.
Where Does Co-dependency Come From?

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When we say that co-dependency emerges from our family of
origin, we are stating clearly that we do not believe that people
become co-dependent because they have been living with an
addict. Rather, we are stating that they are in relationship with an
addict because they are co-dependent. Clients who say, "But I
didn't know she was an addict when I married her", Inter discover
through their own recovery that they indeed had chosen someone
who fit the family of

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origin rules that they themselves had grown up with. In other
words, water seeks its own level.
The next part of our definition, as well as our culture, means that
we believe that our culture has many elements in it that foster and
maintain co-dependent behavior patterns, These can include
interpretations of religion that are rigid, dogmatic and authoritarian,
and in which people are led to believe that they are bad if they ever
think of their own needs prior to thinking of someone else's needs.
Other cultural influences are our schools, in which children are too
often expected to conform, be "nice" and be so much like each
other that they lose their individuality and their ability to question
life for themselves. Our American emphasis on technological
"cures" and "fixes" for everything can also foster co-dependency
because it increases our alienation from ourselves and each other
and heightens our fears of abandonment.
The foundation for our definition is the notion of arrested identity
development. Building on the work of Erik Erikson, we have
argued that beneath our adult masks we are actually stuck in pre-
adolescent identity formation stages when we have notable co-
dependent patterns.
In our pamphlet Co-dependency and the Search for Identity: A
Paradoxical Crisis (Friel, Subby and Friel, 1985) we likened co-
dependency to the foreclosed identity state first proposed by
Erikson. Thus, we are like wounded children wearing the masks of
adulthood, frightened that someone will "find us out" or expose us
for what we truly are wounded children. Tim Cermak refers to our
identity model as one of several major theoretical frameworks for

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understanding co-dependency in his recent book Diagnosing and
Treating Co-dependency.
The over-reaction to things outside of us is the addictive and the
denial part of co-dependency. We can help others in their crises; we
can become work-addicted and super-responsible; we can focus on
all the negative hurtful things that our alcoholic or addicted
spouse/friend does to us; and we can blame others for our misery
because these are all ways of avoiding our own internal reality and
pain, which leads to the next part of our definition, which is an