Enacted codependency

Today I'm reflecting on my experiences with codependent relationships. I've come to recognize that I have trouble with being codependent with people who want to be dependent upon someone else. A recent experience with a new person in my life that is causing me to feel guilty and responsible for their feelings and self-defined crises is causing me to reflect on some things our church has been wrestling with.

As a church we read When Helping Hurts. As I read it I was in agreement with many things, but also frustrated by the book. There are some at our church that are pushing for us to "be a blessing in the Twin Cities" by "helping the poor." My main question as we read the book is: can we really "help the poor"? As I read the book what struck me is that you could basically define help that is harmful as codependent helping. If we all learned about codependency and how to love rather than be codependent, we would not be doing harmful helping.

Codependence is:

• helping others out of guilt (avoiding being seen as uncompassionate, avoiding being disapproved of or rejected) or pity (seeing them as less than made in the image of God) 
• doing for others what they can and should do for themselves, thereby robbing them of the dignity of responsibility  (this needs to be distinguished from not helping others because they don't deserve it -- which is something entirely different and is a denial of grace and a denial of the reality that none of us deserve it)
• rescuing or shielding others from the consequences of their own decisions (robbing others of the learning that comes from experiencing the results of their own choices)
• seeing oneself as a savior, as indispensible, as god to that person

What is interesting is that When Helping Hurts deals only with private charity. But the principles in it apply just as well to governmental help. What I would ask is, how much of governmental attempts to help the needy are actually codependency enacted through legislation? 

But that sounds way too uncompassionate. How do we distinguish between showing mercy, vs rewarding/enabling irresponsibility?

Those who actually help the needy learn through hard knocks that it really doesn't help people to lead with your compassion. You need to step back and evaluate what is going on in terms of what a healthy person would think and do. Is it best to short-circuit the painful consequences of patterns of behavior before that pain can bring that person to a point of willingness to take a look at what they are doing, rather than seeing the problem as everyone else and circumstances? Of course, sometimes it is just circumstances beyond their control. But oftentimes that person and the compassionate helper are blind to some things that the person in crisis was choosing that led them to that point, that if not changed, will continue to bring them into repeated, continual crises. 

So, is modern day (as opposed to classical) Liberalism simply enacted codependency? And is it mostly motivated by a phobia of looking uncompassionate?

In saying no to someone who was pouring on the "I'm a victim" and "I have it so much worse than you do" and "you have to help me or terrible things will happen to me and mine" I was feeling the pressure of others around me judging me as lacking compassion if I refused to do what they thought I should be doing for this person. What was ironic about it was that I was doing more than anyone else around me for this person, yet feared their judging me as not doing more. No one else was involving themselves personally in helping this person, yet I feared their deeming me as not loving enough!

The problem with people who judge others for not doing enough to help the needy, is that unless you get truly involved in trying to help someone who is demanding help, you do not have to face the reality that the help is not going to help them. You are living in a delusional world where you imagine that someone else can do for the needy person what they are unwilling to do themselves and that the problem is outside them and in everyone around them. You believe they need help, rather than willingness to change. So you blame others for not helping. And if you are trying to help them, and it feels overwhelming, you can blame (as I did) others for not joining you in trying to do the impossible, instead of gaining sanity and realizing that more people doing what doesn't work will not make it work better. More of futility does not yield success.