• Welcome
• Services
• About Dr. Fran
• Contact
• Resources
• Links
• Self Help
• Clients Say...

Spirituality & Codependency

© 1992 Fran DiDomenicis, Ph.D.

Published first in the Update newsletter of the Delaware Association for Children of Alcoholics

In simplest terms, codependency is the belief, "I am not enough. I need something other than me, something outside of me to become enough." Some call this feeling of intrinsic deficit a "hole in the soul." Feeling this deficit of intrinsic value, we set about doing, getting, or having something that will convince ourselves and others that we are good enough, or at least dull the ache of feeling not good enough. To do this, we pursue sense pleasures, approval of others, mood-altering substances, success, riches, relationships... the list is endless.

Some of these pursuits bring pleasure, others end in pain; some bring success, others misfortune. However, in every case, these solutions eventually fade in their ability to bring pleasure or numb pain. The seeming solutions to the feeling of "not enough" themselves become not enough to hide the sense of emptiness. And, the search begins again.

I prefer to think of the sense of inner deficit in a different light, not as a cold emptiness, or existential fact with no answer, but as a sacred space at the core of every human soul. What we experience as emptiness, anxiety, "not enough", is really a feeling of homesickness for the state we left behind to come into this life. My belief is that each of us comes into the world out of God -- a part of God launched into the sensory world. In that process of separation however, we forget our true nature, we forget we already are enough just as we are. We forget that we are God. The splitting off from God creates that hole in the soul I mentioned. It is the place in which God fits into the soul of each of us like the essential piece of a great picture puzzle. Without the missing piece, the true image of the puzzle cannot be discerned.

The discomforting feeling of homesickness created by separation nags at our attention, to turn us back towards home, towards the union with God we once had. The things we pursue to fill this void we come to falsely think of as self ("I am my job, my family") or we mistakenly stake our existence on ("Without you I would die"). While the sense of being "not enough" is in error, the instinct to find something with which to identify and from which to derive a sense of meaningful existence is instinctive and valid. However, we usually look for “home” in all the wrong places first. Instead of turning the attention inward to find home in the bedrock of our infinite nature, we turn it outward to find identity in the impermanent, changeable world.

This error of sending the attention out instead of in is, in part, our avoidance of the ache of sacred emptiness. Ironically, when we try to get away from the discomfort by pursuing the "solutions" listed above, we make it worse. We make it worse by straying farther away from home, farther away from the experience of God that would finally soothe the ache. As long as we pursue the false idols of the senses and worldly attachments, as long as we flee the infinite stillness that lies within, how can the sacred emptiness created by separation from God ever be truly filled? Like frustrated children trying to complete the great picture puzzle of our existence, we can bang with all our might to make wrong pieces fit the right hole, but it will never work!

So how can we find the fit? How can we fill the sacred space? One way is to use the very sense of emptiness as a kind of target. We can direct the mind's attention towards, instead of away from, the source of the ache. Most psychotherapy and spiritual disciplines advise this. Those feelings we try to dull, feelings that seem to come from the center of our beings - shame, aloneness in the world, desperate longing for connectedness - could they not be used as beams of energy we can "home in on" to follow back to their source?

This requires some discipline. The place from which feelings and thoughts spring is what we're after here, not becoming engrossed or overpowered by them. It is like asking the question, "If I am not my feelings, but rather I have feelings, who is the "I" that has them"? What is the nature of this self that is behind all experiences?

And, if we return to this source of experience, what would we find? Who would be there, at the center, suddenly found in the light of the mind's attention? The pursuit of such questions in contemplation and meditation leads one to the center of one's being. Through meditation, one naturally peels away the false self-identities and experiences true Self in union with God, Self as God. In that home-coming one experiences the great teaching, "God dwells within you as you."