The room is very quiet as Kathleen Whalen Fitzgerald comes to the front and starts to talk.
She has a quiet voice, but every word carries in the stillness. As she speaks, heads begin to nod. There are clicks of recognition going on in the minds of the men and women listening to her, and the clicks are reflected in those slight nods, in sidelong looks and, occasionally, in a tissue brought to the eyes.
”Many of us don`t know who we are. We have this mask that the world sees, but no one`s home in here,” Fitzgerald is saying, gently touching her head with the palm of her hand. ”I asked a woman once how she felt, and she said, `Wait, let me find out how my husband is, how my children are.`
”Our recovery is taking off this mask. Our recovery is learning that we don`t need things outside of ourselves to give us value.”
This is the second three-hour session in a three-part series on codependency. Many of the participants are still raw from the Pandora`s boxes that had been opened at the previous week`s session, boxes that contained such issues as incest, alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse. They are back to learn more about this elusive thing called ”codependency,” which, Fitzgerald is telling them, effectively robs so many of a true sense of identity.
Will the real me please step up, she says. Or is it locked inside this shell?
Education, not therapy
Fitzgerald, Ph.D., former nun, daughter of an alcoholic, author of
”Alcoholism: The Genetic Inheritance” (Doubleday, $17.95), has been conducting these workshops in the Chicago area for the last year. They are packed. She`s not there to give therapy, she says; she`s there to educate. And, she`s quick to add, she`s educating in a field she knows all too well;
codependency shaped her life long before she knew what to call it.
Codependency has become a new catchword.
We have learned that an alcoholic in the family triggers a ripple effect; all the family members become affected, sucked into a chain of reaction. Lives and personalities are molded by and revolve around the one who actually has the illness. The same is true in families with members suffering from drug abuse, emotional problems or any other dysfunctional illness.
The theory of codependency goes beyond saying that other family members are affected by the addiction or illness of one. Codependency is seen as an illness in its own right. The codependent person has become so hooked into another person`s problems or addictions that he has virtually lost his own identity.
And the theory now goes even further than describing a person who has become so enmeshed in another`s addictions. Codependent is also being used to describe anyone whose life is organized around the life of another person, whether that other person has an addiction or not.
”We all know Mrs. Joe Blow, who might be in a terribly unhappy marriage, but whose life is based on the fact that she is Mrs. Joe Blow,” Fitzgerald says. ”Take that away, and she has nothing. She has lost her own self. She is a codependent.”
Fitzgerald acknowledges that codependency has become a new ”in” word, a new concept snatched up by the plethora of self-improvement books. In fact, she starts off one of her workshops with the question, ”How many of you have been hearing about codependency and think of it as the latest in pop psychology?”
In no way does that subtract from its validity, she says.
”Codependency gets to the root cause of why we have self-defeating behaviors, of why we sabotage ourselves,” she says. ”How many of us have been to our therapists, been to our churches, been to our 12-step programs
(such as Al-Anon), and we keep hearing the same language. We`re not learning anything new. We need to get unstuck with all this.
”We need to break the chain.”
Tammy Anderson (not her real name) practically had to be dragged to Fitzgerald`s codependency workshop.
For one thing, she didn`t trust women-the therapist she was seeing was the first woman she had ever really trusted, but to go to a workshop headed by another woman? And for another thing, she didn`t like groups.
”But my therapist kept talking about it-she knew Kathleen Fitzgerald. So I agreed. When I got (to the workshop), it seemed like everyone felt the same. No one seemed real comfortable. It was all these people needing help, but not knowing just what they needed. But everyone seemed to feel trust. I think that was Kathleen.
”Then people started opening up. I felt . . . these people were trusting me with their feelings and I could trust them. By the end, I didn`t want to leave.”
Moving, and shaking
Anderson remembers her family with bitterness. There had been a major geographical move when she was in the 6th grade, and she never felt accepted in the new city. Then the family moved again when she was a sophomore in high school. Rebellion took over her life.
”My dad was quiet; he was always in the background. He never showed his love. My mother was always yelling and she was always sick. I never did anything right. I had a brother and sister behind me, and then another sister was born. I took over being a mother to her.
”I was very shy, a wallflower. My rebellion was silent. I hated everything. I decided to come back here (to the Chicago area). My mother didn`t want me to, so that really decided me. Whatever she didn`t want me to do, I did. Whenever somebody told me not to do something, I did it.”
She became a nurse, and eventually moved into nursing administration. She also moved from job to job, from hospital to hospital. There would always come a time when she would clash with the person over her in authority, and she would quit.
She also became a bulimic, a drug abuser (”There was never any waste when I gave patients medications”) and severely depressed. She started therapy as a last resort.
”The therapist didn`t bring up the word `codependency` at first. By the time she started talking about it, I think I was beginning to put my childhood into perspective. I was still blaming my mother for everything; I was still mad at her. But I had reached the transition point where I knew I had to let go (of those feelings).”
She was at that transition point when she went to the codependency workshops, and the meaning of codependency fell into place for her.
When anger takes over
Childhoods like the one Anderson describes are not uncommon. Many would listen to Anderson`s memories and think that there are far worse scenarios of growing up.
The point is, however, that she let that anger toward her mother and the unsatisfied love for her father take over her life. The anger and frustration became her life, shaped her personality. Take away those negative memories and emotions, and there was no Tammy Anderson left-until she started understanding what had happened and gaining the tools she needed to break the cycle.
”Codependency is suffering without meaning. It`s looking for validity outside of yourself,” Fitzgerald says.
Fitzgerald doesn`t hesitate to talk about her own codependent problems, which ultimately led to the workshops and seminars she now conducts.
Her father was alcoholic, and when she left home it was to become a nun.
”I tried to take care of my father, and I was powerless to do that. Codependents try to control things they cannot control. Then we feel shame because we are powerless. This is toxic shame, not healthy shame.
”With me, I then focused on the Vietnam War (as a protestor) and the Catholic Church. I had given my father my power, and then I gave it to institutions. I focused on societal things, not on self. . . . I was not in touch with my own needs. I wasn`t respectful of myself, of my talents.
”Once I saw the connection (how she organized her life, first around her her father and then the church), I hit the ground running.”
But it looks good
One of the problems in understanding codependency is that many of the
”symptoms” are pluses, from society`s point of view.
Fitzgerald was involved in causes perceived as good-”I could have emptied every bed pan in Lake County, taken care of every black person in the South, if it had made me feel good”-but the reasons propelling her centered on her own lack of identity.
Codependents can be people pleasers because they are so attuned to what pleases the other person. They can be workaholics, providing well for family, because their identity is totally wrapped up in their job. They can be social workers, nurses and teachers, dedicated to caring for others because they don`t know how to care for themselves.
Generations have missed the underlying patterns in their lives, and have still functioned-often well. What accounts for the interest now?
Fitzgerald`s theory is a simple one: the time has come. ”I think there`s a movement about. Recovery is in the wind. There`s a healing going on. It`s like a prairie fire, and people are being warmed by it and made whole.”
She ends the workshops by telling her participants to honor themselves.
”You have not honored yourself up to this point,” she says. ”Now it`s time. Go out and honor your own life.”
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Codependency workshops will be conducted during February and March in Vernon Hills, Arlington Heights, Northbrook, Lake Forest, Deerfield and Evanston. Each workshop consists of three 1/2-hour sessions (including a break). The cost is $96 per workshop. For specific times, dates and locations, call the Institute for Codependency Recovery at 708-295-2309.
