Alcohol Abuse Advice

Codependency Treatment

My favorite codependency treatment self help tools involve biofeedback, brain fitness, sound and light, education, and reading.

Codependency is based on memories. No child is born codependent, so we learn it.

Memories are powerful, especially if you experienced or saw violence as a kid.

Attachment must be completed effectively for adult relationships to be effective, and work with a therapist is appropriate for psychological issues.

However memories, no matter how powerful, can be worked with. I know it is possible because I have participated in therapies like psychodrama and holotropic breathwork which can expand your work with your counselor or therapist using cognitive behavioral therapy or existential therapy or psychodynamic therapy, ect.

I also know that great American tradition of self help works, because I am a veteran of almost 30 years of experience, one day at a time, through the grace of the higher power.

So when I first heard about codependence, I took up the ACOA, or adult child of alcoholic process, which is based on the 12 step model.

In the Big Book of AA, there are a few brief paragraphs talking about the Promises of AA, what will result if you are diligent in doing the steps, and those brief paragraphs state that if you pay attention to the solution, you get more solution, and if you pay attention to the problem, you get more problem, which is the essence of what I think is the core of therapy and self help.

Change the thought and change the feeling. If I feel good, then I act positively.

What the codependency treatment and therapy folks do not mention is that we have this brain that is set up to re-orient itself very frequently, and when I re-orient, I may not come back to the effective thought I was just practicing, I may come back to a problem thought, so I need to pay attention to my thinking and keep it more often than not on the solution thoughts.

Sound like meditation to you? Or mindfulness? Or Flow? Yes it does, and attention can be trained cognitively or physiologically, using biofeedback or meditation.

The first self-help tool that I am recommending, one I have used since 2000, and taught to hundreds of clients is HeartMath.

I practice on a computer 5 to 10 times, and then I can cue the physiology without the computer, because I have taught the brain in my heart to respond to a breathing pattern and a cue thought.

Can you imagine cuing a coherent heart rate heart beat by heart beat? Sure takes the emotional volatility out of codependence doesn’t it.

Yes, it also very healthy for every cell in my body. I like to call it a walking meditation and the best part is my body gets to like it, and reminds me to practice, so it can stay calm.

When the codependency treatment discovery process began in the early 1980’s, no one knew that the heart had a brain of its own, no one knew that heart intelligence sent more data up than the brain sent down, and no one knew that the brain grew new brain cells (neurogenesis) or was so plastic (neuroplasticity), and no one knew that those particular brain capacities could be trained.

So as part of my 12 step work, I work to keep my brain healthy, using physical exercise, good nutrition including omega 3 fatty acid supplementation (crucial to attention on the solution), good sleep, stress management, and novel learning experiences, including computerized brain fitness programs, which have been shown to actually change the structure of my brain with enough practice.

Why would an old wino with neuropathy in his left hand want a healthy brain as a parent of youngsters, and heading into his Senior years? You know the answer to that.

I want to challenge my brain.

If you want to read a bit about brain fitness, which is the core of self-help, recovery, any change in life, then read Brainfit for Life by Simon Evans,Ph.D. and Paul Burghardt,Ph.D. who are neuroscientists at the University of Michigan.

They go into a great amount of detail about what research reveals in regards to enhancing neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, which is again the crux of any self-help process.