I just recently finished the book Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People. I am about to begin my second read. It basically teaches mental health – how not to allow yourself to be sucked emotionally into other people’s behavior. Some people might define this as codependency. As I went through the last chapter, I had a flashback to an article that I saw that defined liberals as codependents (emphasis mine):
In the old days, when someone was a substance abuser, the entire onus for the abuse lay with that person. At a certain point, however, someone figured out that, in many relationships, the abuser’s partner was part of the dance of drug or alcohol dependency. A new term entered the pop culture vocabulary: “codependent.”
The theory behind codependency is that the codependent person, for his or her own psychological reasons, needs the abuser to continue abuse. That’s why you see the abuser’s partner buying booze for the alcoholic, or making excuses to the employer for the drug abuser’s bad behavior.
Okay, so far, so good. We’re talking about dependencies here, and those that aid and abet.
Practicalities aside, there are definitely relationships in which the codependent gets a sort of sick, martyred pleasure out of keeping the abuser tied to the abuse. For someone with low self-esteem, or a pathological desire to be needed, there’s really something satisfying in the bizarre dance of keeping an alcoholic simultaneously tied to his bottle and functioning. You are both better than he is and entirely necessary to his survival. You are the hero; he (or she) the perpetual damsel in distress. Until things get intolerable, your needs are satisfied catering to his illness.
Now, who can we think of that wants to keep others in a situation of need? Throw out the alcoholic, let’s think of other situations, shall we?
To maintain that illusion of superiority, however, liberals don’t the Hispanic gardener (sic), or the black bus driver, or the southern talking Mom in the trailer to prove that he (or she) is capable of precisely the same efforts and outcome. And in order for liberals to maintain that satisfying distance from that gardener or bus driver or mom, they need to create a dependency system whereby they keep those people in their place. The substance liberals offer these people isn’t alcohol, or meth, or cocaine — it’s government money.
Of course, as with the chemical substance abuser, being hooked on a free money is a stable situation for so long. The abuser gradually needs more and more… Then, at some indeterminate point, but a point that always seems to come as a big surprise, nothing helps anymore. The substance abuser becomes dysfunctional and the whole abuser/codependent dance grinds to a halt.
Uh, has anybody looked around lately? Unsustainable union pensions, yet the union workers continue to lobby for bigger contracts, and refuse to accept less? Look at the meltdown in Greece – the government is vainly trying to save the country, and the populace goes on a burning spree because they don’t like the austerity measures. If that isn’t a “dance grinding to a halt,” I don’t know what is.
From p. 80 of LSWSUP:
Abusers don’t see themselves as bad guys. They justify their abuse — I’m helping…I care…It’s my responsibility.
Gee, that sounds vaguely familiar. I remember being a rally and seeing a really sweet looking young woman holding a sign that said “Wouldn’t it be better to govern with love?” I’m sure she’d love to love us all to death, with all sorts of warm, fuzzy feelings as we sink deeper into dependency.
That’s what’s going to happen to America. Right now, we’re creating a two class system, led by Obama, our Codependent in Chief, who is aided by his other obsessive, arrogant and martyred Ivy League educated codependents. They see themselves as superior beings…. But the only way they can maintain this fantasy (and it is a fantasy) is to ensure that the average American is prevented from being hard working, productive and moral….Eventually, though, those same Americans that we hook on government money will become so dysfunctional that nothing can save them. And then it all grinds to a halt.
By the way, if you think I’m fantasizing about what happens when you hook a community on government money, just look at what the liberals did to the blacks starting with the 1960s’ Great Society. Rather than giving the blacks equal opportunities alongside whites, which would have enabled black Americans to engage in the same obsessive, hard-working, compulsive, driven, high achieving behavior that characterized whites, the Great Society gave them free money — and almost destroyed them. And throughout those years of codependent destruction, even as whites bemoaned the burdens of crimes and drugs and illiteracy that blacks placed on America, those same whites could view themselves as beneficent and superior beings, and that almost made it all worth while.
Perhaps it’s time for us to begin a Twelve Step Program for Democrats. We need to help them so that they’ll stop “helping” others.
We need to understand who we’re dealing with here. The people in charge of running these dependency plantations are what the book calls SUPs – Screwed Up People. Screwed Up People can be anyone – an irrational boss, an overly critical mother, that “friend” who always calls you to bail them out of jail or crash on your couch. They all try to control you, in their own ways. They don’t think like “normal people” would think:
“Fighting with screwed-up people plays with your head…You don’t want to lose something that is important to you — money, love, power, respect, security. Fear is holding you hostage and making the SUP seem bigger than life, more powerful than death, and more threatening than your ability to overcome. When winning becomes more important than playing by the rules, anything goes. Reasonableness, fairness, and accepted logic are left by the wayside. The difficult person’s objective is to win, to be on top, not become your friend or appease your ego.”
I think the above description probably applies to the power brokers in charge of maintaining dependency, and not just those in the Capitol. They use fear (taking away financial security, for example) to generate panic. In a panic, the people look for a leader who knows what he’s doing. Oh, he knows exactly what he’s doing – but it’s not necessarily what you think he’s doing.
“Emotionally healthy people find it very difficult to play games with people who refuse to abide by the rules. Knowing what to expect… plants you in the real world where screwed-up people rarely choose to play fair.”
Like the left-wing media researching the backgrounds of the Fox News personnel? (I think it was Media Matters, but it’s late – or early, depending upon your view of the clock — and I don’t have the link handy.) If you want to take on Fox News, take on their content. Personal lives should not be part of the game. But we’re dealing with SUPs here, and they don’t play fair. It’s a lesson a lot of legislators need to learn as well, while I’m thinking about it. SUPs don’t play fair – so don’t expect it, and don’t play by their screwed-up version of the rules.
“They fight to win, regardless of what it takes…Typically they refuse to hear what you have to say…
Arguments are not logical. SUPs change their argument in midstream, do a complete turnabout, if necessary to keep the upper hand….
…They justify their behavior by their “concern” for you and their desire for you to beneift from their superiority, their religious insights, and their political understanding….they may be unaware of their unfair maneuverings and shocked by what they consider your ingratitude and personal attack.
And then the author comes up with some words of wisdom, which should be heeded not just by the presidential candidates, but by the supposedly conservative Republicans already in office (p. 141):
It may help you to know you lose less when you aren’t afraid of losing. You lose who you are when you shy away from the issues, because what you avoid controls you. Power in mind games comes from facing the issues squarely, being straightforward, and not arguing.
Okay, that’s how you deal with the SUP. How do you deal with the codependents? The ones who are addicted to their need?
An SUP is like a whirlpool. His neediness pulls you in. The more you give, the more he wants, until you begin to drown.
Or the country begins to drown, but I digress…
The wrong kind of help is worse than no help at all and can be detrimental…to the recipient. This help…:
* may cripple the other person even further if you give too much
* may make you feel guilty that you can’t prevent disaster
* offers a quickie fix that complicates the problem and recovery for the long term
* lacks honesty or integrity
* shelters someone from the responsibility and consequences of her actions
* rushes in time and again to fix the same problem
* makes you feel frustrated, used, boxed in, and you may begin to wonder if anything you do makes any difference at all
Crazy how a book on interpersonal relationships can be applied to national and international affairs, isn’t it?
There’s a lot more good stuff in the book, but there’s not enough room nor time to cover it all. I am sure there’s more than enough fodder here for a full day’s conversation.