Virtology GlobalAn initiative of Instituto Virtudes · Brazil
Paying his debt calms the house for one night. Then the request comes back, almost always bigger. It is not a lack of love or of judgment. It is a relief the brain learns quickly, and there is one question that separates caring for him from doing things in his place.
English edition of Isabella Becker’s Portuguese essay, adapted for international readers. The article presents Virtology’s interpretation; its specific theoretical mechanisms should be distinguished from independently established clinical findings.
If you have ever paid your son’s credit card bill, the instalment on the phone he sold, or the money he owed someone, just so the night would end, you know what comes next. The house goes quiet. He thanks you, sometimes cries, makes promises. You sleep for the first time in days. And a few weeks later the phone rings again, with a new amount and a new urgency.
People who pay, pay because they love, because they are afraid, and because they cannot stand that scene any longer. This article is about a question almost nobody asks at that moment, and I ask you to read it without hearing an accusation in it: when you pay for him, who is being relieved?
Three things need to come before the rest.
The first: his addiction is not explained by the fault of one person in the family. It involves a history, living and health conditions, choices and the possibilities of care. You did what you knew, with what you had, in the middle of a fright that does not end.
The second: this article is not about the help that protects life. Food, a safe home, treatment, listening and help in an emergency are care, always. And a debt to a drug dealer, collection at gunpoint or a death threat is not a matter of learning a lesson. It is a risk to life, his and the household’s. The response there is different: do not negotiate alone with anyone who threatens, call the police, and use an anonymous crime-reporting line if one exists where you live.
The third: I write “the mother” and “the son” because it is the most common scene. But everything here applies to the father, the wife, the husband, the sister, the grandmother. And it applies to any addiction: alcohol, drugs, gambling.
What is left, once those three are set aside, is the ordinary debt. The one that gets paid without a question, that repeats, and that leaves the house a little weaker each time.
People who look for help for the family hear the word codependency early on. And they almost always hear it as an accusation: “you are codependent,” as if the problem were you.
The word was born in family support groups in the 1980s. It is not a diagnosis and it is not in the psychiatric manuals. In Eduardo Casarotto’s Virtology, codependency is care that has started to revolve around the use, not around the person. It is when life at home gets organized so that the use has no consequences, rather than so that he grows. In his book O Que Nos Prende (What Holds Us), Casarotto describes what happens like this:
This is far more common than it seems. Casarotto cites a study of 42 people dependent on alcohol and their partners: most said that at some point the partner had taken over the dependent person’s tasks, drunk with them, or lied to others to cover up the drinking (Rotunda, West and O’Farrell, 2004). It is not a rare deviation in a few families. It is the path almost everyone takes when someone they love starts to sink.
And it is not a character flaw. It is a system, with the same logic as addiction. And a system can be reorganized.
The scene lasts a few minutes, and everything is decided inside it.
He calls or shows up. He names the amount. He says that if it is not paid today, something will happen. He insists, cries, gets angry. At that moment an alarm goes off inside you. What sets it off is the amygdala, a structure the size of an almond, one on each side of the brain, deep inside, roughly at the level of the temples. It is the threat detector. It speeds up the heart, tightens the stomach, shortens the breath. And it does not separate a danger to life from the danger of a bad night very well. To the amygdala, the distressed son in front of you is a threat.
You pay. The alarm switches off. The relief is immediate, and it is real.
The brain records that sequence very efficiently: the tightness came, I paid, the tightness went. The next time the tightness comes, the way out is ready before you think. A behavior that removes a discomfort grows stronger with each repetition. That is how we learn to scratch a mosquito bite, and that is how we learn to pay.
At the same time, another region does some weighing. In Virtology, selfishness is a system everyone has: the SNE, the Selfishness Neurofunctional System (the Portuguese acronym is kept in the English editions). Its instruction is “first, I secure myself.” The weighing is done by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region at the lower middle of the front of the brain, just above the eyes. It works as a value calculator. In each situation it weighs my gain against the other person’s, before you notice it has weighed anything. I explained this system, and the one for pride, in SNO and SNE: two systems at the root of neurosis.
In the family, this weighing takes a particular shape. On one side of the scale is your relief now. On the other, his growth later. In the middle of the scene, the relief weighs more, because it is right there, in your body. His growth is a distant idea.
Casarotto calls this priority of one’s own immediate relief by its technical name: selfishness. The word is frightening, and it is heavy to read after years of giving everything up. But the technical name is not an insult. It describes the system that decides, and that system exists in everyone. Casarotto gives examples any family will recognize. The father who pays the debt is often paying so as not to feel the fear. The wife who does not mention the relapse is often avoiding the fight. The brother who lends money is often buying an end to the subject.
Now the same scene, from his side.
The brain learns through error feedback. Virtology treats that feedback as one of the pillars of learning: without it, the brain does not correct its course. When a person makes a mistake and the consequence reaches them, the system registers it and adjusts. When the consequence is intercepted halfway, the system has nothing to adjust.
The debt that disappears is a consequence that never arrived. For him, the use went on costing almost nothing. What became expensive became expensive for you.
That is why the family’s path, as Casarotto describes it, involves no longer removing the consequences of the use from him. Not the ones that put life at risk: those are emergencies, and life comes first. The others. The debt, the shortage, the embarrassment.
And there is a caveat he is careful to make clear, and I repeat it: protection is not suspended in order to teach a lesson. Nobody takes food, safe shelter or access to treatment away from someone so that he will “learn.” What changes is everything else.
Sometimes the debt the mother pays is not only her son’s.
Virtology describes a defense mechanism called reparation. It is born of guilt. The person feels they owe something, even without quite knowing what, and tries to make up for it. They please too much, give too much, apologize too much. It looks like kindness. In Casarotto’s reading, it is the payment of a debt.
In the family, he places reparation at the heart of codependency. It is the mother who cannot say no. Who pays the bar tab, the credit card, the phone instalment. Who hands over money knowing where it will go. And who, inside, believes the fault is hers: “I worked too much when he was little,” “I separated from his father.” To pay for that guilt, she erases herself.
There is a fit between the two that makes this very stable. The son says, “it’s your fault.” The mother answers, inside, “yes, it is my fault.” The two defenses complete each other. The guilt has changed hands, and the use goes on.
That debt never closes, because the guilt that sustains it has not been treated. Paying one more bill settles nothing. It only postpones the next one.
I wrote about why saying no stirs up so much guilt in Saying no without losing yourself to guilt.
Codependency usually shows up in four forms. None of them is a character flaw, and each has a healthy version next to it. The work is telling one from the other, situation by situation.
The third face calls for gentleness. Sometimes, without anyone noticing, caring for the son has become the meaning of the day. Not because the mother wanted it, but because her whole life went that way. Casarotto describes this through the Lack: the person places in the other the completeness her own life has not yet built. He is careful to say he is not claiming this is your case. He is saying it exists and is worth looking at. If caring for him is covering an emptiness of your own, letting go will hurt in a way you do not expect. And the pain will make you hold on again.
Before paying, covering or fixing, ask:
Does this help protect a need, expand his autonomy, or take over a task he can already do?
The answer changes with the situation. That is why the question has to be asked every time. A few examples help with calibration.
Listening when he wants to talk is care. Guessing what he feels and solving it before he asks is doing it in his place.
Paying his bar tab is doing it in his place. Protecting life in the face of threat or violence is care, always.
With money, there is a middle ground that works. You can limit what you offer and agree to pay an expense directly. Instead of handing over the rent money, pay the rent. Instead of giving money for medicine, buy the medicine. That is different from taking another adult’s cards, passwords or income. A money arrangement with an adult requires consent, a clear purpose and review.
And the old debt, to the bank, the shop, the friend? Debts, fines and lost work call for a concrete plan, made with him. He takes part in the solution, with support. The family is neither obliged to take everything on nor forbidden to help.
The line is not always clear, and you will get it wrong. But a question asked over and over becomes a criterion. By the tenth time you ask it, it shows up on its own.
When a mother in this situation hears that the virtue she needs to work on is Selflessness, the reaction is often outrage. “Selflessness? I have already given up everything for him.” And it is true. Sleep, money, peace, sometimes her marriage. Casarotto’s answer is that if selflessness meant renouncing, she would already be the most selfless person in the world.
In practice, this means bearing your own discomfort for the sake of his growth. Letting the night go badly. Letting him insist and hear no. Letting him feel the debt to the bank, the shop, the friend. That hurts the one who loves more than any giving up of comfort.
Virtology separates two things that usually come mixed together. Legitimate renunciation is setting aside a wish of yours for a real need of the other person: the mother who skips the party because her son has a fever. Self-erasure is ceasing to exist: not sleeping, not working, not seeing anyone, not looking after her own health, because her whole life went to him. Self-erasure serves nobody. It makes the caregiver ill. And it offers the person who uses one more place where he does not need to grow.
Casarotto sums Selflessness up in a short phrase: it is not erasing yourself, it is re-weighing. It is changing the weight on the two sides of that calculator, so that his growth comes to weigh more than your relief.
And there is an “other” who tends to disappear from this story. When the whole house revolves around a son who uses, the others are left behind. The brother who gives no trouble. The small child who has learned not to ask. The husband or wife left without a partner. The elderly parents nobody visits anymore. All of them are also the neighbor. Giving them back the place the use took is also Selflessness. And it shows the person who uses, without any speech, that the house is not only his.
I wrote about why freely given care calms the one who gives it, and why overload does the opposite, in Caring for others calms the one who cares.
In Virtology, no virtue works alone, and the order follows the Pyramid of Virtues.
Humility comes first. It works on pride, which is the primitive need to matter. In the family, pride takes a form almost nobody recognizes as pride: importance through caregiving. “Only I know how to take care of him.” “Without me he won’t survive.” Someone whose worth is tied to caregiving cannot share it, cannot let go, cannot let him grow. Because if he no longer needs me, who am I? Humility is also what makes it possible to ask for help, including for yourself. The mother who says “I need treatment too” has stepped down from the place of the rescuer to the place of someone who also needs help.
Selflessness comes in alongside, paired with Humility, from the start. Without Humility, it turns into display: the person sacrifices herself to be seen sacrificing herself. And it comes in small. Casarotto warns that Selflessness that comes in big, before Humility has a hold on pride, almost always produces the sacrifice that makes people ill, staged giving, or the savior role.
Then comes the rest of the Treatment Foundation. Acceptance, because nobody controls another person’s use, and while all the energy goes to the impossible, there is none left for the possible. Forgiveness, which dissolves the guilt that feeds reparation. Responsibility, which gives back to each person what is theirs: what is mine to do and what is his. Individuation, which separates the mother from the son, so that her life has its own outline again. State of Certainty and Perseverance, to sustain the new way when it is not yet producing results.
Only then comes Development. For conflict in the family, Virtology’s canonical combination is Humility, Selflessness, Forgiveness, Gentleness, Purity of Heart, Reconciliation and Honoring Family. The first three belong to the Foundation. The other four belong to Development and come later. Gentleness helps tell legitimate renunciation from self-erasure, and gives the no a low voice, without humiliation. It only holds with the Foundation underneath it. Purity of Heart asks the question of motive: am I giving so that he grows, or so that I have peace? Reconciliation requires Forgiveness first. Honoring Family requires Acceptance, Forgiveness and Individuation first.
And at the top, as the horizon, Love of Neighbor. That is where the final criterion comes from.
Relief makes the decision in the middle of the scene. The practice is to take the decision out of the scene and into a calmer moment, without ceasing to protect life.
A note about the first time. On the first night you do not pay, the house gets worse, not better. The alarm rings louder. That does not mean you got it wrong. It means the usual relief did not come, and the body notices. The peace of holding a no calmly takes a while to arrive. But, unlike the relief of giving in, it stays.
The fear that appears right after all this is always the same: “so I’m supposed to let him destroy himself?”
No. Leaving codependency is not abandoning. It is changing the kind of presence. You go on guaranteeing food, a safe home, treatment, listening. When life is at risk, you protect, always. What leaves is what sustains the use: the loose cash, the covered-up lie, the debt paid without a question.
A resident of a therapeutic community, thanking the people who had stood by him, said something I wish every family could hear: “I also believe in myself a lot, but it took you putting me in a place, at a level, where I can earn my own way.” Nobody earned it for him. They put him in a place where he could earn it himself.
Love does not change on this path. What changes is where it comes from. Love that comes from fear and emptiness turns into control and rescue. Love that comes from a whole life, with sleep, with friends, with the other children back at the table, turns into presence. I wrote about how to put this new way into words, and how to sustain it, in A boundary is not a punishment.
If the debt comes with threats, armed collection or a risk to life, do not negotiate alone: contact the police or your local emergency services. If he is hard to wake, very confused, breathing slowly or having a seizure, call emergency services at once. If he drinks heavily or has taken sedatives for a long time, stopping suddenly can be dangerous, and stopping should be planned with a doctor. Talk of suicide is never a test: stay with him if it is safe and call emergency services. And you also have a right to care: local addiction services can guide the family, and family support groups are usually free.
Continue with SNO and SNE: two systems at the root of neurosis, Pride is not what you think, or the 12-Step guided trail.
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Explore the Professional Formation →Translated and edited from the Portuguese essay.