codependency, explained.

Hi friends. It’s been a hot second (or like two months) since I’ve had the energy to write. When I launched this website, I knew that I was also stepping into my clinical work, which is why I didn’t make any promises about posting regularly. I’ve also been battling some chronic fatigue and gut-health issues, which has slowed me down big time. Though—slight side-note here—I have found a great integrative nurse practitioner here in Nashville who is willing to run tests that most medical doctors won’t (which is ridiculous—I will spare you my rant.)

But today, I felt like writing on a topic that I think is relevant to so many of us: codependency. Perhaps you’re familiar with Melody Beattie’s work. She wrote “Codependent No More” and a daily reading book called “The Language of Letting Go.” I knew about her work for a while, but I never thought it applied to me. I thought that people who were codependent were just obsessively clingy and anxiously attached. The idea of being “too close” to someone didn’t align with my typical avoidant attachment tendencies.

I was the opposite of codependent, I thought. I was independent. Like Rosie the Riveter, but in overalls.

Then one day, about a year and a half ago, my best friend called me a codependent. And I was pissed and defensive (which in hindsight should have been my first clue that she was right.) After a lot of introspection, processing, and not talking to my best friend for what felt like decades, it dawned on me—I was struggling with codependency. The scales fell from my eyes, ya’ll. I saw what had always been true but lived totally outside of my awareness. I realized that I had been completely in denial that my sense of independence wasn’t actually independence at all—it was a mask, it was armor that protected me from pain and kept me avoidant.

You see, someone who has a healthy sense of independence has confidence in her abilities and trusts her heart. She can stand on her own two feet, and she can also be weak and vulnerable and ask for help. She can be fierce, and she can be soft. She can maintain a strong sense of personal identity and be intimate in relationships. She can hold onto herself and fall in love.

This was not me, though I am becoming she.

I was so attached to this identity of being “independent”, too trapped in black-and-white thinking, that I couldn’t see that I could be both independent and dependent in relationships. I also realized that the codependent relationships that I had with my mom and best friend were keeping me from deep intimacy in my own marriage and within my own self.  

Let me take a pause and define what codependency isn’t because I think it’s a misunderstood word. Codependency is not the same as an obsession with someone. It’s not just being attached to someone’s hip or talking on the phone with them every day. Being a “codependent” is a bit of a misnomer because we’re typically not codependent in all of our relationships and you don’t have to be in order to struggle with codependency.

Codependency is a pattern of behavior within a close relationship. Psychologists previously thought that codependency only affected families dealing with substance abuse, but we know now that it expands much broader than that. Some people refer to codependency as a “relationship addiction”, where there is extreme emotional and social dependence on another person.

To me, the hallmark of codependency is when you feel an extreme amount of responsibility for the feelings and actions of loved ones. The reason that we take on that responsibility—which is often unconscious by the way—is because we feel on some level that they are us and we are them. In other words, two people’s identities are enmeshed, or entangled, with one another.

Maybe you’re wondering why that happens. Why do people become enmeshed, or codependent? And the answer isn’t simplistic. I’m not about to try and unpack this question in a single blog post because it’s incredibly nuanced and has various theoretical underpinnings. But, let me share a few thoughts on this from an attachment perspective.

Codependency is a product of having an insecure attachment with a primary caregiver. For many children, they learn that in order to get their needs met or to feel a sense of love and belonging in their family system, they must lose their sense of self and tend to the needs of loved ones before their own. This usually happens when children are parentified, meaning that the child-parent roles are reversed. Typically, this looks like children taking on emotional responsibilities for a parent that should have never been their responsibilities in the first place. Feeling an extreme amount of responsibility for the feelings and actions of loved ones is learned behavior that is conditioned. 

Maybe in your family system, you took on too much responsibility for the health and wellbeing of your system. Maybe you were the “glue” that held it together. Maybe it wasn’t safe for you to have different opinions or beliefs because that meant that you’d be rejected. Maybe you learned to put aside your values, desires, and dreams in order to please others so they would love you. For better or for worse, our patterns of relating with humans are very much dictated by our earliest attachments to our parents.

Please hear me say this with my whole heart—if you struggle with codependency it’s not your fault. I think to some degree it’s a universal human struggle. All of us, in some way or another, learned some pretty faulty ways of being in relationships because *newsflash* we are wildly imperfect, as are our families, and meaningful relationships are just about as clear as mud. And for those of us in my generation whose parents mostly dealt with their crap by not dealing with it at all, we inherited some pretty shitty intergenerational trauma. Epigenetics is real, and if you don’t know what that is, you should Google it. It’s really cool stuff!

So, you didn’t do anything wrong. You merely adapted. AND ALSO, you were not meant to live trapped in the codependent cycle. You can heal. You can have healthy, securely attached relationships with the people you love. You can learn how to have real intimacy in relationships, which typically gets confused with codependency. Intimacy and codependency are not the same, and where there is codependency there is no authentic intimacy. You can learn to hold onto yourself as you fall in love with your partner. You can learn how to meet your own needs. You can learn how to use your voice and make decisions on your own. You can learn that you are strong enough to stand your ground and worthy enough to take up space in this world. Ultimately, you can learn that you are enough, that you can trust yourself and that your voice matters too. And when you do that work, it will change your relationships—for the better!

I love lists. So, I made you one. And I made it pretty, too! These are some signs that may signal you may struggle with codependency.  

I hope you use this list to reflect on your own patterns and why you do what you do in relationships. What’s the story behind the struggle? Why do you think it’s your job to rescue people? Where did that come from? Why do you always need reassurance? Where did that come from? (*let me give you a hint—it came from your family system, your earliest attachments!)  

If it’s true that profound pain can happen in relationships, then it’s also true that profound healing can happen in relationships, too. We cannot heal our attachment wounds on our own—we need healthy relationships to help us rewire our souls so we can learn how to receive love. They are, as Mark Groves says, the arena where we get to practice the art of holding onto our own sense of self while being in meaningful relationships. We can love people deeply, we can be empathetic, and we can give with abundance if we are first tending to our own hearts and being true to ourselves. There is a big difference between feeling responsible to someone and for someone (and if this doesn’t make sense, you should go order the book Boundaries right now and then you can thank me later.)

It makes sense why people become preoccupied with fixing other people’s stuff or desperately needing other people to fix their own stuff—it’s a defense mechanism. And like all defense mechanisms it works until it doesn’t work or until you awaken to it and realize how it’s actually hindering your growth. See, if I become totally entrenched with another person’s life and problems, then I can avoid looking at my own stuff and doing my own work. This narrative isn’t typically a conscious one, but it’s wildly powerful. The pattern of codependency is a defense mechanism because at its core, it’s way of dealing with the anxiety that comes when you don’t feel like you can handle your life. And please hear me say this—sometimes we truly do need to ask for help. Sometimes we don’t need to go at it alone. We were not created for that just as much as we were not created for codependency. But sometimes we do need to go at it alone to discover that we are not really alone after all—that we are connected to the Divine and that He equips us with a spirit of courage, wisdom, and power.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve done some serious expanding. Certain patterns have surfaced into my awareness, specifically the one of codependency. I have grown immensely and as I’ve relinquished my codependent conditioning, I have found my relationships to be stronger than ever—with my parents, my friends, and my spouse. I know how to take responsibility for only what’s mine and how to set firm boundaries and stick to them (and actually be OKAY with disappointing people.) Because I know that I am worth it. And so are you.

And to the Christian, this is an incredibly Trinitarian concept. We refer to God as “three in one.” He is distinctly and separately God, yet intimately connected to His son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, our inner wisdom. God is distinctly His own, and yet exists in unity. And if we were created in His image, is this not also true for us and our relationships? That we were created for the purpose of intimate communion with others and also for the purpose of feeling whole and beloved in our own skin. I believe it certainly is.  

Evaluating the health of our relationships is a really important part of becoming who we were intended to become. So, I hope that you ponder the health of your relationships. To be healthy and secure in relationships, we almost always have some excavating to do within our own hearts. We need to be introspective. We need to be mindfully aware of our patterns, of how and where we get our worth in this world. Be kind to your heart as you begin to peel back your layers—self-compassion will always be the catalyst of forward growth.

xoxo,

Rachel