Most people think of the cuckoo bird as a wooden figurine that pops out of a clock. In reality, Cuckoos are brood parasites.
Licensed professional counsellor and author Andrea Anderson Polk compares cuckoo birds to the human experience in her book, The Cuckoo Syndrome: The Secret to Breaking Free from Unhealthy Relationships, Toxic Thinking, and Self-Sabotaging Behavior.
"In nature, a female cuckoo bird is very sneaky and manipulative. Cuckoo birds are nature's infamous imposter, deceiver and manipulator," said Andrea.
She says the cuckoo will hone in on a nest. When the host bird leaves the nest, the cuckoo will go in and lay an egg in the nest that looks nearly identical to the other bird's eggs.
From there, the host bird will return and sit on the egg, thinking it belongs to her. The cuckoo bird egg will hatch first, and the baby cuckoo will instinctively kill the other eggs in the nest.
"The cuckoo has this insatiable appetite, where they exhaust the parents. They spend their life feeding this thing, and it doesn't even belong to them," Polk explains. "And then sadly, their eggs never hatch and come to life."
This reminded Andrea of a relationship with a close family member she was trying to navigate her way through.
"I had been through healing, counselling, forgiven this person, had compassion. I understand why they did the things they did. I even let go of expecting a genuine apology because I didn't want to sever the relationship," said Andrea. "I looked at this picture of a cuckoo, and it was the first time I had compassion for myself."
It was then that she realized that she was in a cuckoo relationship, a one-sided relationship where a person may feel like they are doing all the work.
Anderson is now using this discovery as a way to help not only her clients but readers who pick up her book.
In The Cuckoo Syndrome, Polk gives readers new insight and ways to fend off the cuckoos that invade their nests with their devious disguises.
She says Cuckoos can take many forms. There is the cuckoo of avoiding emotion, the fear cuckoo, the stress cuckoo, the shame cuckoo, the unresolved grief cuckoo, the perfectionism cuckoo, the counsellor cuckoo, and probably the most insidious cuckoo of all: the religion cuckoo.
"I've seen a lot of churches and faith-based communities can operate in this place of toxic religion. Not all religion is toxic and hurtful, but when I make a distinction between religion and relationship, I think of a relationship in terms of that intimacy with Jesus and being able to come to him and bring our emotions to him," said Andrea. "Whereas religion, when it is used to hurt people, it is more of the rules of religion elevating man-made rules above the relationship. We're using Scripture and the law to try to control people or justify wrong behaviour."
Drawing from a depth of study in scripture, science, and psychology, Polk uses her discovery as a way to break us free from the cuckoo’s snare by teaching us to embrace the desires of our hearts as we uncover the truth of who we are, who others are, and who God is.
"We can learn to establish great joy in our identity by committing ourselves to discover meaning in suffering and understanding how our pain is the genuine catalyst for purpose."
Today on Connections, Andrea explains what the Cuckoo Syndrome is and how we can rid ourselves of the cuckoos in our lives.