Doing to Belong: The Plight of High-Functioning Co-Dependents
Begin as you mean to go on…
Begin as you mean to go on. My therapist told me this recently and I’ve taken it to heart. Except sometimes, you begin without thinking, letting old behaviour patterns take the wheel of your life only to find yourself in the same exact same emotionally barren place you just tried to leave behind.
Case in point: Though I’ve intentionally made big changes in my life to make more space for creative work, I still find it hard to sit down and actually do it. The habit of putting EVERYTHING —from the dishes to admin work to walking the dog to literally weeding a garden with no expertise or plan to plant anything—before actually sitting down to write is so strong, that despite my best efforts to engineer a life where it is the priority, I still can’t do it.
So, what’s my problem? Why do I feel I need to take care of everything? Why is it my job to run the house smoothly? To make dinner for everyone even if I’ve just worked a whole day like everybody else? To be available at all times for everyone even though no one is asking me to be?
Part of the answer, in the words of Terri Cole, is because I’m a high-functioning co-dependent.
High-Functioning Co-Dependency
I recently listened to her interview with the “We Can Do Hard Things” gals, and she said something that made me feel so called out I’m still blushing crimson with shame:
“In my 20s, I could take a perfectly functional boyfriend and turn him into an underfunctioner in two weeks or less…There’s a point when people just stop fucking asking because it’s really not satisfying when you’re with someone who never lets you do anything or doesn’t think you’re going to do it right.”
Ugh. And there we have it, folks: my contribution to a failed marriage and more importantly, the key ingredient to my own self-abandonment.
Now, Now, Lina. Gentle. I just re-read this last sentence and felt myself revert back to an old, critical way of relating to myself. Though it’s true that that is one of the main ways I contributed to a failed marriage and one of the main ways I’ve abandoned myself over the years, I deserve some grace just like everybody else. Sigh.
Hi, my name is Lina and I am a fellow traveller, trying my best but sometimes stumbling.
I use Kirsten Neff’s formula of self-compassion when I’m confronted with an uncomfortable truth (that is, when I remember and am not in default mode):
Mindfulness: Oof. That stings.
Common Humanity: You’re not the only one that has made that mistake, you’re only human and you did your best with what you knew at the time.
Self-kindness: [hand on heart] You’re okay. May I give my past self the love I didn’t give her then. Let her know that now that I know better, I can practice doing better. That’s all I can do.
Okay, thanks for your patience as I did a little self-soothing… I hope you’ll do the same if the discussion below makes you feel like you’re also being called out.
Cole defines high-functioning co-dependence as “behaviour that includes disordered boundaries, where you are overly invested in the feeling states, the decisions, the outcomes, and the circumstances of the people in your life to the detriment of your internal peace and well-being.”
I’d really bought into the delusion that if I could just keep everybody happy, I would be okay. Which meant that whenever someone was not happy, it was always my responsibility to fix. Though that might have made me indispensable (because I had done such a good job at creating underfunctioners), it also made me quite insufferable.
In my defense, this delusion is one that was created and is still highly endorsed by the patriarchy and its ideas about gender roles. A good girl is meek, and kind and generous and compassionate and always puts her needs last. There is a lot of feedback that re-enforces these notions and a lot of judgements from “selfish” to “harpy” that come with resisting it. But that is a conversation for another time…
Check-in:
Is there a part of you that feels you need to hustle for love?
Do you often feel that your needs are less important, less intense than others? E.g., I’m fine, I got this. They’re the ones that are struggling, I can be there for them, etc., etc.
When your loved ones are struggling, how do you respond? Do you feel a sense of urgency to “help” them or “fix” the problem? Do you immediately go into auto-advice giving, presenting them with many different options (most involving you saving the day)?
If you answered yes to any or all of the above, read on my friend. If you answered no but recognise your partner/sibling/parent in this, well, read on my friend.
The Cost: Self-Abandonment
What is the cost of buying into the illusion of control? What do we lose when we believe that we’re solely responsible for the efficient functioning and emotional well-being of all the people in our worlds? That all problems are ours to fix?
We lose everything; everything, because we lose ourselves. The above behaviour is a type of martyrdom that nobody asks for and everybody resents. It is an excellent, socially acceptable strategy of not doing the hard work of being ourselves and striving to find the unique way in which we can contribute to this existential experiment we call Life. Another term for this is self-abandonment: when we stray into other people’s path, we abandon our own.
But how does self-abandonment look like? How do we know when we’re doing it?
Self-abandonment happens when we ignore our needs in order to ensure our safety and belonging in a family/group/organization.
Therefore, to break down the cost, we need to talk about our needs.
So, what even is a need? The APA Dictionary (2018) defines Psychological Need as:
“any need that is essential to mental health or that is otherwise not a biological necessity. It may be generated entirely internally, as in the need for pleasure, or it may be generated by interactions between the individual and the environment, as in the need for social approval, justice, or job satisfaction. Psychological needs comprise the four higher levels of Maslow’s motivational hierarchy.”
And for those of you not familiar with the ol’ Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, here it is:
(By User:Factoryjoe - Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7964065)
Here’s where it gets complicated. We have parts of ourselves that try to source those four levels through problematic strategies, often to the detriment of that first rung of the ladder, the physiological. I outline a few below of the strategies most commonly used by high-functioning co-dependents below.
Gentle reminder: if you recognise yourself in any of the below, be gentle. Give yourself some grace. These patterns don’t appear out of thin air and have likely been survival strategies since you were little. Put your hand on your heart and give yourself some self-compassion.
Confounding Safety with Control
Check-In
If your partner is angry or upset how do you respond?
A. I immediately try to appease them by backing down and apologizing.
B. I yell right back—I’m not going to take that shit.
C. I feel like a deer in the headlights—I totally freeze and find it hard to form sentences. Part of me shuts down.
D. I allow them to feel what they have to feel— after all, it’s probably not really about me. If they’re starting to yell at me, I either let them know that it’s hard for me to understand what they want from me when their voice is raised or if they are really activated I let them know that I have to walk away to calm myself down but I’ll come back.
Instead of developing a healthy relationship with the unknown, and working within their own scope of influence (themselves), high-functioning co-dependents will confound safety with control. If you recognise yourself in A especially, you’ve probably found ways to manage your own distress about other’s distress by trying to manage their emotions.
If someone in my family was unhappy or having a bad day, I’d feel a sense of urgency to fix it. I had convinced myself that everybody’s happiness somehow depended on me and if they were not doing well it wasn’t just my responsibility, but my fault. This really screwed with my identity as a good partner, good mom, good sister, good daughter, etc. If they were not okay, I was not okay.
The problem with that is that I started resenting when they were not okay because that impacted me. It is hard to be empathetic and supportive when you’re feeling resentful.
Confounding Being Needed with Being Loved
This is the ol’ hustle for our worth tendency— if I am not totally indispensable, why would people want to stay with me?
OR I am the only one that can do it, everybody else is less functional than me therefore it rests upon my shoulders.
Check-In
What do you think would happen if you stopped doing all the things you do for your loved ones?
A. They would wonder what the point of me is—why keep me around if I’m not useful?
B. There would be a mutiny among the ranks—totally mayhem and collapse of all systems, maybe even some bloodshed…
C. They’d be a little surprised and maybe ask if I was okay, but then they’d go pack their own damned lunches.
Okay, these were a little tongue in cheek, but I bet you get the point. If you answered A or B, there’s probably a part of you that confounds being needed with being loved. You have an unconscious belief that you need to do everything for everyone or else everything will fall apart including your relationships. Maybe you clean your kids’ rooms, or pay all the bills, or make sure everyone knows exactly where they’re going in the day. You may be too insistent on ensuring your child has studied sufficiently for their math test or that your partner has not forgotten to buy milk at the grocery store. You run your life as if it were a military camp and the enemy—chaos, uncertainty, collapse—is forever about to invade.
The problem with that is that it’s exhausting. While we’re hustling so much to keep our relationships intact, we’re actually missing all the ways our loved ones are actually trying to connect with us in the moment. We’re too busy trying to control everything, and do everything to notice or even appreciate small, daily consistent bids for connection.
To put it bluntly, while we’re off fighting a war on uncertainty and chaos, our loved ones are watching from the sidelines (because we’ve left them nothing to do) wondering when we’ll stop and come home to them.
Confounding Doing with Being
Which brings us to the next rung of Maslow’s ladder. If love is conditional on how needed and effective we are, we start to make the mistake we are only what we accomplish. There’s no room to be with oneself, to get to know oneself. If life is a constant military/neoliberal exercise of effectiveness and productivity, there is no time to nurture one’s unique version of humanity.
In a nutshell, if you’re constantly doing everything, you’ll be the only one that never gets a chance to simply be. To appreciate the small pleasures of being human—sights, smells, taste, touch. To act like a sunflower and stop and feel the sun on your face. To walk in the woods and marvel at the birdsong, the various berries and ferns and infinite shades of green. To get curious: what is that weird, purple plant? What is the point of slugs? You’re not allowed to sit quietly on the couch cuddled up to your kid while watching Moana for the billionth time or spend an evening with friends playing Catan or pickleball.
You can’t because who else is going to make sure that everybody has sunscreen/is at their piano lesson/brought the car in for repair/ is answering all unnecessary work emails/has made dinner/is the emotional support for Aunt June who is going through her 3rd divorce and so on and so on and so on.
Man, I’m exhausted just writing that paragraph.
Confounding the Self-like Part with Self
The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model believes we all have a Capital S Self: a core part of our being that is undamaged and undamageable and is always with us. You know you’re in your flow, or your “Self-Energy” when at least one of the 8 Cs are present: compassion, clarity, confidence, creativity, connectedness, calmness, curious and courage. When you’re relating to someone else with the Self you may also notice the 5 Ps: Persistence, Playfulness, Patience, Perspective, Presence.
The Self, is more of a State of Being than a part of our personality. I know, I know. It’s vague and mysterious and kind of hard to understand. I struggle with it too. I think it’s because when we access Self, we access a part of the divine mystery of this existence. In an age where we worship the visible and the consumable, that is somewhat dificult to grok, sort of like trying to understand quantum physics or why it’ so hard to find the matching Tupperware lid.
For high-functioning co-dependents like myself, we have a part that gives an Oscar-worthy performance of Self. In fact, it is totally convinced that it is the Self. In IFS we call this a Self-Like part. It pretends to be calm, curious, and all of the 8Cs but it is doing it with an agenda: to keep everybody close and safe. It is a manager part, deploying all the good strategies of communication and regulation to cling to the illusion that it has a modicum of control.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: it’s pretty useful in everyday life. Except that it will perform this role while deep down it feels panicked, fearful and desperate and will totally sacrifice your own emotional well-being in service of its agenda.
And because it has an agenda, its compassion and empathy for others but especially yourself are surface level only. It will keep going, try to manage everyone even when we’re depleted and will get upset if other parts of your family system (internal and external) are not responding to its manipulations.
For high-functioning co-dependents, this is one of our main managerial parts, the one we often mistake for Self.
In Recovery: Or How Not to Be Dried-Up Husks of Ourselves
I’m happy to say that for the most part, I’ve learned my lesson. Or, more accurately, I am continuing to learn this lesson (over and over again ad nauseam). Slowly, as I focus on remaining on my own path, I’m getting much better able to distinguish between what Byron Katie calls my business, your business and God’s (which she defines as Reality’s) business:
“Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, “you need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation…If you are living your life, and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.”
Sigh.
Exercise:
Choose an hour of the day (preferably when you’re awake).
Notice when you stray from your own business (a big flag for being out of your business is that a “should” is present”).
How do you feel? What happens in your chest? Throat? Belly? Jaw? Other parts?
Now remind yourself that it is none of your business and with self-compassion, get back on your own path. Focus on what you can do in that moment instead of focusing on what the other should do. What do you need right now?
How does that feel?
This isn’t going to be a magic bullet. People are still going to piss you off. They’re still going to be frustrating and triggering and even sometimes hurt you with their behaviour and actions. But it is a practice. Understanding what is yours and what is theirs is the first step to inner freedom. It also allows you not to be so frustrated/triggered/hurt/angry because you realize it has nothing to do with you—it is not your business.
What it also does is reveal your true agency—to respond according to your own heart and needs at the moment. Accepting that other people have the right to act, feel and be according to their own unique path does not mean accepting to remain in that situation or not to seek change. On the contrary, focusing on our own needs allows us to grow our own internal garden, paying attention to what needs weeding and what needs nurturing— something we can’t do if we are always puttering in other people’s gardens.
Books to Help you Stay in Your Business
Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Co-Dependency by Terri Cole.
Loving What is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life by Byron Katie.
The Way of Integrity: Finding your Path to Your True Self by Martha Beck.
How you choose to live your life is your greatest creative act. Creativity requires rest, a lot of space to iterate, to play and most of all to just be. Give yourself the gift of freedom and intention and stop trying to manage other people’s business—your own business is literally dying for you to get back to it.
