The Struggle to Find Joy and Rejoicing in My Posterity

My Dream Family

All my life I looked forward to being a wife and mother.  It was a joyful day when my husband and I had our first child. Finally! I was a mom!  I loved it, but I also began to experience frequent stress and anger and some depression.  To me, family life involved so much work and opposition.  I had many happy moments with my family, but I wondered if this is what I had always dreamed of? It didn’t really seem like “joy and rejoicing” to me.

Seeking Help

As more children came, my negative and positive emotions increased. I sometimes lost my temper multiple times a day and soon felt like I needed emotional help. I read parenting books, went to parenting classes, attended the temple, prayed and fasted.  Eventually I went to my Bishop and requested counseling from LDS Social Services.  By that time, I had five lively sons from ages nine to one years old.

Anger Drill

My therapist taught me to do what he called an “anger drill”.  When I began to feel stress I would go to my room and do something physical to release the stress, like sit-ups. As I moved my body I would talk out loud about what was making me stressed.  This skill helped me improve dramatically.  It started to re-train my brain to handle stress and conflict more rationally. The Lord also prompted me to eat less sugar, which I found gave me much more self-control.  But there was more in store to answer my prayers for peace and joy in my home.

A Divine Intervention

During this time my mother and father-in-law were missionaries for the Addiction Recovery Program.  Prompted by the Spirit, my mother-in-law talked to me about some literature regarding codependency.  She told me a little about the concept and I decided to read it.  As I did, I identified with what I read.  It became clear to me that much of my unhappiness was because of codependent behaviors and that anger and depression were just symptoms of a larger problem.  The Lord was answering my prayers and showing me a road to greater happiness.  I started to study codependency more.

What is Codependency

The term codependency was originally coined “to describe the person or persons whose lives were affected as a result of their being involved with someone who was chemically dependent… a pattern of coping with life that was not healthy as a reaction to someone else’s drug or alcohol abuse.”[1]  The patterns were “emotional, psychological, and behavioral.” [2]  As professionals continued to study the condition, they found it among many more groups of people such as caretakers, families of PTSD, families of behavioral addictions, and more. It was even said that “codependency is everything and everyone is codependent.”[3] Addictions in families amplify the “emotional, psychological, and behavioral” trends that exist to some degree in many families. An LDS expert explained codependency as “man’s own way of coping or surviving in this fallen world.”[4]

A New Definition of Codependency

As I have learned about it, I best understand codependency as our own set of weaknesses, conditioned negative tendencies, and issues that separate us from God. These things may result from our pre-dispositions we brought with us to earth combined with the conditioning from our life’s circumstances and experiences (especially not being treated with the love and respect we all deserve as a human being).  In short, I see codependency as the natural man.  “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:15).

As “light cleaveth unto light” (D&C 88:40), codependents (or natural men) attract spouses with a similar level of severity.

Causes and Symptoms of Codepency

There is a large variety of causes of codependency.  The symptoms can also be the causes when they are prevalent in one’s family. Some common symptoms are:

• Not living by the Spirit or being out of touch with the Spirit
• Sinning (I view this as self-inflicted abuse)
• Letting another person’s behavior affect you and being obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior[5]
• Happiness depending on what others do or do not do or one’s circumstances[6]
• Self-seeking[7]
• Conditional love
• Criticism of self or others
• Identity or worth defined by a relationship, a role you play, outward appearances, actions, or possessions
• Demanding too much of self and others
• Unhealthy communication
• Anxiety, Depression, Anger
• Addictions
• Obsessive, compulsive
• Perfectionism
• Intimacy issues
• Being overly analytical
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Abusing or being abused
• Workaholism or laziness
• Doing for others what they should do for themselves or Irresponsibility
• Being too passive or too defensive
• Being too emotional or unemotional

Codependency is passed down through the generations unless the “emotional, psychological, and behavioral” trends are changed through the atonement of Christ.

Healing Through Christ

My eyes were opened seemingly all at once to a looming set of sins and weaknesses.  I identified with most of the symptoms on the list above.  Soon, I became aware that my husband and I had poor communication and I was venting stress from our relationship onto our children.  Also, I realized that pride and fear pervaded a great deal of my choices and thoughts. I based my worth on what I accomplished or acquired. My happiness depended on my children and husband doing what I wanted and their accomplishments. I was manipulative, emotional, irresponsible, selfish, and demanded too much of myself and others.  I also saw that in order to feel good I tended to turn to things or behaviors, even religious acts, instead to the Lord Himself. All of a sudden my false pride was crushed.

This was very painful at first, but the Lord said, “…repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal [you]…” (3 Nephi 18:32). Codependency, is an addictive behavior[8] and I began to attend Addiction Recovery Meetings and do the 12-step workbook that goes with the program. This is a program of anonymity, but I choose to openly testify of its effectiveness.  The program helped me to “focus on the basic doctrines, principles, and applications of the gospel.”[9] As I worked the program and the Lord worked in my life in other ways, I experienced a dramatic shift, “a change of mind…a fresh view about God, [myself], and about the world.”[10]  I felt set free!

Joy and Rejoicing

Before, I wanted to love and have a happy family, but I didn’t fully know how.  “For we know in part… ” (1 Corinthians 13:9). As my natural man is brought into submission to God’s will, I am becoming who I really am.  I am a child of God, a Christ-like being, the embodiment of love, “for God is love” (1 John 4:16).  As I am less controlling and more charitable with my children and husband, they are free to be themselves and their Christ-like personalities bring me great joy.  We are not perfect, but I am more understanding and forgiving of our pride and weaknesses.  Now, I can truly say I have joy and rejoicing in my posterity.

[1] Robert Subby and John Friel, “Co-Dependency: A Paradoxical Dependency,” Co-Dependency, An Emerging Issue, 31 (Hollywood, FL: Health Communication, 1984); as cited in Melody Beattie, Codependent No More (Hazelden Foundation, 1986,1992), 31.

 

[2]Robert Subby, “Inside the Chemically Dependent Marriage: Denial and Manipulation,” Co-Dependency, An Emerging Issue, 26; as cited in Codependent No More, 30.

 

[3] As quoted by Melody Beattie in Codependent No More, 31.

[4] Douglas Dobberfuhl, Healing the Codependent Heart (Currawong Press, 2013), 37.

 

[5] Melody Beattie, Codependent No More (1992), 34.

 

[6] Healing Through Christ Institute,LLC, Healing Through Christ (2007-2013), 142.

 

[7] The remainder of the symptoms listed were taken from various pages throughout Healing the Codependent Heart, unless otherwise indicated.

 

[8] LDS Family Services, Addiction Recovery Program (2005), v.

 

[9] Uchtdorf, “It Works Wonderfully,” Ensign, Nov. 2015, 22.

 

[10] LDS Bible Dictionary, Repentance, 760.