What is CoDA and Co-Dependents Anonymous?

CoDA or Co-Dependents Anonymous is a twelve-step program of individuals who wish to learn how to have healthy, fulfilling relationships. Codependence is hard to define. It is not black and white. To some degree, we are all codependent. Like eating, a certain amount is healthy and necessary but eating too much is bad for your health. Similarly with relationships, when your self worth and happiness depends totally on the behavior of another person, you have problems.

In my experience, CoDA starts from the premise that one of the reasons people have unsatisfactory or unhealthy relationships is that they don’t know how to have a healthy relationship.

For me the best definition of codependence revolved around examples of codependent behavior. I realized that I was behaving in a codependent manner if:

• My emotional state depended on the emotional state of my alcoholic addict wife. If she was sad, angry or depressed, then I was sad, anger or depressed.
• I found myself doing things for my wife that she should be doing for herself.
• I was constantly worried about what my wife was doing when she went out with her friends.
• I would do almost anything to avoid open conflict with my wife.

I tried a couple of Co-Dependence Anonymous groups before I found one that worked for me. Shortly thereafter I ended up moving to a town that didn’t have a group, so I got together with a few people that I met through Al-Anon and started a codependence recovery group.

We got a codependence workbook with a number of exercises for each of the twelve steps. We took nearly a year to work through all of the steps in the workbook, but it helped tremendously. It was a lot of hard work but it helped me to learn how to have healthier relationships. More importantly, it taught me how to engage my alcoholic addict spouse in a healthier relationship.

Return from CoDA to Finding Help

Return to My Alcoholic Addict