Codependency is when you did not feel validated, heard or your needs were not met as a child so the way you learned to cope with that was by helping, fixing, people-pleasing, and taking care of others to feel the void of feeling unloved and not nurtured. Codependency is a way for you to distract yourself from dealing with your own feelings. It is a way to feel needed, wanted, and to feel accepted. Also, you feel lost when you are not taking care of others, that has become your identity. You have gotten so used to taking care of others and self-sacrificing that you do not know who you are without it. Most of the time when you are codependent you are trying to fill a void through others, and it may fill temporarily fill it but it does not complete your love jar.
You are usually codependent parents for 2 reasons. One you did not have your needs met where you had abusive parents, addict parents, mentally ill parents where they neglected you and abused you and you felt you had to take care of them. Or you could have codependent parents that made you rely on them for things, made you feel you needed them. Or you saw your parents being very codependent on each other and did not have any real individuality so you live by example. You could have really loving parents but your codependent parents may have taught you how to not trust and rely on yourself.
In codependent relationships, it is often talked about how you have to have a very abusive partner or an alcoholic/drug addict partner and that is a big issue but it is not always the case. You could be in a relationship with another codependent or you could be codependent on someone you enable like a lazy person. Usually, you are trying to overcompensate for something they lack. You are key on a certain person that you want to meet your needs and you want to help them in some sort of way. So what are some signs?
When you are in a codependent relationship you can be someone that has no real identity, individuality, interests outside of them. You do not know who you are, what you want, what you value because you are so invested in this person. You may wait for their phone calls, for the next time you hang out or to make your day better. Something important may be going on or you may be doing something important but you will drop it to go see them and take care of them.
You feel you need their approval, their validation, their touch, their input, opinions on what you say and do. This could be from past abuse or current abuse. This causes a lack of confidence in yourself. Because you feel like you need them you can become very addicted to them. You can be addicted to sex with them, being around them, helping them, taking care of them. Even if they can do it for themselves you will take that opportunity away from them because of that addiction. It can be so bad that you can feel like you can not stop and you can not say no to them. This is because it is an addiction. Your brain fires off oxytocin which is the love hormone and the attachment hormone which creates a bond and dopamine which is the happy love hormone.
So because you do not know how to love yourself or validate yourself or be alone and you seek that happiness you will always seek it outside of yourself. You will feel a need to take care of them but also a need for them to take care of you. This neediness can be always needing to talk to them, checking their social media to see where they are, getting upset when they talk to someone attractive.
When you feel insecure you will look for ways that they can validate you. You depend on them to make you feel good, to uplift you, and you feel like a whole person when you are around them. They may not be meeting your actual needs but they fulfill that shallow feeling that you are needed because you are filling their needs. And when you do try to meet their needs, you are also looking for the same in return.
Fear of abandonment comes from having an insecure attachment to your parent starting in infancy as well as being abandoned physically or emotionally. This transfers over into your close relationships, especially your romantic ones. If you are in a codependent relationship you will form a bond with them where you depend on them to meet all your needs. This can cause you to be afraid of them leaving. You also will have high expectations of them and when they do not meet those needs you will get angry at them and punish them with things like silent treatment or fighting. You may sabotage the relationship or you will leave before they leave you.
You may notice you will overly sacrifice yourself for your partner. This is because you seek the approval of your partner and you seek the validation of your partner. You are unaware of your own needs because you make your partner matter first. If your partners’ needs are not met then you feel not validated and will take responsibility for their feelings. In your wiring, you have believed that you feel like you are a whole person when your partners’ needs are met and think that is meeting your own needs. In reality, you are still sad and feel unappreciated because it is a temporary fix and not really meeting any of your needs.
Because you have lost yourself from taking care of others, you have a hard time being able to identify your feelings. You may notice when you are sad or angry but you distract yourself from them. you are out of touch with yourself. When you are used to your needs not being met and you do not learn how to deal with your emotions, you will avoid them. Also, feelings can cause conflict and conflict may mean your partner won’t like you anymore, conflict means potential abuse, negativity, potentially hurt someone else’s feelings, potentially getting someone’s disapproval, and dealing with uncomfortable feelings.
These are all things you have a hard time with so you will suppress these feelings and make yourself not matter. This is because when you were a child you did not feel like you mattered and you carry this with you of not knowing how to speak up. This suppression can turn into random spurts of aggression or passive-aggressiveness where you indirectly show your anger.
When you are codependent you are prone to abusive relationships because you have traits that manipulative and narcissists are attracted to. Like the people-pleasing, the enabling the self-sacrificing so it makes you more susceptible to abuse. These people play on your self-doubt and need to please and will continue the abuse.
Because you give away all of your control by not making decisions for yourself, by taking care of your partner, by thinking of everyone else, you become controlling in other ways. Like when you help your partner you tell them what to do or you will try to control things that are completely out of your control. You may try to control your future, the way people perceive you. This can cause you to be resentful because you can’t control these things.
You will overly give and help. Because you give too much, you will become resentful because you won’t receive the same thing in return. You think about others too much and that is not the norm. you may do things in the hopes that someone else will treat you that way. At the end of the day, most people won’t reach those expectations and you will just be disappointed. But even so, you may notice you are addicted to giving because you feel you get that approval of oh they like me! But in reality, it just winds up hurting yourself and it also hurt your self-worth and confidence because you don’t receive the same in return.
You say yes when you really need to say no. You do not check in with yourself before agreeing to something or offering yourself. Going with the flow is your go-to. You go with the flow and may say yes to everything or you fear saying no. So you always will do things that your partner wants. you may have been taught you were not allowed to have boundaries or you can’t say no because that is selfish or you feel guilty for thinking of yourself or saying no. So you will allow things to happen that aren’t good for you or do things you don’t want to for the fear of what will happen.
So one thing you definitely need is to have some individuality, do more things for yourself and your partner needs to as well. You want to spend time away from each other so you don’t feel like you need each other. So it is important to remind yourself that you do not need them but you want them. Figure out how to give yourself your own needs so that means getting to know who you are. What do you like? Who are you? What are your interests? What do you need?
To learn more about how to cope, watch the above video.
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