Readers react to a guest essay critical of the concept of codependency and tough love.
To the Editor:
Re “No, Love Doesn’t Make You an Enabler,” by Maia Szalavitz (Opinion guest essay, July 10):
Tough love is not actually what these codependency programs suggest. Instead, the suggestion is to stop living a life focused on someone (anyone) else’s well-being. These programs advocate detachment with love — that is, to put love and caring at the forefront of the relationship, but without losing oneself in the process.
These programs are not designed for the addict, or to get the addict clean, but for others to learn to live with the addict, clean or not. When I took a lifeguard course, I was informed that the greatest danger for a lifeguard is being drowned by the person you are trying to save. While this is not a perfect analogy, the idea is that trying to save an addict who doesn’t want to help themselves is more likely to ruin you than save them.
So recovery for the codependent is about learning to let the other person lead their own life and manage their own disease. It is not about being heartless or uncaring, although it may look that way, but about being realistic about your power to change anyone other than yourself, and becoming clear about what you are willing and able to do for someone else whatever their affliction.
Quinn Faison
San Francisco
The writer is a coach with Planp.us, which helps parents of preteens, teens and young adults.
To the Editor:
I agree with Maia Szalavitz 100 percent.
I’ve been through it all. My brother died from alcoholism, and while I needed the support I found in Al-Anon, I always knew that the concept was bogus. People who love their families as I loved my brother are going against everything that is human within us to “stop enabling.”
I did all I could to help my brother, and I wish to this day I’d done more, but I was caught up in the codependency myth. How much better my life would have been, and probably my brother’s also, if there had been support for me as a caregiver and not shaming as a “codependent.”
I have come to see the whole 12-step establishment as doing more harm than good.
Mary Dolphin
Corvallis, Ore.
To the Editor:
I understand the point Maia Szalavitz is making, but I think that codependency is a concept that has helped the sanity of many people, of whom I am one.
Having lived with alcoholic people for much of my life, I know that codependency is a real thing. My husband wasn’t mean, and he had the ability to work at a good job even while drinking every night. I had four children, and until I got to Al-Anon, I focused more on the alcoholic than I did on my own life.
Without realizing it, I bought into the common idea in alcoholic families that if I had dinner on the table on time, or kept the kids from fighting or was an interesting enough person, I could make him stop drinking. Secrecy took over our lives, and I left my children in the dark about what was happening.
When I finally got to Al-Anon, the relief was palpable as I learned from others that I wasn’t responsible for the drinking, I couldn’t cure it and I needed to focus on my own life. Detachment with love meant that I could make reasonable boundaries around what I would do for the alcoholic. He was an adult with his own life, as was I.
I never left him or broke up our family, but I did live in a much healthier way, and I hope I nurtured better lives for my children in which we didn’t have to cloak everything in secrecy. To call this healing work by the group founded by Lois Wilson “toxic” makes me angry.
Carolyn
Surry, Maine
The last name is not being published at the writer’s request in keeping with the Al-Anon tradition of using only first names.
To the Editor:
This essay is an insult to caring parents like me who have struggled with a loved one’s addiction — in my case my son’s alcoholism. Most of us who end up in Al-Anon are not there initially by choice; we are driven there by despair.
The idea of codependency, as Maia Szalavitz points out, may have been rejected by psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, but the terminology and the related message of self-care have helped many like me to regain control of our lives, work and emotions and to break away from the destructive manipulations of the addict.
It is not abandonment as she makes it out to be. Most of us who embrace the philosophy of “detach with love” get there inch by inch. As I detached, my son did better in rehab and is sober now.
I do agree that one size does not fit all. There is no codified treatment for addiction. Until that happens, we have to use every tool that is available and affordable.
Kanchana
Long Beach, Calif.
The last name is not being published at the writer’s request.
To the Editor:
Maia Szalavitz’s essay about codependency makes important points about family addiction recovery. As a professional in the field, I find her term “toxic” to be too strong, although I agree that the word codependency has lost its meaning.
In general, we in the recovery field have retired the word and concept “codependency.” I prefer the simplicity of “Name It, Claim It, Tame It.” For a more evolved family solution, check out “Love the Kid, Hate the Disease.”
Todd Whitmer
Lititz, Pa.
To the Editor:
Maia Szalavitz takes a narrow clinical definition of codependency and uses it to malign Al-Anon, the 12-step fellowship for family and friends of addicts and alcoholics.
I have been attending Al-Anon meetings for over 17 years. In this fellowship I have received peer support and understanding, not a diagnosis of codependency. Nobody ever prescribed “tough love” or “back off” for my family situation. My participation has been life-changing and positive.
Just after my eldest son, Aaron, died of an overdose six years ago, people in Al-Anon, grounded in empathy from their own family struggles with addiction and alcoholism, provided support that has been critical to my eventual healing.
The benefit of peer groups for people affected by addiction and alcoholism vastly outweighs any academic debate on terminology.
Stephen H. Gorski
Eagle, Wis.
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