Codependency

Co-Dependency

The term co-dependency refers to a system of negative behaviors an individual has learned or adopted in order to function in difficult or painful interpersonal situations. Co-dependency can be associated with many different types of interpersonal problems, including chemical dependency, mental illness or impairment, divorce, physical impairment, and abusive relationships. Co-dependency is a person's response to painful interpersonal realities. It can range from mild tendencies to more extreme reactions.

Co-Dependency and Good Intentions
Warning Signs
Learned Behaviors and Beliefs
Getting Help

Co-Dependency and Good Intentions
At the onset, co-dependent behaviors may appear kind and nurturing, but those behaviors can become warped to a devastating degree when their purpose is to function in difficult interpersonal situations. The co-dependent individual learns to survive and function in unhealthy systems by adjusting behaviors to avoid, change, or cope with the situation. This produces behavior patterns that are carried into other areas of life, even if the dysfunctional situation improves or is eliminated.

Warning Signs
The following behavior patterns are typical of co-dependents:

	Justifying and rationalizing another person's inappropriate behaviors, rather than appropriately confronting the person about those behaviors
	Excessive loyalty, whatever the cost, with no reciprocation
	Caring for others to the extent that personal needs are not met
	Taking responsibility for another inappropriately
	Inability to ask for help
	Belief that they are responsible for feelings, behaviors, or problems of others
	Difficulty in identifying and expressing feelings
	Perfectionism
	Have difficulty forming and/or maintaining intimate relationships
	Pleasing people to offset a fear of rejection
	Allowing others to dictate their behavior, beliefs, or feelings
	Basing their self-esteem on what other people say or do

Learned Behaviors and Beliefs
Co-dependents have patterns of learned behaviors and beliefs that often make life increasingly painful. They may use repression, suppression, dissociation, minimization, and denial to avoid dealing with the reality of their problems. Like battered spouses, co-dependents are unable to assert rights because they often do not believe that they have any.

Co-dependents can also be controlling and demand perfection, feeling that they must control others and do everything right in order for things to be okay. They often have little or no sense of self worth, preferring to enable others as a method of showing that they are worthwhile.

Co-dependency may be apparent in a wide variety of situations. It is often most easily recognized in families with chemical dependency; but it can be observed in many other interpersonal situations such as in those caring for chronically ill individuals and parents having problems with troubled children. Co-dependency also can be observed in many of the helping professions such as therapists, nurses, and social workers.

Co-dependents typically do not know how to care for themselves. They may become emotionally enmeshed with specific individuals while isolating and fearing people in general. They may be totally numb to their feelings, or they may have extreme feelings of guilt, shame, frustration, and sadness. These psychological states, combined with fixed, negative behavior patterns, cause co-dependents difficulties and put them in a cycle of never-ending problems until intervention occurs or they decide to get help.

Getting Help
Co-dependent patterns can be changed. Co-dependents can and do learn to assert their rights and their own self-worth. They can address the fears and devastating effects of co-dependency and learn new, healthy behaviors. Self-abandonment can be healed and replaced with a sense of self-caring and an ability to validate themselves and others. Co-dependents can learn to set appropriate boundaries, when to be assertive, and when being vulnerable is safe. They can stop self-defeating behaviors and can learn methods that will allow them to become emotionally and spiritually free from their co-dependency. The Twelve Step organizations of Al-Anon, Co-dependents Anonymous (CoDA), Alateen, and Nar-Anon are for co-dependents. Numerous private therapists and counselors are adept in dealing with co-dependency. Co-dependents can be happy and free when they overcome their co-dependent patterns.