When the Scapegoated Becomes the Scapegoater

Eight week ago, I lay on my basement floor sobbing and crying out to God, “I can’t do this anymore!  Why is this happening?  Where are you?”

I have had a devilish year with my family.  I can’t believe how many brewhahas there have been and how many of those brewhahas have left me bloody.  I have wondered if I could possibly pick myself up and keep going.   Here I was again, in the middle of another mess, and I was filled with the shame—deep, paralyzing shame.

                                                                                

I have never felt driven to look for a purpose for why bad things that happen to us.  I’ve been okay with the idea that bad things happen at times and there is no reason and not a blessed good thing comes from it.  But I do tend to look back to see if something miserable has borne a blessing.  It was about a month following this last family mess that I found an incredible blessing, maybe even an actual purpose, in the past two years of misery. 

Oh, that word! Codependency . . .

Throughout my teenage years, my parents threw the word “co-dependent” around.  They had gotten a bit of counselling and had taken on some handy lingo including this word.  I can’t remember what their exact ideas about co-dependency were, but I do remember it always had to do with “the other parent’s behavior,” or with them letting us know that whatever they themselves did, it couldn’t “make” us feel anyway; rather our feelings were our choice.  In other words, they could be real jerks, but it was our choice to feel angry or hurt in response their behavior.  Yes, for them “codependent” was sophisticated term that gave them further permission to abdicate all responsibility for themselves.

                            

I hated the word.  Really hated it.  And that is unfortunate . . . because it is only now, at age 40, that I have returned to that word to discover what it really means and have found within it a wealth of insight and understanding.  Robert Subby, author of Lost in the Shuffle: The Co-dependent Reality says this:

“Co-dependency” is the denial or repression of the real self.  It is based on the wrong belief that love, acceptance, security, success, closeness and salvation are all dependent upon one’s ability to do “the right thing.”