Working With Codependence: The Wounded Child, Adapted Child and Functional Adult

Dear Community,

Happy April and hoping you are all experiencing a rebirth of what you hold dear. It has been a rich month full of wonderful work with clients, special time with our aging terrier and exciting encounters with birth and death. I love this life! Not to mention new seasons of Game of Thrones and Sabrina the Witch....

My theme this month is codependence. I work a lot with people to stretch their perspective on what codependence is, how it works in our lives and how to use this awareness as a springboard for growth. 

My training and experience with codependence is grounded in Pia Melody's seminal and I believe divinely channelled developmental model. Her's was the first psychological model I immersed myself in nearly 20 years ago and it has shaped my inner work and my work with clients profoundly. She outlines the 5 characteristics of a child and how these characteristics develop and shape our lives. 

Pia says we come into this world as valuable, vulnerable, imperfect, dependent and spontaneous. We get impacted in these areas and then develop issues respectively with self esteem, boundaries, reality, interdependence and moderation. See the matrix of developmental issues here. Buy her book here. 

My spiritual perspective is that people are impacted in these five core areas and develop super powers as well as liabilities as a result. We can't have the super power without the liability and vice versa. I believe recovery is about recognizing our super powers and liabilities and becoming responsible for both.

To distill the wisdom of her model, I like to focus on the three developmental stages. Three is magic. These three developmental stages are linear and they are not linear. They developed as we aged but they exist within us now as different states of consciousness. I believe codependence is simply a lack of awareness about the 5 core issues and about how we were impacted as developing children. Codependence is also a lack of awareness about which of the three states of consciousness we are in at any given time. This lack of awareness results in difficulty shuttling between the three states and means we can get stuck in one of the first two. Awareness is the key to recovery and to getting unstuck. Here are the three stages/states: 

• Wounded Child ~ each of us was a precious child that experienced some degree of enmeshment or abandonment because we and our care givers are human. This wounded child's super power is that she is in touch with the oneness of all things. Her corresponding liability is that she can't differentiate herself from her environment. She feels deeply and and can become overwhelmed by those feelings.

• Adapted Child ~ each of us has an adapted child that sprung up to care for the wounded child and we wouldn't have made it this far without her! She is amazing and deserves our gratitude. This adapted child has many superpowers rooted in her creativity and her will to survive. She also has liabilities because although she may look like an adult she isn't. She thinks it's all up to her and she acts impulsively to deal with or cover up the wounded child's pain. She is what Jung called the persona.

• Functional Adult ~ this part of us is what Jung called "individuated." She is what many would call the observer. She is aware of the wounded child inside and has undertaken the job of loving her unconditionally. She is aware of the adapted child and has lessened her burden by developing spiritual resources that help her feel less alone and able to trust herself and the universe. The functional adult has some ability to recognize when she is triggered into the wounded or adapted child and pause. She has inner and outer resources that help her calm her nervous system and shuttle back to her grown up Self.

We will always have the wounded and adapted child, recovery is not about banishing them. Recovery is about resilience, awareness, perspective and resources. Recovery is about being in the functional adult state of mind a little more than in the wounded or adapted. Recovery is about getting to experience relational freedom and fulfillment as a functional adult.

When my wounded child is feeling overwhelmed I can call on my functional adult to care for her. A visualization that helps me tremendously is that of a large shady tree (like Monet's willow tree below) protecting and nurturing my wounded child. This tree is my functional adult. I still feel the wounded child's feelings but I identify with the tree ~ strong and rooted. This functional adult contains and nurtures the wounded child and allows me to ground and connect with my observer~Self.

To work with the wounded child begin to notice when you feel emotionally overwhelmed. Ask yourself,how old do I feel right now? Picture yourself in your mind's eye at that age. Slow down and feel what's happening in your body. If you are resourced enough, step into the experience like you are stepping into a portal. What do you notice? Begin to think about what you were going through at that age. Perhaps you remember something overwhelming or scary happened back then? Find some compassion for the precious child you were and begin to feel that compassion softening your experience. Picture the young you surrounded by light, in a favorite place in nature or in the arms of a loved one.

To work with the adapted child begin to notice when you are stressed or experiencing unmanageability in your life and ask for help from another person or connect with a spiritual resource.

To connect with your functional adult work with grounding. Remember that you are no greater or less than any other person. Your worth and value as a human cannot be raised or lowered. Remember that each of us on on the spectrum with codependence and that each of us is growing up at our own perfect pace.

I hope this distilled perspective on codependence is digestible and peaks your interest in the topic. To learn more check out one of Pia Melody’s books.

Sending love to all.

P.S. I recommend going to seeMonet: the Late Years at the De Young. Check out the beautiful series of willow trees towards the end of the exhibit.

Claude Monet