Dependency and Our Soul
The obvious foundation of our spiritual journey is our relationship with God. But which self do we bring to that relationship? Which self do we bring to any of our relationships? If we have kept our real self buried, how can we bring it into our relationship with God? Maybe that’s why codependents struggle so much in their relationship with God. We try to play it safe by showing God a false version of ourselves. Fearing that our real self is just too damaged, we don’t want to be truly known, not even by God. But if the only self we bring into our relationships is a false self, we will end up with shallow, disappointing, and predictable relationships.
What we usually end up with is a God shaped in the image of our parents and friends. This kind of God may feel safe, but our relationship with him will always fall short of the reality of who God is and who he meant for us to be.
There is a scene in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in which Susan asks Mr. Beaver about Aslan the lion, who is a Jesus figure in the story.
“Is he—quite safe?”
“Safe?” Mr. Beaver replies. “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”[28]
Lewis is pointing to the fact that God is unpredictable and beyond our control. God does what he wants, when he wants. But we can still completely trust him. Whatever he wants for us will be good because God himself is completely good, completely faithful, and completely trustworthy.
So Aslan’s “unsafeness” is different from what we mean when we describe other people—our parents or others—as unsafe. Their unsafeness is based on their being predictably untrustworthy. We may think they are good, but we cannot always rely on them to do what is best for us in every situation. Consequently, there is a limit to how open and honest we can be with them.
When I (David) dealt with my codependency issues, I realized that I had been working really hard over the years to build my relationship with God. I went to Bible college, got involved in different programs there, and ended up leading a parachurch youth ministry where my salary was based on donations. And it seemed to me that God was just like my own father—always a day late and a dollar short. (I remember one time when I had to pay a bill by a certain date, but there was no money available for my salary. The funds arrived after the bill’s due date—a day late.) I worked as a pastor for almost twelve years, all the time hoping it would increase my intimate connection with God.
Unfortunately, I was trying to bring a false self into my relationship with God during this time. I didn’t realize it; all I knew was that I was frustrated and angry with God because he didn’t seem to act the way the Bible portrayed him. I was aware to some degree that all my relationships were off-kilter because unknowingly I was trying to relate to people through my supposedly pain-free false self.
It was only when I was able to face the pain of my childhood and bring that pain into my relationship with God that I could begin to relate to God through my real self. And much to my surprise, my other close relationships—with my wife and sons—changed as well. God finally became not a simple extension of my natural father but instead the ultimate Father I found represented in the Bible.
I had vowed to myself that I would be a different father to my boys than my father had been to me. But I found out that vows don’t work—or at least, they don’t work for long. With any dependency, it’s never going to work to try to fix something on the inside by doing something on the outside. Healing can only come from the inside out, and that means we have to rediscover and uncover our real self. After all, God made our real self; we’re the ones who tried to make our false selves. The false selves may work in some situations, but they always fall short.
Your journey to take your life back will involve getting beyond your false self and breaking free from fear, anger, and shame so that you can bring your real self out of hiding. We’ve seen how taking your life back will affect your brain, your body, your emotions, and your relationships, especially your relationship with God. But before we can begin the healing journey, we need to look more closely at how it affects your soul.
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LOSING TOUCH WITH YOUR SOUL
THE DIFFICULTIES DESCRIBED thus far have cost us all something. But the greatest price we’ve paid is the loss of who we really are. We have lost touch with our own souls. When we consider all the fallout from trauma, attachment issues, inhumane family rules, and the wounds of abuse, it’s no wonder we feel unworthy. And with all that pain inside, it’s no wonder we try to resolve our internal issues by making adjustments to our external world. Getting close to the pain simply hurts too much.
What does it look like to lose touch with one’s soul? It varies. Take Bob, for example. When he decided to become a medical doctor, his family was excited. How special, they thought, to have a doctor in the family. But then, they expected nothing less.
Very early in life, Bob had learned that any attempt he made to achieve academic success made him a hero in his parents’ eyes. With his 4.0 GPA all the way through middle school, high school, and college (and all the accolades that went along with it), getting accepted at his number-one choice of medical schools—Harvard—was just the icing on the cake.
If there was an honor to be achieved in med school, he achieved it. After all, he couldn’t stop now. He continued to excel in his residency and soon built a very successful private practice. Everything he put his mind to, he accomplished. To any observer, he had it made. But all his success was on the outside. In his heart, he secretly struggled with feelings of being an imposter. He lived with the haunting fear that he would someday be exposed as a fraud. Though he tried to push these thoughts out of his mind, he couldn’t do so unless he medicated himself with alcohol.
There was no life-altering trauma, no deep early wounding in his childhood—just a sense that he was valued only for what he accomplished. That was the unspoken family rule. And once all his accomplishments finally lost their luster, his internal world began to fall apart, even though to all outward appearances his life was a major success story. Feelings of fear, self-loathing, and shame became so overwhelming that he finally had to look for help.
In his recovery, he acknowledged that he had always struggled with feelings of inadequacy. And he finally realized that it was because everything in his family was based on performance. Love and approval were meted out in proportion to what he was able to do or accomplish.
When he was young, he had pushed through those feelings and accomplished more. But now he realized that his early decision to become a doctor wasn’t based on being called to that profession—it was simply a way to get attention and approval from others. Because it all looked so good on the outside, no one ever would have thought that Bob had a deep-seated need to be valued just for being himself—just for being here.
Mary’s story is quite different. She was raised by a codependent mother and an alcoholic father. Her childhood bedroom was next to the laundry room, and she remembered all the times she’d been awakened by the washing machine running in the middle of the night. The first time she checked to see why her mother was doing laundry at such an odd hour, she got roped into the family secret.
In what proved to be an all-too-common occurrence, her father had come home drunk, climbed into bed, and immediately gotten sick. Mary’s mother not only faithfully cleaned him up, put fresh pajamas on him, and changed the sheets, but she put the soiled sheets and bedclothes in the washing machine before going back to sleep.
One night, Mary’s father didn’t make it to the upstairs bedroom. When she woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, she found him asleep on the floor, lying in his own vomit. Mary woke him up and cleaned him up before calling her mother to escort him upstairs. Then she proceeded to clean the bathroom and put her father’s clothes in the washing machine before going back to sleep. It was an automatic response for someone in training to become an enabler when she got her own problem person
to take care of. After college, she graduated to chief enabler when she married an active alcoholic. Her codependency made her very good at doing exactly what her mother had done.
Both Bob and Mary lost touch with their souls when they were young. They gave up their real selves and developed lives that revolved around taking care of or meeting the expectations of someone else. Ultimately, their efforts were failed attempts to win approval, acceptance, and love. Bob thought that if he achieved his goals, his family and others would fill the approval holes in his soul. Mary and her mother thought that things would get better and that they would feel the love they both desired if they just showed they cared enough.
The Problem with Ourselves
When we lose touch with our soul, we have really lost touch with our true self. We can blame it on our busyness, our lack of time for self-reflection, or even the excesses of our culture. But in truth, we have done it to ourselves. We have given in to fear and shame, and we have settled for living through the externals of life. The result is a lowered sense of self-worth, even though we try to augment our feelings by doing all kinds of things that seem like good ideas but end up only working on the outside. It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, or making sure the outside of a cup is clean but not bothering to clean the inside.
We don’t typically express the problem in outward ways, such as comparing ourselves to someone else and feeling that we’re not as smart, attractive, or popular. It may start that way when we’re young, but as we mature and become more sophisticated in our self-loathing, we’re more likely to turn inward with statements such as “I’m a damaged person” or “I feel worthless.” These statements pinpoint the problem as internal, as something within ourselves. It isn’t that we have bad relationships; it’s that we are basically bad on the inside. And because it’s an internal problem, nothing we do in the external world will even touch it. Feelings of emptiness just sit there on the inside and fester.
When we try to fix internal problems through external means, it not only doesn’t help; it also leads to a place where we are truly out of sync with ourselves. Tragically, instead of changing strategies, we often just try harder to refine our false selves in hopes that we can finally get the formula right.
It’s easy to see why that’s an impossible task. Unless we clear out the shame we have accumulated, eliminate the bitterness and anger we have nursed, and face the fear that has hindered us, nothing will change. But that’s where Life Recovery begins.
The Problem with Others
Until we free our real self from its burial place and bring it into alignment with God’s design for our lives, being out of sync with ourselves will also put us out of sync in all our other relationships. One belief we must give up is the notion that we are being loving and caring when we act out our codependent behaviors. Codependent behavior is not based on or motivated by love. It is rooted in our need to feel accepted and needed. Codependence is a futile attempt to fill a hole inside ourselves, and it doesn’t lead to close, healthy relationships.
As we regain awareness of our real self, we need to stop saying yes to everything and stop trying to manipulate situations so we don’t have to say no. We’re afraid to say no because we might disappoint someone. The truth is, we can’t say a healthy no if we have weak or porous boundaries or if we’ve built walls to shut out other people. Healthy and safe attachments are possible only if we take responsibility for ourselves and stop blaming others.
When one of my (David’s) kids began to confront an addiction, our family was required to be involved in the recovery program. This led my wife and me to join an ongoing group of other parents and addicts. I was used to running groups like this, but I wasn’t used to participating in one led by someone else. But Jan and I joined the group.
It was an awkward introduction as the group welcomed us in. When I said, “I’m here because one of our kids has a problem,” a young man who was dealing with alcoholism nearly jumped out of his seat as he said to me, “That’s what’s my dad said when he came the first time! You’re going to find out that you’re here because you have a problem!”
Fortunately, I didn’t have to respond. Later, I understood what he meant, and we became good friends.
That conversation reminded me of a number of parents who came to counseling for help with one of their adult kids. One couple said, “Our son has problems,” and when they listed a few, they included still living at home at age thirty-one; not having a job and not looking for one; and sleeping until noon while supposedly still trying to take some college courses. He also hung around with friends who smoked pot.
When I asked who supported their son, they said, “Oh, we do. He’s got to have some spending money.”
“Who pays for school?”
“Oh, we do.”
I said, “It doesn’t sound like your son has any problems. Life for him is pretty easy. He sleeps as late as he wants, and he doesn’t have to earn a living. It seems more like you, the parents, have the problem.” Every time I have a conversation like that with parents, I think back to the young man who insightfully told me the same thing about myself years ago.
Our goal in taking our lives back is to realign with our true self so we can develop healthy, loving, and open relationships in which we feel accepted and affirmed for who we are rather than for what we do. We will finally find the peace and serenity we long to experience when we develop relationships in which we truly care for one another.
The Problem with God
We have yet to meet a practicing dependent who has a healthy, vibrant relationship with God. How can we bring our false self into a real relationship with God, whose real self is his only self? We can’t. When we lose touch with our soul, our true self, we suffer spiritually.
Finding our soul means we have to resurrect our real self. And that takes time and hard work. Life Recovery involves basing our lives on the acceptance we have in Jesus, not on our feelings or circumstances.
Perhaps you’ve been frustrated or angry about the distance you feel in your relationship with Jesus. Maybe it seems as if he hasn’t heard your prayers or he’s somehow avoiding you. A common false self that many Christians develop is a “spiritual false self,” in which we act as if everything is going great in our relationship with God, even though we feel empty inside. But when we get alone with our thoughts, that’s when we feel the disappointment and the distance between ourselves and Jesus. But Jesus sees through our false selves to the true self we’ve buried within us. He wants to help us rediscover and reconnect with our true self—the true self he designed and intends for us to live in.
When we’re honest enough to admit our powerlessness and submit ourselves fully to God, we discover that Jesus is our true, fully sufficient, and fully available power source. His power is perfected in our weakness.[29] But surrendering to our powerlessness means that we have to give up our false selves and recover our real self. That’s all part of moving from a reactive life to a responsive life, as we’ll see in Part II.
PART II
The Responsive Life
REINTRODUCTION
WE HAVE LOOKED at what causes and characterizes reactive living. Now it’s time to consider the more desirable alternative—responsive living—and to explore how we can begin to choose to live that way. A simple way to describe the responsive life is that it’s the opposite of the reactive life. But to be more specific, here are three characteristics that mark the distinction between the two ways of living.
We Learn to Act, Not React
Instead of reacting automatically out of our woundedness, we begin to see and believe that we have choices. Responses are not preprogrammed. We can look at a situation and decide how we are going to respond.
When my wife and I (David) began to respond rather than react to our son’s addiction, we had to learn new ways of relating to him. Instead of trying to avoid conflict by giving him whatever he asked for, we had to learn when and how to say no.
&nb
sp; I remember a time when he was in dire straits, all because of his own actions. It wasn’t easy saying no, but as a family we had learned that we had choices and that saying no was the right decision, even though it was painful. Instead of continuing to react to make the problem go away temporarily, we were now making responsible decisions based on long-term healing and recovery.
We Learn to Trust
One of the main characteristics of reactive living is that we’ve learned not to trust anyone because they were bound to disappoint us or we were bound to disappoint them. Typically, we learn this in our family of origin, especially when family loyalty is low or nonexistent.
One of the first tasks we encounter in our healing is developing a trusting relationship with someone. We’re all aware that no one, including ourselves, is totally trustworthy. So the key is to find someone whom we already trust to some degree and to be prepared to do repair work when it seems as if trust has been broken. Building trust takes time, and it is always risky; but healing cannot be done in isolation. It requires connection building.
We must learn also to trust ourselves again, as that is the basis for making good decisions. Trusting ourselves goes hand in hand with building a trusting relationship with another person. And as we build trusting relationships on earth, we gradually learn how to trust God, as well.
We Learn to Feel
In navigating our dependent relationships, we have learned how to read the emotions of others. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for the purpose of better understanding the other person; it was a matter of sheer survival. At the same time, we learned to bury our own feelings for the same reason—to survive. Our feelings don’t ever go away, but they can become distorted and difficult to access. So now we must learn how to identify what it is that we’re feeling.
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