Love, Codependency, and Addiction

Adopted and adapted from an article by Alexandra Katehakis, Ph.D., and several articles listed on the last page!

“Might as well face it; you’re addicted to…”

Are you in love or in lust or codependency or even addiction? Disentangling and distinguishing your feelings can help you make positive decisions in your whole being, not just your romantic life.

Codependency is a learned behavior that often stems from growing up in a dysfunctional home. There is a fine line between addiction and codependency. Codependency and addiction of all kinds often encourage each other. Codependency doesn't always turn into addiction, but codependency is where addiction stems from.

“Not all codependents are addicts, but all addicts are codependent.” – Pia Mellody,

Lust and love produce chemicals in the brain’s reward center, including the feel-good hormone oxytocin, which promotes bonding and emotional connection. Being around a person you love or desire can also produce a kind of dependency, as your brain craves another hit of oxytocin, which according to scientific studies, is also present in codependency and addiction. The chemistry of oxytocin in our mind and body shares similarities in how our bodies respond to love, sex, drugs and alcohol. How we apply that oxytocin is what often determines whether it’s love or codependency or addiction.

So where do we start to understand how this applies to us? While each of our stories is complex, almost all of where we are today really did have its genesis in childhood. This is easy to identify if that childhood included neglect or emotional, physical, or sexual abuse (including bullying). It is less evident but also clearly impacting if we grew up in a codependent home, surrounded by over-controlling or with messages that we were ‘less-than.’ The ensuing wounds bequeathed a shame-based sense of self that attempts to right itself through a distorted understanding of our sense of purpose, value and safety. If we experienced that in childhood, where our fundamentally critical life foundations are formed, then we also would have sought any protective or disconnecting methods which may have helped us to survive but further damaged our very sense of self and, absent remediation, continued to follow us in life.

Shame accompanies all forms of abuse and is considered a barrier emotion that blocks all other vitality states from being experienced. Chronic and unrepaired shame in early childhood prevents the healthy development of a sense of self. It has devastating effects on being relational. Emotional contact, or attachment to others, can’t be met due to the shame, insecurity and even terror that human contact can bring. We may feel our very soul is sick. Even worse, shame can become dissociated or repressed for a long time without awareness. Our acting out, whether needing to control through our codependency or sexually acting out or through the use of alcohol or other drugs, is the manifestation of unconscious, unresolved shame. Sadly, it leads the codependent or addict (of any kind) into a vicious cycle of self-loathing, self-destruction, and self-sabotage when things are going well, making shame the cause and effect of their compulsion or codependency.

These different but related and frequently enjoined types of acting out can be thought of as an intimacy disorder, with fantasy often being the counterpoint to shame. Shame resides deep in the gut, while fantasy is a neural pathway in the brain that allows the person to dissociate. Pathological dissociation is a disconnection between the cortical (intellect) and subcortical (emotional) parts of the brain. In effect, this means that due to neural circuitry that has uncoupled, the brain and body have lost communication with each other. This disconnection accounts for why addicts and codependents often report feeling inadequate, unbearably lonely, and internally numb. It also allows them to drift into a fantasy world, never grounded in the reality of their lives. Oxytocin fuels that escape to deliver feelings of elation and warmth and joy. This elegant system, which provided a necessary escape in childhood – often when there was no other escape – now serves to protect from the psychic pain that is often unbearable and difficult to acknowledge, let alone feel. Even though the addict or codependent intellectually knows they’re hurting themself, this dysfunctional neurobiological organization leaves them struggling mightily to form and forge relationships and stop their destructive and often controlling behaviors.

When an addict or codependent “hits bottom” or “gets sick and tired of being sick and tired,” they're ready to ask for help. The human organism always seeks to heal itself, so it’s often a matter of time before a newcomer walks into the rooms of recovery. This first step is crucial to becoming affiliated with a community of concern and coming out of isolation. No longer having to do it alone, the program becomes a stand-in for a healthy family.

Studies show that over time, the social relationships intrinsic in the program change participants’ attachment styles. Relying on others to get their needs met leads people to experience themselves more accurately. Many see their anxious and avoidant attachments decrease, and a sense of being secure in relationship to others increases. Participants begin to take comfort in connection, expand their ability to trust others, and experience less fear of being close or of others wanting to leave.

Defining and making contact with a higher power is an essential component to the restoration of the self, whether the recovering person locates it in the actual meetings or comes to experience it as a universal divinity within. Regardless, working through the 12 Steps helps participants organize the emotional, physical, and psychological pains of the past into a coherent narrative that helps them make meaning of the present and stay healthy. A new capacity for self-regulation and self-reflection and the inner peace those skills bring may be an early gift of recovery that grows with continued sobriety and neural integration.

Through their affiliation with others and eventual spiritual awakening, the recovering person can earn a secure attachment, laying the foundation to move toward healthy lifestyles, including healthy love and intimacy (emotional and physical). By diligently working the program, we experience an emotionally and spiritually intimate relationship with others and with ourselves - sometimes for the first time. This foundation of affiliation is the bedrock on which a healthy and whole self can emerge. We slowly and progressively begin to find that controlling others or escaping via sex, alcohol or other drugs doesn’t feel as desperately necessary as it once did.

Love both emotional and physical is a manifestation of vital energy that is a part of all of us. Recovery helps awaken and bring that forward in healthy ways. The expression of that energy represents the love recovering people feel for themselves and others. Emotional connection and bodily pleasure are the necessary combination for robust and healthy lives.

By attending meetings and workshops, working the Steps, taking service commitments, and regularly connecting to the any number of healthy fellowships, recovering people find a roadmap to healing and connection and healthy relationships.

Articles for additional thought and reflection:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3430484.Alexandra_Katehakis

https://psychcentral.com/authors/alexandra-katehakis-ph-d-mft-cst-csat

https://psychcentral.com/lib/love-lust-or-addiction#love-vs-lust

https://psychcentral.com/blog/what-is-love-addiction#is-it-mental-illness

https://risingwoman.com/healing-codependency-and-love-addiction/

https://codependencyrecovery.org/2023/03/05/recognizing-the-difference-between-codependency-and-love-addiction/

https://www.thecabinhongkong.com.hk/blog/behavioral-addiction/love-addiction-boundaries-codependency/

https://theonlinetherapist.blog/codependency-is-love-management-not-love-addiction/

https://chriskingman.com/blog/love-addiction

https://doctorbecky.com/codependence-and-love-addiction/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5031705/