The 6 D’s

The 6 D’s are a slightly more abstract as in understanding that codependency has six major faces or sides. They are Denial, Delusion, Distortion, Defensiveness, Dishonest and Despair.

• Understanding that codependency has six major faces or sides. They are denial, delusion, distortion, defensiveness, dishonest and despair.

• Understanding there is no specific pattern or process of one face building on another, but rather an endless array of combinations of how the faces are interrelated. There is nothing there for the faces to mirror themselves on thus they can only feed on themselves for mirrors and this is likened to a tiger chasing its own tail.

Denial

Through denial we maintain our pathology and dysfunction, whether it is

• denial of the problem,

• the feelings regarding the problem or

• the depth of the problem's impact on our lives.

In our culture are many problems but only one dysfunction. Addiction, incest, abuse, neglect, depression are all problems often found in families. The denial is what creates the dysfunction. The denial eliminates the opportunity to resolve problems or deal with feelings about the problems. It also eliminates the alternatives and chances to find recovery for the problem.

Statement of Fact: The problem controls us.

Denial sets up problems to be passed on intergenerationally. What we don't pass back we will pass on. "The sins of the parents shall be passed onto the children for three to four generations." Much of therapy is a process of dissolving denial. The therapeutic process is to take the covert and make it explicit. The covert involves the buried issues that control our life. Once we make the covert explicit we have choices.

This is Responsibility in action.

Freedom requires the ability to choose. As long as denial exists, there is no freedom -no freedom to be us. Addiction or compulsion or obsession is a process of decreasing choice, the decreas¬ing ability to be oneself, the loss of freedom denial is the sustaining force of our self-destructiveness.

Delusion

Delusion is "sincere denial," denial we really believe in.

Delusion is a form of a self-deception that allows us to survive with the problem intact. Delusion varies from "It will get better if I try harder," to "There is no problem." Delusion is harder to deal with in recovery because it is sincere and actually provides a payoff, that feels good and makes sense to the logic we bring with us as survivors of our past. The ability to believe our life is wonderful in the face of repetitive disaster is quite appealing.

The delusion that one is in charge is certainly less scary than the reality of being out of control.

• Delusion becomes a "crazy maker" for the people around us.

• Delusion can help us deal with illness and hang together during crisis, but it also makes change very difficult.

• Delusion is the survival tool of self deception.

Distortion

Another face is the distortion of reality as a way to maintain the delusion and denial. (see FESINGER’S theory of Cognitive dissonance). We do not see the same reality as others. As the person with anorexia looks in a mirror and sees fat where there is no fat and the alcoholic can distort the conse¬quences of their behavior; many of us distort the reality of relationships, the impact of behaviors, violence, neglect or manip¬ulation in our lives. We distort the world, what we value, and what is said and done. Intervention is done by injecting a sense of reality and awareness of behavior and consequences.

• Distortion is the alteration of reality.

Defensiveness

Before we can see reality, the fourth face needs to be addressed. Defensiveness is the 'pro¬tection racket'-the focusing on others:

their roles, responsibilities and behaviors, while not letting anyone get too close or see too much of us.

Guilt is our veneer, fear is the power plant, shame is the fuel.

All these distract from the underlying hurt and pain of isolation. It takes a strongly integrated defense system to protect the isolation and to prevent pain and hurt. The following is a list of common defenses that we use:

• Manipulation-covertly controlling and altering circumstances and consequences;

• Projection-seeing in others what is going on with us;

• Blaming- assigning to others responsibilities for what goes wrong in our lives;

• Intellectualizing-using words, insights and talk that goes beyond the issue in order to avoid the feelings, bury everything with extraneous data and disconnected issues;

• Shifting-switching the issues and the direction of where things are going;

• Agreeing-always following the path of least resistance;

• Disagreeing-taking the devil's advocate stance;

• Levity and humor- minimizing through lightness and joking;

• Grandiosity-making things so big they can't possibly be dealt with;

• Minimizing- making things so small they don't have to be dealt with;

• Raging- scaring people with the power of our anger;

• Passive aggressive -not getting angry, but shutting down, avoiding, withdrawing, being quiet, "getting even but not angry";

• Ignoring- pretending not to notice so we don't have to deal with it;

• Seducing-being seductive, charming, sexualizing things in order to avoid and control;

• Lying-saying what isn't true and leaving things out or being dishonest about our feelings;

• Reversing- answering questions with questions, placing it back on other people or back where it doesn't belong;

• Arrogance-the haughty attitude that distances by putting us above it all;

• Bullying and threatening- scaring people, badgering them, push¬ing them away from the real issues;

• Leaving-going away, running away, distancing, shutting down; Helplessness-a learned sense of "not being able" that makes everybody want or need to take care of us;

• Pitiful-behaving so people end up feeling sorry for us and pitying us, as our way of avoiding responsibility;

• Unpredictability-creating an atmosphere that induces fear be¬cause people never know what we're going to do or how we're going to respond;

• Argumentative -making everything into a fight, a disagreement, a difference of attitudes.

Much of our defensiveness comes from a core belief that "I am bad ' " If someone tells us we made a mistake, we hear it through internalized shame and are convinced they are really saying we are a mistake. This personalized inter¬pretation of feedback and criticism necessitates defensiveness.

Recovery and Intervention must deal with the defenses, but not by heavy confrontation or battering at the defenses.

The very battering gives them strength.

This includes our self-battering, being hard on self.

The most effective way of dealing with defensiveness is simply to notice the defense at the time it is being used. This tends to diffuse it so it no longer works.

If every time I ask someone a question and they make a joke of it or ask me a question back, or every time I talk about what's going on in the family and they switch the subject, or whenever I say I'm hurt and they get angry, and so on-these are the defenses. What needs to be said is, "You just answered my question with a question," or "You switched the subject while I was talking about what's going on in the family," or "You got angry when I shared my pain." This diffuses the defense. It does not mean there will automatically be recovery or the relationship will be healed, but the noticing eliminates the power that defenses have over us. When we confront and attack defenses with our own defenses and begin hassling with others, there develops a collusion of defenses which prevents any intimacy or recovery from occurring.

• Defensiveness is protection and hiding our vulnerability.

Dishonesty

Dishonesty and distorting the truth occur as the process of our pathology and dysfunction escalates.

• We lie to cover our tracks or to protect others.

• We become dishonest about our feelings.

When we hate some¬thing we say it's OK. When we feel awful we say, "I'm fine." We smile through our pain and deny our anger, becoming dishonest about behavior, addictions and time. Some of us who would never acknowledge dishonesty leave big pieces of information out alto¬gether.

The dishonesty creates a disharmony, an electric tension within that can only be quieted with addictive or obsessive behav¬ior. It isn't quieted at all. We just distance ourselves from it. We distance ourselves from ourselves.

We model dishonesty for our children. The basic dishonesty in our culture begins with the dishonesty of families. It is a way or surviving among people who are cruel and crazy making. If it is truth that sets us free, many of us have never known freedom. Our dishonesty becomes delusion and self-deception. There is no chance for recovery with dishonesty. We must seek and strive for rigorous honesty. "Perfect" honesty may be too abusive, rigid or brutal; many people become self righteous and use excess honesty to beat up other people. We need to learn privacy but give up dishonesty. The dishonesty we teach our children is the dishonesty we learned in childhood, especially the dishonesty with our feel¬ings.

• Dishonesty is the fuel for self-hate.

Despair

Despair is the hopelessness that things won't and can't change. Despair is the felt sense that we are not in control and are unwilling to let go of control we don't even have. Isolation is the result of the despair experienced in our relationships. Despair mingles with fear, shame and pain, manifesting itself into our last ditch efforts of self-destructiveness-suicide ideation and self-destructive addictiveness. Despair is the absence of hope, truth and light. As co-dependency is the emptiness of the soul, despair is the death of the soul. It is that hollowness of self, the feeling of emptiness that so many of us carry Our alienation feels complete; we are cut off from God, self, our family and friends.

• Despair is the strangling of our spirit.

We have a feeling of emptiness so we collect from others and reflect this out to give us a sense of importance, meaningfulness, warmth or beauty. Only externals can give us beauty and meaning. We can be hard, cold and jagged, brittle to the point that a hit in the right place will cause a shatter. We can tolerate the intolerable, but this is usually marked by tolerance breaks. These may be anything from a temper tantrum to a pre-psychotic breakdown. Stress cracks codependents. These cracks can be called nervous breakdowns or anxiety attacks. In previous generations they have been called spells, or the vapors. If you know about the -vapors, -you are either a social historian or old enough to be everybody's mom or dad!

We can only reflects out what enters. We reflect out, in adulthood symptoms, what enters in childhood experiences. Our cultural obsession with treating symptoms applies to treating codependents. We focus on the adult symptoms and ignore the childhood issues. The adult symptoms include:

• Relationship problems-problems that stem from the absence of self -relationship, inability to have intimacy, being enmeshed, choosing inappropriate, abusive, clinging relationships;

• Physical ailments-illness, somatizing our feelings into arthritis, cancer, allergies, upper respiratory infections, being over¬stressed;

• Boundary issues-we can't set limits, we do for others what we won't do for ourselves;

• Identity problems-absence of self-awareness, strength, directions and goals;

• Shame and guilt behaviors -we become controlled by our shame, a belief in our own worthlessness and our guilt, a denial of our uniqueness;

• Seeking external validations -others define us;

• Caretaking, enabling-we remove harmful consequences from the behavior of others;

• Compulsive addictive behaviors-we become addicts;

• Dissociation-absence, and split off from self;

• Intensity issues -needing excitement, often surrounding ourselves with crisis and creating chaos, only feeling alive when things are falling apart around us;

• Anxiety problems -fears, anxieties, hyper vigilance, phobias which control our lives;

• Low self-esteem-we feel less than, flawed;

• Hyper cautious-timid approach to life, restricting experiences, refusing to take risks;

• Collusive role-enabling victim and offender behaviors, enabling violence;

• Victim role-behaving and feeling as if we don't have any impact or choice, believing people are doing it to us;

• Offender behavior- taking hurts and anger from within and pro¬jecting on others, doing things to hurt others, violating their boundaries;

• Passive aggressive-not dealing with our anger in straight ways, anger is repressed and covertly expressed. We withdraw, get quiet, become cynical and sarcastic, leave emotionally and physically;

• Being stuck-acting helpless so other people have to take care of us;

• Sainthood martyrdom-being perfectionists, arrogant and shameless;

• Tolerance breaks-Tantrums, falling apart;

• Problem orientation-Life is a problem to be solved;

• Obsessiveness-ruminating, rolling things over and over in our heads;

• Pseudo maturity-feigning independence and experience;

• Emotional pain -sometimes depression; constant hurting.

These are some of the symptoms, they are not the problem. They flow directly from childhood. The input into the prism, the light that goes in, is reflected out as these symptoms. The childhood issues become the cause of the adult pain. We have a childhood developmental disorder that primarily gets acted out beginning in adolescence or earlier and very seldom treated until adulthood, if at all.

A child is pulled off the path of becoming oneself. The spiritu¬al journey of becoming the person we were meant to be by our creator is thwarted. Things that prevent us becoming us are the causes.

Statement of Fact: Violence nourishes codependency.

Violence is the violation of self, freedom, needs, rights, feelings, ideas, sexuality or our bodies. It is a violation of boundary, a set-up for loss of identity. It requires the overreaction to the external. The violator, the of¬fender, has the power. The victim loses their power. We try to change who we are so that we won't be noticed, beaten, hurt or neglected. The power is outside of myself. I'll react and change who I am and I'll try to be what they want me to be. I discover that it's hopeless, but I continue to attempt to be someone other than me. I may defy, react or rebel but I am still being controlled by whatever or whoever it is that is hurting me.

Codependency is a child's reaction to families that are messed up. It comes from:

• divorce

• marital problems

• affairs

• addictions

• battering

• abuse of all kinds

unpredictability -- enmeshment -- abandonment --emotional denial -- threats --neglect -- incest --parents being unhappy about themselves, their relationships and lives

• parents not dealing with problems, expecting the kids to make it OK

• lack of affirmation of self

• parental unavailability which produces self-doubt

• shame

• excess pressure to fill the family needs perfectionistic expectations -- covert stress and control issues martyrdom of parents

• Children's over involvement with parents' problems.

It is the crushing of our trust, identity, autonomy, safety, reality, self-image, industry, pleasure and creativity.

We learn to react to the needs, problems and dysfunctions of those around us, rather than to our feelings, our reality, our needs and wants. It comes from a child's insecurity of living with parents in a dysfunctional marriage-a family that produces fears, anxi¬eties, worries, phobias, hyper vigilance, and control issues.

As children we tried to make everything better and were unable to. We believed survival depended on fixing the family. We be¬came over-responsible, helpless and hopeless or naive. The prem¬ises, myths, modeled behavior, rules, scripting and repetition all contributed.

We reenact dysfunction. We pass it on as a legacy of dysfunction and denial to, our children. Children exist for their parents. Families set up role reversals where parents are taken care of by their children. This happens to many of us in families that are dishonest, bankrupt, hopeless, dysfunctional, empty and undependable.

As crises and problems occur in our present lives, it is back to our families of origin that we must go for our healing. Nothing changes until it become real. We have learned to protect, deny, obey and "live with." We have created a national parent protection racket. We try to believe that parents always do their best or at least try their best. In protecting our families and our parents we lose the real source of codependency and stay focused on symptoms. We protect family and stay sick.

Like a conduit, the child receives abuse and delivers dysfunc¬tional lifestyle. We are unaware of the connection between our painful lifestyle and our childhood issues. Hiding what underlies our dysfunction makes change difficult, even impossible as long as denial remains. The behaviors, such as over-responsibility, enabling, excess tolerance of the inappropriate behavior in others, our mood swings or disordered eating, are truly compulsive. We do not choose. They may seem voluntary but we can only choose when we have awareness, not just of the behavior but the driving forces beneath the behavior, feeling and internal conflict. We subconsciously repeat the dilemmas, fears and pain of child¬hood-or we avoid repeating them to the point of going in the opposite extreme. 180 degrees from sick is still sick.

Many of us maintain our shame so our parents don't have to feel guilt. Our parents often came from families where their parents were emotionally unavailable and dishonest. Children are set up to give meaning to parents' lives and get enmeshed in parents' problems. The issues become intergenerational. What doesn't get passed back gets passed forward. Our problems become our children's problems. Our children's problems become our cultural problems.

Family violence, social messages, school, church, culture and peers all play a part in creating codependents.

We live with an educational system that often:

• stifles our ability to become us

• Squelches our curiosity, creativity and interest

• smothers awareness of the awesomeness of creation

• breaks down creation into meaningless components

• forces us to stay in the lines with our crayons

• coerces us to memorize and repeat without understanding or interest

• compels us to compete and learn so little in such a long period of time

• denies our ability to question or think critically

• impels us to discover ourselves either as a failure or a success.

Survival in the system depends on one's ability to adapt to whatever school style or teacher style we happen to be in at the time and to be the recipient of the frustration of the teaching profession. This is codependency reinforced in our educational system.

Religion contributes with:

• undercurrents of sexual shame, frequently resting on rafters of woman-hate

• concept of God as a judgmental, powerful, punishing father figure who selects those to favor and those to punish capriciously

• focus on a god of miracles, of power, who alters the course of creation, who is jealous and petty, and vindictive

• over-ritualized liturgy

• religion based on intolerance

• institutions operating with addictive greed

• a focus on punishment, shame and threats

• religiosity rather than spirituality

• religious arrogance

• religious extortion and exploitation

• sick spiritual leaders.