Notes on Codependency

Originally written on March 6-8, 2019

*Information from Psychology Today, Wikipedia and Positive Psychology Program websites.

You might be codependent if you:

1. Have an excessive and unhealthy tendency to rescue and take responsibility for other people.
2. Derive a sense of purpose and boost your self-esteem through extreme self-sacrifice to satisfy the needs of others.
3. Choose to enter and stay in lengthy high-cost caretaking and rescuing relationships, despite the costs to you or others.
4. Regularly try to engineer the change of troubled, addicted, or under-functioning people whose problems are far bigger than your abilities to fix them.
5. Seem to attract low-functioning people looking for someone to take care of them so they can avoid adult responsibility or consequences, or attract people in perpetual crisis unwilling to change their lives.
6. Have a pattern of engaging in well-intentioned but ultimately unproductive unhealthy helping behaviors, such as enabling.

Many codependent people grow up with a codependent role model who selflessly sacrificed on behalf of under functioning others. To them, codependent relationships are normal and routine.

Symptoms and behaviors

Codependency does not refer to all caring behavior or feelings, but only those that are excessive to an unhealthy degree. One of the distinctions is that healthy empathy and caregiving is motivated by conscious choice; whereas for codependents, their actions are compulsive, and they usually aren't able to weigh in the consequences of them or their own needs that they're sacrificing. Some scholars and treatment providers feel that codependency is an overresponsibility that needs to be understood as a positive impulse gone awry. Responsibility for relationships with others needs to coexist with responsibility to self.

Codependency has been referred to as the disease of a lost self. Many codependents place a lower priority on their own needs, while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others.

Commonly cited symptoms of codependency are:

- intense and unstable interpersonal relationships
- inability to tolerate being alone, accompanied by frantic efforts to avoid being alone
- chronic feelings of boredom and emptiness
- subordinating one's own needs to those of the person with whom one is involved
- overwhelming desire for acceptance and affection
- perfectionism
- over-controlling
- external referencing
- dishonesty and denial
- manipulation
- lack of trust
- low self-worth

The main consequence of codependency is that “codependents, busy taking care of others, forget to take care of themselves, resulting in a disturbance of identity development.” Codependency is a psychological concept that refers to people who feel extreme amounts of dependence on certain loved ones in their lives, and who feel responsible for the feelings and actions of those loved ones.

Codependency can be distinguished from BPD because while BPD includes instability in interpersonal relationships, it does not necessarily involve dependence on other people.

Codependent and Unhealthy Helping Mindtraps

Mindtrap #1: Catastrophizing.

Are you a person that immediately jumps to the worst possible conclusion about someone’s predicament, and assumes that your intervention is necessary to prevent imminent disaster? (e.g., “Without my intervention the other will end up dead, broke, homeless, in jail, fired!”) Has this led you to impulsive rescuing?

Challenge: Ask yourself - Is it really and truly true that without my help, total disaster will occur and the other won’t survive? Or, is it possible that the other will be okay (and possibly benefit) if they have to solve their own problems or assume their own consequences?

Mindtrap #2: Mind-reading.

Are you a person that assumes other people will think badly of you if you don’t continue to give at such a high level? (e.g., “If I don’t help or give, other people will think I am bad or selfish” or, “If I don’t help or give, they will be very angry with me and I won’t be able to stand it”)

Challenge: Ask yourself - Do I really know that other people will think I’m “bad” if I don’t over-give, rescue or enable, or “good” if I do? Can I check this out with people that I respect? Do I know that others will be incredibly mad at me (rather than accepting it, or merely being temporarily irked) if I pull back on my helping or giving? Is it really true that others’ disapproval is so unbearable I must sacrifice myself or is the truth that I can survive others’ displeasure if I determine my help or giving is not really necessary or will not be helpful in the long run? Does rescuing and enabling really protect me from experiencing others’ disapproval?

Mindtrap #3: All-Or-None Thinking.

Are you like many dysfunctional helpers and givers who are “black-and-white” thinkers whose absolutist proclamations lead them astray? Do you look at situations and people as completely right or wrong, good or bad (e.g., “If I don’t help, I am a bad or selfish person,” “I love them so I have to give them another chance,” or “I have to help them, they’re family”).

Challenge: Ask yourself - Is it a fact that I am a “bad” person if I do not rescue, enable, or over-give, and a “good” person if I do? Or can good people sometimes decline to bail others out or set boundaries around their helping and giving? Is it possible that saying “no” to fostering the other’s dependence is what a “good” person does? Is it always the “right” thing to solve others’ problems and the “wrong” thing not to?

Mindtrap #4: Personalization.

Do you feel compelled to help or give because you think someone’s negative behavior or circumstances are somehow your fault and therefore your responsibility? (e.g., “If I was a better parent, teacher, spouse, manager (or whatever), they wouldn’t be in this mess, therefore, I am responsible for rescuing them”). This belief often involves confusing having an influence on others with having control over what those others do.

Challenge: Ask yourself - Is it really true that at this point in time I am responsible for the other’s misfortune such that it is my responsibility to fix it? Even if I bear some responsibility, aren’t there other factors (including the other’s choices) that played a role? What do people I trust say about my responsibility for fixing the other’s problems—why should I believe my distorted thoughts instead of them?

Mindtrap #5: Emotional Reasoning.

Do you use your emotions as evidence of facts? For example, you feel distress and alarm over another’s predicament and automatically think you must intervene?

Challenge: Ask yourself - Can I say with certainty that my emotional reactions to others’ predicaments are always or even mostly right and they rarely, if ever, mislead me into unnecessary or harmful helping or giving? Does my empathy ever lead me astray such that I impulsively offer help without considering the costs of helping to others and me? Does honoring my first impulse to rescue or give lead me to make offers I later regret?

Mindtrap #6: Shoulding. Are you a duty-bound person that “shoulds” yourself into carrying the load of others? Do you think things like, “I should be giving and selfless” and “I should sacrifice my time/energy/resources if I am a good spouse/parent/coworker/friend/person”?

Challenge: Ask yourself: Am I holding myself to standards that I do not hold others to? Can I soften my “should statements” so they are more reasonable? For example, instead of “I should be selfless and sacrifice myself for others” perhaps I can say, “It is generally good to help others but there are times when it is all right not to.” “I must help or I am a bad person” can be softened to “Being a helpful person is part of what makes me a good person but there are times when being a good person may mean not intervening to solve another’s problems.”

Finally, many codependent people irrationally believe they can solve others’ unmanageable problems. But think about this: Although your good intentions are powerful stuff, are you really so gifted (or omnipotent) that it’s realistic to believe your efforts can solve the other’s problems even if those problems are complicated, the other is not ready for change, and the evidence is that your efforts are not working? Or, does available evidence indicate that you can’t change the other or their situation, or that the other is not ready to live differently? Are you really being fair to yourself if you feel you’re a failure if you back away from trying to fix them or their problems? What would you say to a friend in this situation, would you support them in withdrawing their aid?