In dysfunctional families issues arise and they are never spoken about. There may be a lot of arguing but it isn’t necessarily about the issues but more so about attacks on each others character. Rarely feelings and how things make each other feel are discussed. And because of this, all their feelings are suppressed and they can no longer identify their own needs.
They develop behaviors to avoid or ignore these emotions like not trusting, talking, or avoid feeling. And all attention is on the addict or the most mentally ill. This is where codependency comes in. Where all their needs are put aside for another.
In the past, codependency was a term more affiliated when it came to relationships with addicts. But as time went on, codependency became a term recognized for people who grew up in dysfunctional families and had certain behaviors in relationships with others.
Codependency is behavioral which means it is something that is learned usually as a child. Codependency is when a person forms one sided relationships that are usually emotionally destructive and/or abusive. This is done by enabling the other persons addictions, bad behaviors or poor mental health. This in turn affects the ability to have healthy relationships with others.
When you are codependent you give up all your wants and needs for others which makes you loose your sense of self. This then makes you want to enable others more because the only way you know yourself is by giving and taking care of others. It can become compulsive or addicting to feel needed.
Codependents have good intentions but the care taking becomes repetitive and exhausting. They will constantly find ways to help take care of their dependent which then leads the dependent to need them more. The feeling of being needed can feel rewarding and the feeling of being needed becomes satisfying for the codependent. But when the care taking becomes compulsive the codependent will then feel unable to make choices and feel helpless but is unable to break away from the cycle that is causing it.
So how exactly do you know if you are codependent? What are some things you will be experiencing as a codependent?
This is something I also had to learn and had a problem with for many years. I would try to fix things when nobody asked me or get mad when someone wouldn’t listen to my advice. And I eventually learned sometimes things are not my place or my business. Nobody asked me.
When you were younger you probably were the one who was in the middle who had to come up with the solutions for things whether you were told or you felt it was your responsibility and put it on yourself. Now you probably catch yourself going out of your way to help even when people didn’t ask. You try to come up with solutions or fix things in any way possible.
And maybe even become resentful when others don’t appreciate it or take on your help. It may have become second nature to you to just try to fix and although it is beautiful to want to help, people don’t always want your help or your solutions. It is only okay when others ask. Not when we feel the need to fix it. It is not our problem to fix.
If the people around you aren’t okay then you don’t feel okay. This can also be a form of empathy but the difference is you NEED others to be okay for you to be okay. You can’t be happy unless the ones around you are. You can’t for your own happiness or find things that can make you happy. Your happiness is solely reliant on your relationships.
It is important to separate yourself from others and be your own reason for your happiness. Because when we put our emotions in the hands of others, we can’t take control, they have all the power and control over us.
Growing up in a dysfunctional home you get used to being needed. It almost becomes your identity. So if you don’t have someone needing you, you don’t know what to do with yourself. Feeling needed is something that makes you feel whole. You feel unworthy when you are not needed.
You may catch yourself putting yourself in positions where you are needed. If there is something that needs a volunteer, you are the first one to volunteer. Maybe you do things for others that they can easily do for themselves. It becomes addicting to be needed.
Sometimes it is okay to not be needed. People can’t become independent or figure things out for themselves if you are always there taking care of them. You can’t break the cycle if you are always needed or you can’t get a very much needed break. Catch yourself feeling like you need to be needed and occupy yourself with something that you can do for yourself. Go have some you time.
When you grow up with chaos you will do anything to gain some type of control over your life. Having a sense of control is really important in our lives. Felling like you have lack of control internally means you will go looking for outside sources for that control. This means control with food how little or how much, control with self harm or you may try to control others behavior so you feel okay.
This means making unreasonable demands and acting bossy or self righteous to certain people like your partners. And after you realize you can not control them you will feel disappointed. We can not control others, only ourselves.
Try to find the things you can control like who you can talk to, how you react, what you wear, what you do in a day. Little things like that because you are not that child anymore in the chaos. You are older and wiser and have more control over your life now. You don’t have to cope in the chaos anymore as the little helpless kid.
The people that were supposed to guide you, love you and cherish you, just didn’t do that. They taught you to not only not trust them, but also to not trust yourself! When you are a young child and you don’t form that feeling of trust with your parents, trusting others is so much harder. You think “If I can’t trust the ones who gave me life, who can I trust?!” Your parents are supposed to form that foundation of healthy trust and they unfortunately broke it.
Now as they taught you that you can’t trust them, they also were showing you to not trust yourself and your own judgments. By you having to take care of everyone else or them telling you in different ways not to trust yourself, it lowered your sense of trust more and more.
So you don’t trust your own judgments or decisions and may need to always ask others what they think. At the same time you also don’t trust others as well so it can cause you to feel like you are alone in a big black hole of not knowing where to turn or who to trust. You are in constant doubt.
Work on the trust for yourself. That is the foundation, it always starts with you. Make decisions and don’t ask for anyone’s approval, be yourself, become more self aware. Once you are able to start to trust yourself you will discover who you can and can’t trust.
From the time you were a child you most likely were told or felt like your needs didn’t matter or they were less important than other family members. It may have been a chore just to be heard. This just made you push your needs to the back of your mind and made you feel like “I don’t matter, my needs are not important. Everyone else must come before me.” So that pushed you to focus on everyone else even further.
If you are always worrying about everyone else and taking care of their needs you will have no idea of your needs or who you are. You are too focused on everyone else! I bet you if I asked you right now what are things that make you happy, what are things you need to feel loved, you would sit there and have no idea how to answer!
Lack of being aware of your own self and needs leads to low self esteem and feeling bad about yourself. Because your relationships are one sided and your suppressed needs aren’t being met you will feel unworthy, unloved, unappreciated, unsatisfied and down right terrible. On top of that resentment builds when don’t recognize own needs and wants.
Take some time and find what your needs are! Explore yourself, explore what makes you happy, what makes you feel appreciated and loved. What is your love language? Find your needs and make them important because if you won’t no one will. You don’t want to be or turn into a resentful person forever, am I right?!
Sometimes people please because they don’t want others to think less of them. Or sometimes we do it to prevent anxiety or guilt. We want everyone to like us. We can become addicted to what others think of us or the need to be needed. You were always needing to sacrifice growing up so it is just something you are used to. It is good to understand your reason behind why you people please so much.
Aside from the reason, you just will sacrifice yourself to the point you are giving out of an empty wagon. It is good to give but it becomes unhealthy when you give out everything you have. You will sacrifice your time, money, stuff and emotional well being to benefit others. Just giving and giving and not really taking. This becomes unhealthy not only for yourself but for the ones around you.
This is the big trait that enables the unhealthy behaviors in others. You draw in the users and abusers by doing this. Not only that but you will become emotionally and physically exhausted, resentful, and angry from not fulfilling your own personal needs. It is okay to do things for yourself. It is important to take care of you! If you don’t take care of you then you will do half jobs on your daily tasks including in your relationships. It is okay to not do everything everyone wants. You can’t please everyone that is an unrealistic task that sets you up for failure and disappointment.
As a child we look for validation from our parents and when we don’t get that or we don’t learn how to validate ourselves we will look for it from others. Now everyone likes to feel validated every once in awhile. But when you are codependent you need the validation because you don’t know how to validate yourself.
You will go out of your way to find ways to get others to make you feel validated in the person you are or the choices you make. Because you did not form your own healthy approval of yourself you relay on others to make you feel good.
We need to first start validating ourselves, being whole ourselves before we are able to hear others and it not being the only thing we need. Rather it is an extra.
Boundaries are put in place to protect ourselves. They are basically walls to let people know how to treat us and what we accept for ourselves. Boundaries a lot of the time are taught by our parents/family members. When we don’t have healthy boundaries it lets people know they have free range over us and can do whatever they please.
Since codependents don’t have healthy relationships with others and pretty much tolerate a lot more than they should, they have little idea what a healthy boundary is. On top of that because they don’t have healthy boundaries for themselves, they may have little understanding of others boundaries. This will cause tension and feelings of being disrespected or discomfort.
Learn what healthy boundaries are. And don’t hesitate to put them in place for others. People in your life may not like it but that is okay. Your job isn’t to make everyone happy. It is expected they will get mad because you have unhealthy relationships with them. Your job is to make sure you are healthy and have healthy relationships, not to appease everyone else.
No can be a scary word. When we say no that means it opens the door for potential conflict, thoughts of letting others down/being a bad person or our own dreaded feelings of guilt or regret. Saying yes is a lot easier and can become addicting. No feels dangerous. You may even spread yourself thin and say yes when you really needed to say no!
Saying no isn’t just needed but it also is healthy. When we don’t say no we can start to resent not only the other person but ourselves as well. We will resent saying yes or you may get anxiety. You are allowed to say no, no one will think any less of you and if they do then they aren’t the right people to be in your life.
Just because codependency is a learned behavioral condition does not mean you can’t recover from it. That is the thing it is learned and you can learn new things and unlearn old habits. The brain is a crazy thing! Education is key to helping you overcome things. So they more aware you are, the better you will be at making choices to over come these things. You got this!
What do you guys think? Did this article resonate with you or someone you know? Do you have more to add about codependency? Leave it all in the comments below!
[…] are a people pleaser or a fixer or a giver. When you are codependent, as a child you did not feel validated so in order to feel worthy or validated you would help, […]
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[…] is especially major if you are codependent. As a codependent, you will want to fix, give, and please. And as a codependent, you are struggling […]
[…] Codependency is when you were not validated as a child which then causes you to seek validation through taking care of others, pleasing others or trying to fix them. This is very common in abusive and emotionally neglectful homes. When you are a child you crave your parent’s validation and when you don’t get it, you will seek it in unhealthy ways. […]