How to know if you struggle with codependency
One of the tragic outcomes of growing up in a dysfunctional family is codependency. You may have heard the term and wondered if it applies to you or even what it means.
In a nutshell it’s looking for something outside yourself to validate you. That means the way others view you dictates the way you feel about yourself.
If you grew up in a dysfunctional home, this behavior may feel normal to you. You have a constant external focus because you had to stay alert to threats outside of you in order to feel safe.
These threats may have been physical or emotional. For example, if you were raised by a narcissist, the fear of rejection and abandonment would be constant.
Codependency develops because you have to abandon yourself and your needs in order to keep the relationship going. As a child, you have no choice but to prioritize the relationship over yourself because you feel you’ll die otherwise.
When faced with survival or anything else, we’ll choose survival every time. This makes sense, but also separates us from ourselves and creates a people-pleasing persona.
Codependency is enabling
Codependency often shows up as enabling behavior that prevents someone else from facing the consequences of their action or inaction. For example, you cover or make excuses for a spouse’s addiction.
You may carry a lot of resentment over the fact that your service to others goes unnoticed or unappreciated. Because resentment causes disease, you may struggle with chronic illness or autoimmune as a result.
You never learned to set boundaries as a child, and boundaries tell us where we end and others begin. With codependency, there is no healthy separation and you feel overly responsible for solving other peoples’ problems.
You find it hard to say what you want and feel guilty when you stand up for yourself. This leads to dishonest and manipulative communication as you try to get your needs met in a covert way.
Without the ability to say what you want clearly, you lack intimacy in relationships. That means nobody knows who you really are inside and it’s possible you don’t either.
Poor sense of self
When our parents fail to meet our needs emotionally or physically, our sense of self suffers. We grow up feeling as though our value lies in what other people think or say about us.
Codependency is the way we try to feel better about ourselves by outsourcing. It’s a grabby energy that never satisfies because you’re relying on something outside your control, and trying to control it.
That’s why criticism, even when it’s constructive, can make you fall apart. Rather than taking or leaving feedback, you find it devastating because your sense of self is dictated by external factors.
Peoples’ opinions of you can change regardless of how “perfect” you behave toward them. That’s why it’s essential to develop a sense of self independent of outside influences.
On Day 2 of the Dysfunctional Family Detox, we go in depth on the topic of codependency and how to heal - from trauma-informed experts who have been there. They show you how to recover using the same techniques that worked for them.
Join us March 5-7 as we dive into the adult outcomes of childhood trauma in ways you’ve probably never heard before. 14 interviews over three days will help you take your next steps out of the fog of codependency into clarity.
