Worry Sources

Today's Ten Thousand Questions question:

Which do you worry about most: money issues, relationship conflicts, or potentially embarrassing social situations?

For me, it's relationship conflicts, no contest. I can shrug off social embarrassments as ultimately meaningless, and I feel confident that I can solve the money questions that arise in my life through information, intelligence and effort. But relationship conflicts--no matter how much effort I put in, there is no guarantee of anything working out.

Book reflection: From Bondage to Bonding

Nancy Groom's book From Bondage to Bonding is summarized succinctly by its subtitle: Escaping Codependency, Embracing Biblical Love. (I've got the 1991 edition. It's from NavPress.)

Readability: Small margins and print, intensely sad anecdotes, and a lack of dialog mark this book as the product of the previous century (or should I say "millennium"?), and put it in contrast to How We Love. This book takes some serious contemplation. Every chapter does come with a summary and a diagram at the end, but you won't find easy-to-read bullet points in this book.

Ease of absorption: The hardest part of reading this book is thinking through how/whether the material applies to your own life. The tone of How We Love is very sympathetic, non-judgmental. Bondage, in contrast, does not hesitate to mark a behavior or attitude as sinful. Groom does discuss how codependency develops (Part 2), with a compassionate perspective as a recovering codependent and the child of an alcoholic herself, but she is very clear about placing the responsibility to change on the shoulders of the codependent (through the power and love of God, Part 3). Codependence is a disorder or addiction, not a "normal" or healthy condition, and so the decision to accept or reject the label of codependent is a much weightier one than identifying which insecure "love style" is yours, as in How We Love.

Key concept: Groom offers a (frightening and intense) definition of codependency on p. 21: "Codependency is a self-focused way of life in which

• a person blind to his or her true self 
• continually reacts to others 
• being controlled by and seeking to control their behavior, attitudes, and/or opinions, 
• resulting in spiritual sterility, loss of authenticity, and absence of intimacy."

(Bullet points mine, inserted to compensate for the minimal punctuation in the original.)

Groom does mention that "you can be just a little bit codependent," and our counselor D. prefers to think of codependency not as a bin but as a smooth continuum. "Everyone's a little bit codependent," D. says. I think this is a misleading way to put it, because codependent is a real and weighty label. What I'd say instead is that everyone has imperfect relationships and imperfect self-knowledge, and everyone uses certain strategies to protect themselves in the midst of their broken relationships. Those strategies, taken to an unusual extreme, render a person codependent--and so everyone follows the strategies of the codependent "a little."

Organization & Overview:
The first chapter explains how the definition of "codependent" evolved. "Codependent" originally described the spouse of an alcoholic, or the co-alcoholic, whose patterns enabled and reinforced the alcoholic's dependence on alcohol. Later, codependence was recognized as an addiction in its own right--an addiction to approval.

The other chapters of Part 1 unfold the various characteristics or manifestations of codependence:

• self-forfeiture,
• self-contempt,
• self-aggrandizement,
• self-sufficiency, and 
• self-deception. 

Each is illustrated with a character in the Bible who sinned in that way, and each concludes with an explanation of why Jesus' behavior as recounted in the gospels differs from the codependent pattern.

Part 2 consists of some chapters exploring how a person becomes codependent: A child's natural Fervent Longings for relationship are not met by parents, so the child suffers Painful Losses and goes on to develop Self-Protective Pretenses. In attempting to reverse the bondage of addiction to the approval of others, a codependent may turn to Autonomy, which Groom summarizes as a "refusal to trust or need," but autonomy does not actually offer freedom from bondage but only deepens the codependent's disconnection from true relationship.

In Part 3, Groom outlines the path a codependent must take to move "from bondage to bonding." These include grieving, accepting grace, and surrendering to God. She then goes on to describe what real bonding looks like, in Part 4. I haven't read Part 4 yet; I'm still in the last chapter of Part 3 ("The Freedom of Surrender").

My relationship with the book thus far, briefly: I'm a bit embarrassed not to have finished reading this book yet, since I started it over a month ago, and it's a slim volume (200 pp). I stalled after coming back from Turkey and found myself surrounded again by more pleasant books! Then we had a murky discussion about codependency with the counselor, in which I found myself totally overwhelmed and left with a number of misunderstandings of what she'd been trying to say. So I gave myself some time off to process subconsciously, and I'm only picking up the conscious processing again now... I'll write more in another post, but for now I'll say that the chapter that resonated with me the most was "Self-Deception: Committed to Denial." This one was an eye-opener, putting a name to some patterns of thought that I'd never even registered as artificial before.

More personal thoughts to follow, and eventually a summary of Part 4, on real love, real relationship, real Bonding.

Quote from many days ago: Ballet as Religion

From this NYT article on Natalie Portman training in ballet for the movie "Black Swan":

Ms. Portman’s experience gave her a taste not only of the physical sacrifices, but also the mental ones. “It was very religious in my mind,” she said. “The ritual of, like, breaking in your point shoes and getting them soft, all of that, it’s almost like tefillin wrapping in Judaism, this thing you do every day, this ritual.”

Portman's comment evokes for me the ideas of Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. In this book, Alva Noë argues that consciousness and self are more deeply intertwined with bodily existence, physical action, and the surrounding environment than we typically admit. Identity doesn't reside in our skulls.

There are two connections here to ballet as religion. The first connection is dance. Noe says that "dance [is], for me, the perfect metaphor for consciousness" (see this interview). The second connection is religion--not that Noë speaks specifically about religion (as far as I remember). The connection is in Noë's ideas and the claims of religion. I won't try to speak for all religions since I am only immersed in one, but Christianity at least has been telling humans that their identity doesn't reside solely in themselves, much less solely in the way they think or worse solely in their brains, for thousands of years. Rather, it resides in our relationships, to each other and to our Creator.

Theme

From Ten Thousand Questions:

If you had to pick one of the following words to serve as the central theme of the next chapter of your life, which would you pick: tranquility, prosperity, triumph, or healing?

Healing. I didn't recognize my sickness, my scratches and scars, until this season started. When did it begin? At the altar when we vowed forever and evers? That winter evening when I made a promise? A year ago, when I was crying every weekend and it seemed for a time that there was no way out?

How far from that I feel. We are in a different place now: married. Time together is still a limited resource (that, if nothing else, I learned at breakfast today), but we aren't suffocating for lack of it. We are thirsty for more but we are not parched, and the rains fall regularly.

Yet it was in that time of stress and distress that I found myself vulnerable: woundable, and in fact wounded. It forced me to see my wounds, so that I could begin see my healing.

I had learned, once upon a time, not to rely on Another. I learned this so long ago that I cannot say what book or teacher told me. Was it stories, was it disappointments? my mother, my father? the very nature of the world? --was it whispered to me by leaves dying from the cold, then by the melting snow? I used to think I could preserve myself by growing in the right shape, with a shell around me like an oyster, or like an insect with its jewel-hued armor. I used to think I could have everything I needed by taking so little from each one that none would run away from me. I used to think you would all run, if I leaned too hard: or if not run, then fall; or if not fall, then attack.

I am trouble. This also I learned, and I locked it up inside and then I lost the key. How can I take it out of myself?

Healing. Already this has been a season of healing. I had to be healed and I had to unlearn and be sliced open by truth till I bled relief and I knew myself anew.

I have oozed other things, along the way. Self-pity, self-hatred. Condemnation, anger, judgment. Confusion. But I am coming clean. This is the season, the season of healing, the season of soothsaying.

 Say to me forsooth, the truth. Pull away the supports that have me leaning all the wrong ways, and settle me on the firm foundation. Unbandage me, and let the sun sterilize my skin. This is the season of straining and growing. Let this be the season of healing.