Codependency Counseling and Comprehensive Family
Intervention Services
Beyond Alanon and Codependency Anonymous:
Mental Health Counseling for “Codependent Relationships”
Consultation by Telephone is Available Nationally.
206-546-HELP
206-769-STOP
My codependency counseling practice offers you personal and direct clinical guidance to support your participation in Alanon, Codependency Anonymous (CODA), or other Twelve Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. I also provide counseling to help couples with problems of addiction, chemical dependency, or drug abuse and provide clinical recommendations and treatment matching referrals to other sources of support.
Codependency Counseling: Symptoms of “codependence” have been anecdotally identified as: controlling behavior, distrust, perfectionism, avoidance of emotions, problems with intimacy, excessive caretaking, hypervigilance, and/or physical illness related to stress. Pioneers in the addictions treatment field report that codependents often suffer from depression, as they succumb to excruciating feelings of frustration or sadness over their inability to improve the situation.
Codependents have learned a set of maladaptive, compulsive behaviors in order to cope and survive in a family . . . perhaps wrought in conflict and unspeakable family-shared pain. Immense emotional suffering is encountered because of a family member’s alcoholism or other addictions, sexual or other abuse . . . or a loved one’s chronic illness, or forces external to the family, such as poverty. Theorists maintain that codependent people are frequently driven by intense feelings of shame.
Learn to Set Interpersonal Boundaries:
Sustaining Limits to Maintain Your Self-Preservation:
No! . . . is a completed sentence!
Such behaviors, which may well lessen conflict and ease tension within the family in the short term, are counterproductive in the long term, since, for example, the wife is actually supporting or “enabling” the husband’s drug abuse or drinking behavior. So, sometimes, the codependent is referred to as “the enabler.”
It is also worth noting that since the wife in the above example is dependent (relies upon) on her alcoholic husband, she may actually feel disturbed, disoriented, or threatened if she sees clearly that he is emerging from his dependence. The threat to her position as a confidante and needed loved one might lead her unwittingly to resist her husband’s steps towards recovery. Similarly, a codependent parent might resist a child’s steps toward independence, whether early or late in life.
Codependent people, it is believed, have a greater tendency to enter into conflicted relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable or needy. The codependent tries to control a relationship without directly identifying and addressing his or her own needs and desires. This invariably means that these people set themselve up for continued distress and unfulfilling lives.
Understanding and Changing Your Codependent Role:
Relationship Roles: Love Addiction ~ Obsession and Compulsion
Codependents may insist that they are sacrificially acting in another person’s best interest, making it difficult for them to see the controlling nature of their own behavior.
The Bridge to Recovery
is a program of self-development for people struggling with any negative habit: chemical dependence, codependence, or non-chemical dependencies. Dr. Hart is an alumnus of The Bridge to Recovery program for Codependency. Following is an excerpt from their website:
At The Bridge to Recovery, we believe that codependence is the “dis-ease” underlying many addictions and that it is only as we address people’s codependency issues (roles) that long-term recovery can be sustained. Therefore, part of our focus is on core issues that create or contribute to relationship problems, anxiety, depression and driven-ness or compulsive behavior. Left untreated, the following issues can compromise sobriety, putting chemically dependent individuals at risk for relapse.
- Undue shame, guilt and poor self esteem
- Lack of mature coping skills — (arrested development)
- Repressed, back-logged emotions (resentment, rage)
- Lack of personal identity and self-esteem
- Lack of healthy boundaries or sense of self
- A tendency to act in the extreme-immoderation
Codependency Counseling Blog by Keritesorszag
The Bridge to Recovery is a program of self-development for people struggling with any negative habit: chemical dependence, codependence, or non-chemical dependencies.
Edgewood Recovery Insight: Tired of Waiting for Someone Else to Change?
Early childhood experiences shape us and go on to inform our adult lives. Past experiences, whether harmful or benign, influence our behavior in relationships, how we respond emotionally when stressed, and what we believe to be true about who we are. When we overlook or minimize emotionally painful events from our childhood we can fail to recognize their influence on our current life.
Dr. Patrick Hart
The Hart Center Mental Health:
My practice helps people streamline (augment) their work with twelve-step programs like alcoholics anonymous, alanon or CODA. Contemporary psychological perspectives and cognitive behavioral counseling can assist you in integrating what you are learning in twelve-step fellowship programs. These fellowships are “forever to remain non professional,” so professional guidance may help you to resolve problems that remain “cunning, baffling, and powerful” influences that continue to sabotage your most valued relationships. You may wish to consult me for recommendations to formal treatment programs that can help you resolve issues related to codependency. Below are a few suggestions:
The Meadows
The Meadows provides a path to personal completeness and integrity, for those seeking treatment for trauma and addictions, thus serving the individual with a lifelong recovery process. The Meadows is a multi-disorder inpatient facility specializing in the treatment of a broad range of addictions. The facility’s intensive treatment focuses on drug and alcohol addiction, sexual addictions, depression, psychological conditions, affective disorders and compulsive behaviors.
Pioneers of the Codependency Model & Counseling Field
- Carol Cannon
- Melody Beattie
- John Bradshaw
- Terry Kellogg
- Claudia Black
- Pia Melody
- Sharon Wegscheider
“Codependency is the pain in adulthood that comes from being wounded in childhood and leads to a high probability of relationship problems and addictive / compulsive behavior. It is a combination of immature thinking, feeling, and behavior that generates an aversive relationship with the self (self-loathing), which the codependent individual acts out through self-destructive or unduly self-sacrificial behavior.”
~ Carol Cannon The Bridge to Recovery