What is codependency?
Your mood rises and falls with their day. It isn’t a flaw. It is a way of relating.
Maybe you typed the word into your phone, late at night. Maybe you read it somewhere and stopped. It sounds heavy. What it describes is very common.
For the person close to you, we write “he”. The same goes for “she”.
In plain words
Codependency is when your day hangs on another person. Your mood, your thoughts, even your sense of your own worth. If he had a good day, you settle. If he had a bad one, you go down with him.
It isn’t a type of person. It is a way of relating. That is why we don’t pin it on anyone as a label.
The word was born in the late 1970s, around alcohol. It described people who lived with someone who drank or used. Later it widened, to any relationship with the same shape.
It is not a medical term. Researchers still debate where it begins and where it ends. But when they compared the definitions, they found four things in common. Your attention is constantly on the other person. You put yourself last. You try to control what they do. And you keep what you feel to yourself.
Five difficulties, five scenes
One of the key books on the subject describes five difficulties. We give them in our own words, with a scene for each. You may recognise one, all of them or none.
Worth. You feel you are worth something only when things at home are going well. A quiet evening lifts you. A message from his work knocks you down. There is a word for this: other-esteem. The worth that others give you disappears the moment something goes wrong. The worth that comes from inside doesn’t hang on anyone’s day.
Boundaries. Either there is no line between you and the other person, or you put up a wall. You read his messages while he is in the shower. Or you shut yourself away in silence for days, and nobody knows what you are thinking.
Your own reality. You no longer know what you think and feel. Or you know, and you hide it. People ask how you are, and you tell them how he is.
Needs. You leave your own for later. Or you would rather go without than ask. You move your dentist appointment for the third time. His, you never forget.
Moderation. All or nothing. One week you check his every move. The next you say “do what you like” and shut the door.
Care or codependency?
Love is not the problem. Nor is worry. Care asks what the other person needs. Codependency decides for them. And care leaves room for you too.
See it in a scene. Your daughter tells you she argued with her manager. She didn’t ask you for anything. Ten minutes later you have told her what to say to him tomorrow. You have also sent her two job adverts. She goes quiet. You hang up feeling bitter: “I’m trying to help and she won’t listen.” Nobody asked for help. And in the end, you are the one who hurts.
Afterwards you may go cold on her, so she gets the message. Usually it isn’t spite. It is the wound of not counting. In research, care that leaves you out is linked with more psychological strain and low mood.
You didn’t choose it
Nobody chooses it. Usually you learn it to cope. When you live alongside someone’s using, control looks like the only way to stay standing. Families in many countries describe it as strain that lasts for years. For some, this way of relating began much earlier, in the home they grew up in.
And something few people expect. When he stops, this way of relating often stays. That is why support concerns you too, not only him.
What helps
You cannot decide what he will do. You can decide what is yours: what you think, what you feel, what you do. We call this positive control. We wrote about it in more detail in “The passenger’s brake”.
It also helps to talk about it with people who know it from the inside. Every Wednesday at 19:00 Athens time we run a free online family support group. Our psychologists facilitate it, together with people who have lived it. You listen, you ask, you don’t have to speak. You join under any name you like. He won’t hear about it from us. The group runs in Greek.
If someone is in danger right now, call your local emergency number (112 in Europe, 166 in Greece). If there is violence at home, call the police: 112 across Europe, 100 in Greece. Calling for help when someone is in danger is not codependency.
Sources
- Mellody, P., Miller, A. W., & Miller, J. K. (1989, rev. 2003). Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives. HarperCollins. The five difficulties and other-esteem, in our own words. And the observation that the family’s control often stays after the using stops.
- Dear, G. E., Roberts, C. M., & Lange, L. (2004). Defining codependency: A thematic analysis of published definitions. In S. Shohov (ed.), Advances in Psychology Research, vol. 34. Nova Science. The four points the definitions share. The authors note that a shared definition does not make it a medical condition.
- “Codependency”. In V. N. Parrillo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Problems (2008). SAGE. Where the word began and how it widened in the 1980s.
- Helgeson, V. S., & Fritz, H. L. (1998). A theory of unmitigated communion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(3), 173–183. Care that leaves the self out, and its link with psychological strain and low mood.
- Orford, J., Velleman, R., Copello, A., Templeton, L., & Ibanga, A. (2010). The experiences of affected family members: a summary of two decades of qualitative research. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 17(sup1). The family’s reactions as a way of coping with years of strain.
- Brown, S., & Lewis, V. (1999). The Alcoholic Family in Recovery: A Developmental Model. Guilford Press. The first period after the using stops is often unsettled for the family too.