How To Understand That You Are In A Codependent Relationship

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The first step to breaking codependent habits is to be able to recognize the signs that you may be in a codependent relationship

What is codependency?

Codependency refers to a psychological construct involving unhealthy relationships that people can share with those closest to them.

Initially thought to be related to families of substance abusers, the understanding has since expanded to include other types of dysfunctional relationships. The term codependency is often used to describe a relationship that a person needs or depends on another person. However, this term means more than the fact that the partner is compulsively inseparable.

Codependents are only happy when they make extreme sacrifices for their partner. they feel that the other person needs them to achieve some goal. Codependents have no personal identity, interests, or values outside of their codependent relationship.

The partner's role is also dysfunctional. The person who relies on the codependent does not learn to have an equal, two-way relationship and often relies on the sacrifices of the other person.

This circular interpersonal pattern is the basis of what experts refer to when describing the "cycle" of codependency.

Signs that you may have a codependent relationship

Codependent individuals tend to have consistent and problematic behaviors. These patterns directly affect the emotional health of the codependent and their ability to find fulfillment in relationships.

Some signs of codependency include:

• Experiencing serious difficulties in making decisions in a relationship and ignoring your moral principles in order to do what the other person wants.

• Difficulty expressing your needs, feelings, and grievances in a relationship.

• Difficulty identifying and acknowledging your own feelings and needs, even if you feel guilty about thinking about yourself in a relationship, so you cannot express your personal needs or desires.

• Difficulty getting joy without doing something for the other person

• Dependence on the approval of others

• Low self-esteem, underestimation of your contribution, and you spend all your energy to give your partner everything he asks for

• Possessing an excessive sense of responsibility for the actions and feelings of others.

• Maintaining the relationship, even if you know your partner is doing unpleasant things. Family or friends may try to talk to codependents about their problems; but even if others assume that the person is too dependent, the person in the codependent relationship will find it difficult to end the relationship.

• The codependent person will feel extreme conflict about separating himself from his partner because his own identity is centered on sacrificing himself to another person.

How do you become codependent?

Once people realize that they have codependent traits, they often start to wonder where they came from.

While not everyone's answers are the same, for most people it all starts in childhood. Young children are extremely impressionable and lack the ability or life experience to understand that the relationships they see and experience are unhealthy, that their parents are not always right, that their parents are lying, manipulative, and lack the skills to secure attachment.

The main reason for codependency is often a dysfunctional family in which the codependents were raised. Research has shown that parents of codependents are unable to meet the emotional needs of their children as they grow up. These parents lack emotional capacity due to their own problems at the time and are emotionally disconnected from their children. They are unable to give their children the time, love and care they need, and therefore codependents develop their own means of survival without any parental support.

In response to emotional neglect, codependents find that their own needs, feelings, and problems are irrelevant and learn to ignore them.

If they have any needs, they learn to suppress them. In some cases, these children even fear that if they express their feelings or needs, they may be punished for it. They may find that having feelings and needs contributes to the resentment, suffering, and separation of their parents. As a result, these children learn to suppress their own feelings and needs and, ultimately, by the time they grow up, are completely disconnected from them.

Codependents begin to feel responsible for everything their parents feel and for the way they treat their child. Children begin to feel that they are somewhere responsible for what their parents are going through. It is this behavior that applies to all their future relationships, that is, responsibility for others while ignoring their own feelings!

In such families, the child can be taught to focus on the needs of the parents and never think about himself. Parents in need can teach their children that children are selfish or greedy if they want something for themselves. As a result, the child learns to ignore his own needs and always think only about what they can do for others. These situations create gaps in the child's emotional development, prompting him to seek codependent relationships later.

Codependency can also result from caring for a chronically ill or disabled person. Being a caregiver, especially at a young age, can lead the young person to neglect his own needs and develop the habit of only helping others. A person's self-esteem can be formed due to the fact that another person needs him and receives nothing in return.

Children who grow up in abused families can learn to repress their feelings as a defense mechanism against the pain of abuse. In adulthood, this learned behavior leads to the fact that he only cares about the feelings of the other person and does not recognize his own needs. Sometimes the abused person will later seek an abusive relationship because they are only familiar with that type of relationship. This often manifests itself in codependent relationships.

Breaking codependent habits

Many feel they will lose who they are if they stop being codependent. However, this is usually not the case.

In fact, we become more ourselves when we do less of what is expected of us. Getting rid of codependent habits is a huge gift that we can give ourselves: winning in isolation will balance our responsibility to ourselves and to others.

The key to recovering and ending codependency is to start protecting and caring for yourself. This may seem like a selfish act, but it will put you back in balance. Others will understand that you now respect and protect yourself from over-commitment or abuse, and if they don't understand, they may not be the one open to growth in their own relationships.

A person can learn to become less codependent and regain a sense of self and independence in their own life, but this usually requires working with a therapist, as codependency behavior has been learned over the years and is deeply ingrained. It takes time and practice to stay healthy.

Individual or group therapy can be helpful as it encourages the person to explore their feelings and behavior as a person outside of relationships.

People in a codependent relationship may need to take small steps towards some separation in the relationship, such as finding a hobby or activity they enjoy outside of the relationship. A codependent person should also try to spend time with supportive family members or friends.

Abused codependents will need to acknowledge past abuse and start feeling their own needs and emotions again.

Breaking codependent habits in your relationship will also mean that the helper must understand that he is not helping his partner by allowing him to make extreme sacrifices.

Through communication learning, perseverance, and creating healthy boundaries, both the codependent and the partner can learn to break these habits and bring about positive changes in their relationships.

Author`s site: psiholog-filippov.kiev.ua