Redefining codependency with the universal addiction – control – is the topic of today’s guest post by Steve Hauptman, LCSW. Steve is a Gestalt-trained, Buddhist-flavored therapist who has practiced on Long Island for twenty years. He graduated from Adelphi University’s School of Social Work, trained at the Gestalt Center of Long Island, and specializes in a unique control-centered approach that combines elements of psychodynamic, Gestalt, cognitive-behavioral and family systems theory in the treatment of anxiety, depression, addictions, codependency and relationship problems. A leader of Interactive Therapy groups, he is also a cartoonist and creator of the blogs Monkeytraps: a blog about control, Monkey House, a forum for discussing control issues, and Bert’s Therapy: Adventures of an Inner Monkey. He is currently at work on the six-book Monkeytraps series, which will include Monkeytraps: Why Everybody Tries to Control Everything and How We Can Stop (Lioncrest 2015), Monkeytraps in Daily Life (due 2016), Monkeytraps for Adult Children, Monkeytraps for Parents, Monkeytraps for Couples, and Monkeytraps for Therapists.

I love Steve’s work and his sense of humor so it is my great pleasure to share his post…

The Universal Addiction: Redefining Codependency by Steve Hauptman, LCSW

“So what the hell is codependency?” asks a man in the back row.

He’s wearing a brown corduroy jacket and he sounds annoyed.

I’m not sure how to answer. I’m in over my head here.

I’m a new social worker, six months out of grad school, working for a clinic on the east end of Long Island. My new boss has decided I should run the weekly Family Education Series, which is basically a crash course in alcoholism and how it screws up families. And tonight the topic is codependency.

I know my subject well enough. I’ve worked as an alcoholism counselor. I’ve treated hundreds of codependents. I can diagnose one in the first five minutes of a conversation.

But when it came time to prepare this talk I found I couldn’t define the word.

At work we talk about codependency all the time without ever stopping to explain what we meant. And when I looked into my half-dozen books on the subject I found each defining it in a different way.

One was:
A specific condition characterized by preoccupation and extreme dependence on another person, activity, group, idea, or substance. [1]

Another:
An emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules. [2]

A third:
A multidimensional (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual) condition manifested by any suffering and dysfunction that is associated with or due to focusing on the needs and behavior of others. [3]

A fourth:
A recognizable pattern of personality traits, predictably found within most members of chemically dependent families, which are capable of creating sufficient dysfunction to warrant the diagnosis of Mixed Personality Disorder as outlined in DSM-III [4], which sent me off to yet another book to learn what the hell that meant.

Finally I came to codependency maven Melody Beattie, who explained that a codependent is simply
a person who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior. [5]

A fine definition. Until you notice it describes just about everyone.

Redefining Codependency

Having no idea which definition to offer my workshop, I cleverly decided to present them all.

So here I am, having just done that. I’ve distributed a handout with the five definitions on it, and read them aloud, and am now looking at a roomful of blank faces.

“So what the hell is codependency?” asks Corduroy.

Everyone giggles.

I giggle too. (Inside I’m thinking Shoot me now.)

Then something happens.

Something clicks in some back room of my head.

And I relax, and I hear myself answer, “Addiction to control.”

I have surprised myself. I’ve never thought of it this way before.

But Corduroy starts asking questions, and I find answers bubbling out of me, and suddenly it’s all making a new sort of sense.

I tell him I see codependents as traumatized people, convinced their survival depends on controlling “their” alcoholic’s illness. So they do things like hide booze and avoid dad at certain times of the day and lie to his boss about why he missed work or to the neighbors about why he fell asleep in the driveway. And from all these experiences they come to see control as a way of coping generally, and set about applying it to everything and everyone in their lives, to the point where it makes them sick.

“Sick how?” Corduroy frowns.

Anxious and depressed, I tell him. But also worried and tense and irritable, and unable to relax or have fun, or identify and express feelings, or trust anyone, or like themselves. Also self-medicating with food or work or rescuing other people or whatever else they can think of.

And now Corduroy is nodding thoughtfully, and so are others in the room.

And I know I’m onto something.

The Universal Addiction

After the workshop I go back to doing therapy with clinic clients. Mine is a typical outpatient caseload, filled with the sorts of problems every therapist faces: anxiety, depression, addictions, bad relationships, parenting problems.

But now something’s changed.

Have you ever bought a new car — a new Honda, say — and take it out on the road, and wherever you drive you see other Hondas? Suddenly the world is filled with Hondas you never noticed before.

This is happening to me. Suddenly my caseload is filled with control addicts.

The clients haven’t changed, I have. It’s like I’m wearing new eyeglasses. My vision has refocused or sharpened or something, and now I can’t help seeing how relentlessly, compulsively and self-destructively controlling they all are.

They? I mean We. Everyone.

Controlling, I find, is the universal addiction. It’s everywhere I look. Not just in codependent clients, but all of them. Not just in clients, but in my colleagues and friends and family. And on the nightly news, and in whatever I read or watch on tv or in the movies. And of in myself.

Like a red thread in a carpet, the idea of control snakes through every problem, every motive, every personality, every emotional life.

Why is this?

I had always assumed that dysfunctional families created codependency. But now I find the red thread running everywhere, which must mean either that (a) all families are dysfunctional (an arguable premise) or (b) the urge to control is hardwired into us, rooted in some deep part of our brain that can’t help rejecting what life hands us and trying to replace it with what we prefer. Or (c) both. Or (d) something else entirely. I don’t know.

I spend the next fifteen years studying the idea of control.

I hunt for books on control (there aren’t many), then for books on related ideas like desire and power and addiction. I buy lots of books. I start reading everything with a highlighter in my hand, scribbling big yellow Cs alongside the parts that relate to control. Half my books start to look pee-stained. I buy more books. I start typing out control-related passages I like and collect them in a computer file which as of today runs to 200 pages.

I discover Buddhism, which turns out to be all about control addiction (except Buddhists call it attachment). I try meditating. I hate it. Well, not hate it exactly, but resist it like hell, to the point I’m unable to sustain a regular practice. Apparently the control addict in me just can’t stand to sit and listen to my own thoughts, to that anxious internal chatter Buddhists call monkeymind.

I begin reshaping my approach to therapy around the idea of control. I teach my clients to notice when they’re monkeytrapped – i.e., caught in situations which tempt them to control what they cannot control, to hold on when they should let go.

I start a blog called Monkeytraps. I write posts about control addiction and ways to recover from it. I write posts about my own addiction, and the part I think of as my inner monkey, whom I name Bert.

People read the blog and write comments. “You’re writing about me,” is a familiar reply.

And the new therapy seems to work. I am struck by how many clients tell me, as they become less controlling, “It’s so much easier.”

I decide to write a book.

Monkeytraps, the book

Published in December 2015, Monkeytraps: Why Everybody Tries to Control Everything and How We Can Stop, is based on four lessons I learned from my study and clinical work:

1. We are all addicted to control.
2. This addiction causes most emotional problems.
3. Behind all controlling is the wish to control feelings.
4. There are better ways to handle feelings than control.

I call these lessons the Four Laws of control, since they seem true of everyone I meet and seem to operate pretty invariably.

We can’t help but follow these laws, whether we realize it or not.

Just as, whether we realize it or not, we can’t avoid living lives shaped by the universal addiction.

Book Sale Offer

For a limited time, I am offering reduced prices on both the paperback and ebook versions of Monkeytraps. Click here to purchase.

___________________

[1] Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, ChoiceMaking: For co-dependents, adult children and spirituality seekers (Health Communications, 1985).

[2] Robert Subby, Lost in the shuffle: The co-dependent reality, quoted in Whitfield (see below).

[3] Charles Whitfield, Co-dependence: Healing the human condition (Health Communications, 1991).

[4] Timmen Cermak, Diagnosing and treating co-dependence (Johnson Institute, 1986).

 [5] Melody Beattie, Codependent no more (Harper/Hazelden, 1987).