What you need to know about Codependency
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Attachment Style
Codependency roots from an attachment trauma that a child received in their early years. There are many different causes for attachment trauma ranging from neglect, to child abuse, to the main caregiver becoming ill or hurt, necessity for survival (working for food), to the baby itself being sick or in a lot of pain. Codependency typically accompanies an anxious style of attachment. It is the inverse of narcissism because the narcissists attachment trauma typically manifests itself in an avoidant attachment style.
Once a child has an anxious attachment style — if they have any instability at home or some perceived threat to their security they will often move into a people pleaser role growing up. They will attempt to take care of the needs of their caregiver or to avert disturbing temper flares by catering to them and by being the good child at the beckon call of the parent.
Arise my People Pleaser
They essentially learn that in order to be accepted or appreciated they have to be what their caregiver envisions them as. So they become more preoccupied with their caregivers needs being met than their own. This often manifests itself as a lost sense of self when they are older. This is very similar to the narcissist who has a lost sense of self from repressing their vulnerabilities and creating a ‘false self’ for the world.
Now, because the codependent child’s need do not get met they do not learn healthy (and necessary) concepts such as self soothing, drawing strength internally, and as a result they lose touch with those needs. As such, they regulate their sense of self, self worth and emotions off their external environment which is extremely unhealthy. This leaves them feeling inadequate and like they are not enough which is a disaster moving into their adult years.
Its not Dependency Disorder!
Moving into dating and adulthood the codependent typically finds a mate that has some sort of need that is required. The term codependent originated as a name for the wives of alcoholics as they were the enablers of their husbands in a toxic push pull match for control and stability. As time has progressed the term codependent has come to mean much more as it has a very diverse range of situations and people that it is applicable to now. It isn’t however, recognized by the medical community as an actual disorder, although many uninformed people see the name and they confuse it with Dependency disorder.
The difference between Dependency disorder and Codependency is that with Dependency disorder the person wants their needs taken care of and to be catered too. They essentially don’t care who meets their needs, just as long as they have someone catering to them. Codependency typically centered around one individual and is characterized by the need to be needed. It is a behavioral pattern that can be changed with awareness and practice.
Photo by Zulmaury Saavedra on Unsplash
The crux of it is that the codependent with the anxious attachment style — on some subconscious level of thinking — they do not believe that they are lovable for their own merits and own characteristics. They believe they have to be depended on or they won’t be allowed to stay in their relationship. So many will cater to that other persons need to entrench that dependency on them. This is one commonality with the original definition of codependency in that it was the wives of the alcoholics that enabled their spouses drinking kept their husbands dependent on them to keep the house running and the family on track. The wives enabled the drinking behavior to ensure they were needed and central to the husbands life functioning.
Empaths?
A codependent child learns to be hyper in tuned with their environment in order to feel safe by catering to the needs of their caregiver. As they age into adulthood this sensitivity turns into a higher level of empathy and awareness of the changes in the mood of the people that are around them. They will feed off of those changes and it can make them share in someone's bad mood because they reciprocate what they are experiencing and have that multiplied by their stress, anxiety and frustration at not being able to make the angry spouse or friend calm and happy. This can lead to a fight where the initial angry person claims that they can’t have a bad day without the spouse feeding off it.
Many people today have romanticized this phenomenon and started calling themselves empaths. They believe that it is through some type of emotional osmosis that they absorb the emotions of the people they are with. In a way I suppose they do, but I would argue its a stress response connected to their attachment trauma and they are subconsciously compelled to fix and people please which because its subconscious — it feels like they just absorbed the other persons emotion's. In the end, they are just not aware of their own emotional drivers. Still, Empath has become a term of empowerment for them and being that codependents often struggle with feelings of unworthiness, one could argue that this fallacy is in fact a good thing.
Codependents and Manipulation
As such, codependents are often manipulative and sneaky due to their fear of creating instability with conflict. They typically have a hard time telling people ‘no’. Its like their brain freezes when asked for something and every cell in their body wants to say no, but they are forced to spit out yes even though they really do not want to do this thing they were asked.
They can even go to great lengths to avoid people and places where they think they will be asked for something just because they know that they will not be able to decline the ask. Often, they will say yes and then at the last second call up and cancel or just plain not show up to the event. They’ll have a list of excuses they can draw from to explain their absence.
Typical Traits:
Very likeable
Bends over backwards to help people
Rarely offends people and takes it very hard when they do
Has a need to be liked by everyone
Can’t say ‘no’ to requests very easily
Has a fractured sense of self — they don’t know what they want or stand for.
Has an insecure attachment style- usually anxious
Feels like they need to sacrifice or contribute a lot to a relationship
Underlying feelings of unworthiness
Has a hard time making a decision when choosing options that someone else might not approve of
Often introverted and seemingly shy
Doesn’t dominate conversations- makes a great listener
Is always trying to make everyone feel happy or welcome
Is the one that brings cupcakes for everyone at work etc.
Conflict avoidant — Has a hard time confronting people to their face
Tries to control their environment by manipulation rather than direct conflict.
Will over extend themselves because they struggle to say no to requests
Burn out and crash hard
Will avoid people, places, or events where they might get asked to volunteer, to donate, or to help in some fashion because no matter how exhausted they are they feel like they have to agree.
Have weak boundaries and are unsure of where to draw the line on what they are uncomfortable with.
Without someone that they are attached to, that attachment trauma feels like a constant chronic feeling of despair and hopelessness that is so overt that it feels like a constant state of crippling emotional pain.
Often jump from one relationship to the next to avoid that despair feeling. Being in a relationship and around someone inoculates them from it.
Conclusion
In the end, the codependent had to learn how to get control of their environment by manipulating situations and people so that they could get what they need to keep things functioning. Codependency is best summed up by the need to be needed in a relationship. It isn’t a pathology because with some awareness and behavioral modification a person can recover from it and live a normal life with a secure attachment. It does take work however and a lot of awareness.
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