"Does Codependence Run In Your Family?"

Originally written on March 6, 2019

*Information from Psychology Today website.

Growing up watching important adults over-help, rescue, and enable, makes us more prone to it ourselves, especially if we identify with those adults and hear them exalted by others as saintly for all they put up with. We just learn that in this situation this is what people do. Dysfunctional helping becomes familiar and routine, despite its hazards.

You don’t want to model that “good” and responsible people sacrifice themselves to care for under-functioning others whose need for help is manufactured by their own poor choices. Loving someone and being a good person doesn’t mean accepting imbalanced relationships and allowing others to take advantage of you. Once it’s obvious our help and giving has fostered dependence, irresponsibility, incompetence, harmed our relationships, or led us to feel disrespected or taken advantage of, we should call the deal off and save our resources, nurturing, and support for people that will use our assistance to move forward with their lives.

Codependence involves relationship patterns characterized by imbalanced giving and receiving where relationship intimacy and closeness are built on one’s person’s ongoing crisis and the other’s rescuing and enabling. Satisfying intimate relationships are equitable over time and that mutual caring and giving builds healthy intimacy.

People prone to codependent relationships are often very empathic - learn to manage your empathy so it doesn’t set you up for trouble. Step back and think it through before impulsively helping or giving.

People prone to codependent relationships usually have low self-esteem. Sometimes they doubt that people will want to be in a relationship with them unless they give more than they receive. Sometimes people with low self-esteem boost their self-esteem by helping low-functioning others who, by comparison, make them feel capable and competent.

Low self-esteem usually results from parental absence, indifference, or neglect, which suggests to a child they are fundamentally not of value. In families with long-standing codependence patterns, a parent’s codependent relationship with another child or adult can also lead a child to feel unloved and unlovable, setting them up for future codependence, or for their own poor functioning (since that appears to be the route to receiving love and care). Promote a healthy self-esteem in your youngsters by telling them they are loved, by prioritizing your relationships with them, paying them attention, supporting their interests, and providing consistent and loving attention to their needs. Show them you care about them and their future by using positive disciplinary methods rather than shame-based methods that make them feel like they are bad people when they mess up (being too permissive is almost as bad since it can send a message that you don’t care enough to bother or think they’re hopeless).