co-dependent behavior...do you think you learned it?
 

One of the things I've read lately is that codie behavior is usually learned somewhere in childhood. I'm wondering if anyone thinks they learned it and where/how did you learn it?

As I look at myself, the only thing I can think of was my fathers illness. He had an enlarged heart and had 7 heart attacks one year and had to retire. He was an active outdoors man and having to reduce his activities to avoid heartattacks was hard for him. It took him about 10 years to die and I was his dialysis nurse for three years in highschool. I remember burying alot of resentment at the time. Oh such a bad kid to feel like I do feelings. Not sure what it all means and I'm not going to look at it too closely just now but maybe it matters.

Anyways, I'm rambling.

Do you feel like you learned codie behavior?

I think I brought with me ample problems with emotional boundaries, along with family legacies of alcoholism and co-dependence, and that made me a perfect perfect candidate for the man I married and for full blown co-dependent behaviors to flourish.

Yes, as an ACOA. I learned it well. I could be a professional at it if someone would only pay me for it.

Yep.. as in: "learned by example". Mother, Grandmothers, Aunts in my family are/were all Codies. I am a child of an abusive father and was in the Foster Care system from the age of 12 to 21... coping with all of that BS just reinforced the Codependent behavior IMO. Changing something in myself that feels innate is the hardest part for me.

I'm an ACOA but I swear I was born codependent. I was always trying to put bandaids on family dramas and all along pretending the dramas weren't there. Feeling isolated even at an early stage but one incident that stands out in my mind was when my AF who was drunk at the time asked me to help him fix his life, mind you I was 15 at the time and I had no answer to give him. He died 2 yrs later and the feeling of letting him down that somehow I could have saved him haunted me my whole life.

Actually, I think it's a near-universal human coping mechanism.
I mean, I was taught to share, and love, and care for others, but not in a codependent way. I developed those coping mechanisms as I found myself watch my now XAH spiral into the pit that is alcoholism, but I didn't realize I was doing it.

It took me years to extricate myself, but learning that I was doing THE SAME THINGS that others did in the same situation was fascinating. And for the record, I come from a pretty strong, intact family. (I probably would have gotten out a long time prior, but my career sort of got in the way)

I'm free now, and don't miss the drama at all, so I think that codependency is a wide range of reactions and experiences.

Do you feel like you learned codie behavior?


Yes indeed I did.

The good news is I un-learned them too!!!!!
Lotta work, not easy, but worth it!
Peace-
B

Definitely learned it. I remember late in my AF's drinking career trying to control his drinking. When he went into rehab we (the family) met with a therapist at the rehab center & she said my behavior was more like how a spouse reacts. My mother had pretty much given up at that point so it was up to me to fix it. Wish I would have remembered that prior to becoming a professional codependent with my AW!

I learned it from my childhood.

I was working on it already when I met my loved one with an alcohol problem.

It was a great lesson to keep working on my recovery. Mine was well in place prior to the addiction of alcohol came into my life.

Learned from untreated, ACoA mother......

.....continuing to unlearn.

Oh yeah, I learned it at home. My mother was an ACOA who married an alcoholic. So I not only had an AF but my mother was already well trained in how to be a codie and was glad to pass those lessons on to me.

I do think I learned some of them but I also agree that it's a near-universal human coping mechanism.

That one time, when I got results from my attempts to manipulate/control, convinced me it would always work. *sigh*

My codie issues aren't as much about control as survival. With my AF it was very necessary to put his needs first. Failure to do so lead to humiliation, verbal abuse and physical abuse (not as often but often enough that you would flinch if he was mad and moved fast). So I learned at a very early age that my wants and needs were not nearly as important as other peoples. Just like I learned that to have emotions was a bad thing, they simply became tools for manipulation or abuse.

Your friend,

Absolutely,

You spend most of you time trying to understand why you are being yelled at, beaten, kicked, called names, you wonder if it's your fault that your parents fight all the time, you wonder if it's your fault that you were molested by both family and strangers, you wonder if it's your fault that you are bullied mercilessly and beaten daily.

I learned to be afraid of everyone bigger than me, I learned to shut out the world by hiding in my room and listening to music, I learned to always apologize and beg forgiveness for every little mistake real or perceived.

It is all learned, and someday I hope it will all be un-learned.

Great grandfather was a raving lunatic alcoholic.
Grandparents were teetotallers, parents rarely drank.
But I learned to put my own needs last when my mother spent the first 4 years of my life bedridden. And continued doing that when my sister was born with severe health issues and required much more attention than I did.

I learned from birth on that being quiet and entertaining myself and not bothering adults was "being good." Expressing feelings, especially anger, was "being bad." I also learned, like Spiderman, that "with great power comes great responsibility" or, rather, that because I didn't have health problems or disabilities, it was my responsibility to give, and keep giving, to those who did.

I spent my entire life helping people and putting my own needs last.
I still don't think it's a bad thing to do. But I don't put my own needs last anymore.

There were also lies, lies, and more lies about my next door aunt and uncle who were (and are) alcoholics. And their children, two of whom reacted like normal people do to alcoholics (those were the black sheep) and one of whom was "good" (the codie one).

I hear ya on this part. I don't recall being taught not to bother adults specifically but I was rewarded for my natural inclination to "be good." My family was/is fairly religious and active with service.

I always felt like I was raised by the Brady Bunch family. No overt issues except over-goodness and niceness.

Realized I should add something:

All this "nice-ness" left me with no ability to problem-solve or deal with conflict because I never saw any. I very much think I learned co-dependency in my home I just don't really understand why it developed in my family.

I was trained since birth that the man of the family does whatever he wants and the rest of us should tiptoe around him, lest he finds out that we are not good enough for him and he leaves us.

My mother lived in terror of my stepfather. He never ever hurt us. He didn't even drink much. He was just in control of everything and for some reason my mother was desperate around him. She'd hiss at me to stop annoying daddy, or that I'd done something to upset him. He, and his feelings, were the center of our universe.

I have spent my entire adult life picking partners based on the likelihood that I can control them and keep them around. Because my mother made it clear that there is no way they'd want to be around me and/or her. Men don't want to be around me/us.

My last "partner" was a homeless, unemployed alcoholic who I met at a bar. I tortured him with hidden agendas, unspoken demands and bitter resentments for just over two years. He couldn't escape me - he was too sick and helpless. I kicked him out in a storm of bitterness a few months ago.

I was right to do it and like a true codie I still feel guilty, and I miss him, and I'm glad he's gone, and I never want to see him again, and I spy on him all the time.

Sick. Just as sick as any alcoholic.

That's just about the best summary of codependency I've ever seen, Wendy.

Did I learn it? I guess... But then I took it to new heights.

I'm told that my maternal grandmother was an alcoholic with a temper when drinking. My Mom has little-to-no hearing in one ear from being smacked upside the head by her. Grandmother passed away when Mom was little, then Grandfather passed and she was raised in an orphanage. Still... Even though she was very young, I'm sure she learned some placating and people-pleasing issues.

There was no alcoholism or abuse in my parents' marriage or my home life growing up, but I still picked up the little snippets of Mom's codie tendencies and made them my own; embellished and magnified them. I think part of it was that I tried so hard to NOT be Grandmother (to this day, I am still told by her family that I look exactly like her), that I overcompensated. And then I met XAH, who is every bit the abusive alcoholic that Grandmother was, only amplified several levels...

Dear HP, I hope I got away soon enough and am working hard enough on myself that DS doesn't learn it from me, or his father. I don't know what I find more horrifying: the thought that he might grow up to treat women the way his father does, or the thought that he'll learn from me and find some one like Grandmother. Because either way, if the magnification continues....