Are you a 'Rescuer' at Work? Acknowledging Co-dependency in The Helping Professions. Promoting Self-Care in Difficult Roles.

Co-dependency is a phenomenon more commonly associated with therapeutic work with people with addictions and also their partners and other family members. But there can be a risk of assuming that co-dependency only exists 'within clients' rather than for features of this phenomenon to also show up in helping profession practitioners' behaviours in their work. When this happens it can reduce the level of effectiveness of support given to those being helped, but can also lead to stress and consequent illness, both mental and physical, in practitioners.

Features of co-dependent behaviour can include:

Low self-esteem - or, as I prefer to describe it 'Not liking ourselves very much', because the answer to low self-esteem has often seemed to be something you can 'get in a box' by attending a course rather than for it to be recognised as a pervasive self-dislike or self-criticism that can't be switched off by learning a few 'techniques'.

Seeking others' approval as a condition for our own self-approval, sometimes called 'people pleasing'. Strongly linked to low self-esteem but more outwardly expressed in our behaviours towards others - finding it hard to say 'no' to someone even where we know it will lead to distress, inconvenience, overwork or other difficulties for ourselves, culminating in stress and, often, physical illness alongside the intrinsic mental illness arising from the stress.

Feeling unable to set boundaries: As this link describes, when we have poor boundaries we ....feel responsible for other people’s feelings and problems or blame [our] own on someone else. Some codependents have rigid boundaries. They are closed off and withdrawn, making it hard for other people to get close to them. Sometimes, people flip back and forth between having weak boundaries and having rigid ones.

Rescuing - this can happen when we put other people's needs ahead of our own, to the point that we 'over identify' with them and want to 'take over' their problem, telling ourselves we are 'caring' for them but in fact we are seeking to meet our own needs vicariously through the other person. If we can 'fix them' we feel better about ourselves, but if we can't we feel we have failed. Our co-dependency becomes one of needing the other to change in a way that we feel is right for them. We will often justify that view when we are a helping professional when we incorrectly believe that we have been trained to 'fix' people rather than help them towards creating a way of healing themselves.

There are various other characteristics of co-dependency, elaborated further in this link and they are so extensive that I hope you will see that it is something we all manifest to a certain extent in different contexts in our lives, whether predominantly with our family while at work we do not, or it may be much more at work with our clients but less so in our families. Or co-dependency may pervade all areas of our life.

This is not an article about people who are co-dependent and those who are not, it is about recognising that there is an element of it in all of us and, where it shows up in our work as a helping professional, it can be obstructive to the healing process we try to provide for our clients and stressful for us as practitioners as we are trying to control the uncontrollable - the thoughts, feelings and actions of clients - while we lose connection with what we can control - our own conduct and support for the person seeking help.

My area of work is in the field of mediation and conflict coaching, but it was a conversation with a friend who is a couples therapist that reminded me that these challenges are faced across the board by people who work in the helping professions whether therapists, coaches, nurses, mediators, social workers, teachers, counsellors and others.

As a mediator my role is not to advise or make suggestions nor ever to try to 'fix' a dispute between people who I work with. The aim of the mediation process is to provide a structure and approach that continually focuses on supporting more effective communication and creativity in response to a conflict or difficulty or relationship breakdown in some way. It is crucial that I do not contribute what I might see as answers to the conflict situation for various reasons that are too many to elaborate on here. The point, for the purposes of this article, is that my 'Rescuer' is constantly looming, alongside other characteristics of co-dependency, and if I don't acknowledge its presence and my challenges in dealing with it, it will manifest in my conduct in ways that obstruct resolution of the situation rather than support the possibilities for this to happen.

With no conscious awareness of my rescuing I am likely to say it is the client who is having difficulty, or even being difficult, because they don't go where I want them to go with their problem. I will have over-identified with their difficulty, even though it is not my difficulty, nor my life to live beyond the mediation process, by trying to make them do things as I would wish, or see things as I would see them.

"Codependency is characterized by a person belonging to a dysfunctional, one-sided relationship where one person relies on the other for meeting nearly all of their emotional and self-esteem needs." Darlene Lancer - Symptoms of Co-dependency.

How often do we reflect on whether it can be the helping professional relying on the client to meet nearly all of their emotional and self-esteem needs in what can become a dysfunctional one-sided relationship?

Those emotional needs may be a wish to be seen as 'doing good for and helping others' in order to feel better about ourselves. Perhaps we feel we've let someone down in our lives, or feel guilty as a consequence of some privilege we have had which others have not, and wish to 'make up for it' through our helping practice.

The self-esteem needs we may displace onto what we say is our 'professional status' and so we feel we need to be seen to 'fix' people in order to be seen as 'good at our job' or a 'good professional', not recognising that if people get 'fixed' they always do it themselves, whether with help or not.

But let's also be clear that neither of these motivations would mean we are 'bad people'. There will be very few people who don't have these challenges. You will recognise them by the fact that they are floating a few inches off the ground and have a kind of 'glow' around them. The rest of us have to commit to recognising and acknowledging the challenges and working out how to deal with them so that they don't obstruct the effectiveness of our helping.

If we don't recognise them and acknowledge them in ourselves there is a risk that our clients simply become tools which we depend on to help us feel better about ourselves. We need to be able to feel ok about ourselves independently of what happens with, and for, our clients. The beauty of it is that the closer we can come to that place of peace within ourselves, the more effective we will be in helping clients to heal themselves and improve their situations, as well as develop for ourselves a sound professional reputation.

When we train mediators at CAOS Conflict Management and use role-play scenarios to develop practice and self-awareness, the 'Rescuer' or other features of co-dependency will often arise in the trainee mediators which they will describe with phrases such as: 'It felt like walking through treacle', 'I felt stuck about what to say as I couldn't see a way forward', or even, when there's not acknowledgement of the Rescuer manifesting, 'They were stuck and it was going nowhere, they were at impasse.' .....as if we can possibly know what is going on inside the people we work with, but believe we can decide for them where things are going, or not going, or whether they are at 'impasse' or not.

We pretty much take over clients' thoughts, feelings, decisions and viewpoints and treat them as passive recipients of our 'fix' when we do this. We consider ourselves better placed to know what is best for them and stop involving them in creating their own way forward. In many ways we 'become them' and live their lives vicariously, in our thoughts, perhaps believing they are 'incapable' of healing or resolving their difficulty, or that we have to fix their problem to show we are the 'experts', if we have misunderstood our role in some way. Or perhaps because we are trying to heal our own past pain through them....

There are many people who spend all their time giving to the needy and joining movements for the betterment of society. To be sure, this ought not to be discounted. But their root anxiety, growing out of their false view of themselves and the universe, goes unrelieved, gnawing at their hearts and robbing them of a rich and joyous life. Those who sponsor and engage in such social activities look upon themselves, consciously or unconsciously, as morally superior and so never bother to purge their minds of greed, anger and delusive thinking. But the time comes when, having grown exhausted from all their restless activity, they can no longer conceal from themselves their basic anxieties about life and death. Then they seriously begin to question why life has not more meaning and zest. Now for the first time they wonder whether instead of trying to save others they ought not to save themselves first. Philip Kapleau (Editor) The Three Pillars of Zen, quoted in Zen in the Art of Helping by David Brandon.

I'll leave the above, potentially personally challenging quotation as an opportunity for self-reflection. I am mainly concerned here with our role as practitioners seeking to help others to heal, in whatever context that is happening, and the extent to which our co-dependency as helping professionals manifests and inhibits both the healing and movement forward of our clients.

But it is also important to acknowledge how our own mental health as practitioners is affected, because co-dependency is not just something our clients 'have' as a condition, it will be present within our own thoughts, feelings and subsequent actions. What matters most of all is our willingness to acknowledge it, to see how it shows up in our actions and then do something about it.

At CAOS Conflict Management our 'tagline' is Promoting Mindful Communication, Growth Through Conflict and the mindfulness of our communication and interactions with clients is of particular relevance to this topic. As mentioned above, if we are not aware of how our co-dependency and rescuing manifest in those interactions we are likely to continue to have struggles with clients, and within ourselves, and will often feel like we are walking through or even drowning in treacle.

One of the ways in which our co-dependency 'slips out' in our interactions with clients is through the language we use when communicating with them. In mediation we pay close attention to the nature of our questions and our summaries of what clients say.

Are we leading for us, or following, for them?

If I ask a question such as 'Do you think it would be good to.....?' I am giving a 'fix' rather than helping someone to create their own answer to a situation. This is more effectively supported through questions such as 'What would help in this situation?' and then, if they have an idea for that, I can ask 'How might that be possible?', 'What would be needed for that to happen?' or similar open questions that do not try to lead or direct towards any particular answer that I have pre-defined. In time, as a practitioner with a strong awareness of the Rescuer's presence there will be no expected answer to the questions asked and so no distraction from listening to, and staying present with clients. The questions then follow the client's statements rather than leads them and so they genuinely support a 'client-led' process to unfold. When this occurs the interactions feel light and not like walking through treacle.

Are we seeking approval and reassurance?

A question such as 'How helpful did you find that?' perhaps after a session or after a particular discussion within a session with clients is one that can manifest co-dependency. Why is this?

It can be looking for 'reassurance' that what the practitioner has done has been helpful. However a question such as 'How do you feel about/what are your thoughts about.....[session] / [discussion]' can still provide feedback about the client's experience but more importantly it is helping the client to reflect on their own experience rather than be locked into a frame of saying if it was 'helpful' or not. The client may have other angles from which to assess the experience beyond or instead of whether it was helpful or not. By inserting the criterion of 'helpful' by which to look at the experience the process is no longer client-led and is possibly a manifestation of the practitioner's co-dependency - wanting approval, wanting to have 'fixed' the problem perhaps and seeking reassurance that it has been fixed.

Why won't they change? I've done everything I can to fix them?

Where practitioners work with clients who seem to be focused solely on what is 'wrong', perhaps with themselves, their situation or with another person, for example their partner, or neighbour or work colleague, there can become a frustration that they are 'not being positive', or, in the practitioner - 'I'm not helping them' and other dependencies on the other to change that we tie ourselves into when we are, in fact, separate from the client and their situation and maintaining that detachment is what enables us to be more effective. We may get drawn into continuously checking in with the person to see if they are 'happy' via questions such as 'Is that ok?' or 'Are you ok with that?' But while we get a positive response of 'yes' to the question, we find later that they seem to have changed their mind, or they say that they weren't really happy even when they said they were.

So how have we, as practitioners, led to our own frustration in this interaction, possibly through a manifestation of co-dependency or perhaps just through a lack of mindfulness around our communication - but probably both?

By asking a closed question 'Is that ok?' we 'corner' the person into saying 'yes', or 'no' when they may not feel authentically able to say either. There can be a sense of pressure to say 'yes' to the professional because of the client's own need for approval, or perhaps because of time pressure - it's coming to the end of the session perhaps. For whatever reason the answer has to be 'yes' or 'no' - for the questioner-practitioner's purposes, and not the client's.

But why did we ask the question 'Is that ok?' or 'Are you ok with that?' when we could have asked one which is more open: 'What are your thoughts/how do you feel about that?' These questions don't corner the client into having to say 'yes' or 'no' to our apparent need for certainty. It allows for the ambiguity of response that comes from an open question. One that is led and created by the client. A response that we, as the helping professional have let go of the need to pre-define.

As in the earlier example, we can still receive feedback about a session or discussion segment or outcome being considered by asking the open question that has no 'agenda'. It is then a question that is not influenced by our own co-dependency in the relationship, not meeting our need for approval, for status, for a sense of having rescued the person and having 'fixed' their (our?) problem.

Establishing boundaries

Further to such situations where the person seems to be dwelling on what is 'wrong' in their situation, with themselves, with their partner etc. we may also find ourselves continually trying to 'help them to be positive', 'give them hope'. What is often overlooked in such interactions is that even that cannot be 'fixed' by the practitioner, but what can happen is a letting go of the need to 'make them feel better' and set a boundary of expectation for self-responsibility.

Often I will come across a practitioner who is frustrated that their client 'only wants to complain', 'doesn't want to get better', 'doesn't want to resolve their conflict' - not because the client has actually said any of these things but because all the techniques and cajoling and 'encouragement' the practitioner has tried, or even the 'suggestions' they have given have failed to 'get a result', or 'got them to see a way forward' and so this incapacity or unwillingness is what the practitioner has projected on to the client, rather than reflect on their own sense of struggle and dependency on a particular client-response being given.

This is where the co-dependent characteristic described above of feeling responsible for other people's feelings and problems manifests itself. The practitioner has been so focused on fixing the client's issues and challenges for them they have excluded the client in the process. The client has been treated as passive and, perhaps, incapable of creating their own answers, and so has not been supported in doing so. Some reading this will be thinking, or even saying out loud 'Huh, you haven't worked with some of my clients.'....and those will be the practitioners with this co-dependent characteristic coming through strongly.

On all occasions when a client is focused on what 'doesn't work', or 'is wrong', it is their responsibility to create what 'does work' and what 'is right' for themselves and we can continue to support that creativity by helping them - with summaries of what they have said, and follow up questions:

So, [client], you've said that [person]is not doing what you'd like at the moment, what is it you'd like them to do? Why do you want that? How might that be possible? What if they don't want to do that? How else might things go forward in a way that works for you that doesn't involve them? How would you feel if this situation worked out for you?

Or

So [client] you've said [situation] isn't working out for you at the moment and that x...y...z....is wrong, what would need to be different for it to work for you in the future? What would you like to happen with regard to x...y...z? How could that be possible? What's needed for that to happen? What if it doesn't happen? What else might be possible? How would you feel if the situation changed in the way you are wanting?

These are obviously not 'scripted' questions and others will be more suitable for a particular client/situation. But what is not manifested in any of them is a practitioner-led 'fix' for the problems and feelings of the client. The client is being assisted in taking their own steps, using their own creativity, to move towards a future that feels right for them. The practitioner is not creating it for them, nor is there any need for them to feel they should be. There is a trust that the client has the capacity and the willingness to create the changes they want for themselves and by themselves. No rescuing is needed. Independency not co-dependency is maintained.

And of course, there may still be practitioners who say 'But what if they don't want to answer the questions or can't come up with the answers?'

If the client can't come up with the answers then what level of arrogance do we need to think we can do so for them?

If the client doesn't want to answer the question what is it that means we feel they are the right questions for them?

The important thing is that if the client continues to focus on what is wrong and what doesn't work, then our support can be to help them consider what is right or what would work, but to have the boundary that that is all we are responsible for. We are not responsible for both asking and answering the questions for them. If we practice as if we are responsible for both, we are again practising in a way that is co-dependent. Living the lives of clients for them because we believe we 'need' them to live a particular way - for our benefit.

Unfortunately in some contexts of 'helping' we see moves towards ever increasing use of imposition, or coercion or compulsion to try to force the change 'required' by the practitioner and consequently a greater level of either resistance or passivity and dependency in the client. Sometimes this even extends to systemic 'compulsion' as is the case in the mediation world at present where some practitioners argue for 'compulsory mediation' apparently blind to the oxymoronic aspect of this argument but symbolic of the presence of 'co-dependency' even within the systems which are meant to be supporting the healing and helping of clients. But that's another article. This article, I hope, has outlined the ways in which helping professional co-dependency can be an obstacle to helping clients and, when not acknowledged and dealt with, it will usually lead to an unhealthy level of stress for practitioners, showing up as both mental and physical illness.

"Everybody who rescues is angry at having to do it. When they realise that they no longer have to heal the world as they were encouraged to do in childhood, at a time when they were least capable of doing it, and that in fact they are far more effective if they let other people take care of themselves, they are much happier."

From: Love Your Disease:It's Keeping You Healthy - Dr John Harrison 

Please share any comments you have about this article in the comments section below..

If you are a helping professional and would like coaching in ways of recognising and then dealing with any aspects of co-dependency that you are concerned about within your practice, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or call me on 020 3371 7507. Additionally, if you manage teams of helping professionals and would like to provide for them an opportunity to reflect on the extent to which they experience difficulties with co-dependency in their practice, please contact me as above.

Alan Sharland is Director of CAOS Conflict Management a Mediation, Conflict Coaching and Conflict Management provider organisation based in London, UK. Alan has 27 years experience as a Mediator and trainer in conflict management and effective communication skills-related training and consultancy. He has provided mediation in a wide range of areas including workplaces, neighbour disputes, community disputes, complaints (Special Needs disagreements, University Student complaints, NHS Primary Care complaints), disability discrimination issues, religious group disputes, equality related group disputes and others.

He has a YouTube channel called Communication and Conflict and podcast called CAOS

Alan has written a book to support more effective responses to bullying at work which draw upon the approaches discussed above: How to Resolve Bullying in the Workplace: Stepping out of the Circle of Blame to Create an Effective Outcome for All. 

In 2018 Alan also published a book called 'A Guide to Effective Communication for Conflict Resolution - How Mindful Communication Supports Growth Through Conflict'

Train to be a Mediator with CAOS Conflict Management, or if you are interested in training to be a Conflict Coach in a model based on the same underlying principles and philosophies used in mediation then click this link.