How to stop being codependent in your relationship

I am quoted in the attached article in Woman and Home about codependency: How to stop being codependent: 7 tips from psychotherapists to help you find independence again.

“What do you want to do in life, with your plans, aims, and dreams?” asks Bell. “Codependent people often become overly attentive to the needs of others, and end up losing sight of what they really want themselves.” 

Codependency is about over-functioning in someone else’s life but under-functioning in your own and is rooted in addiction. To have a working understanding of codependency is to see a co-dependent as someone who cannot function from their innate self and whose thinking and behaviour is instead organised around another person, or even a process, or substance.

See also my interview about codependency with Nancy Johnston, author of Disentangle on fostering a healthy self for more about identifying the issues surrounding this term.

Codependency is located within a systemic framework. The term was originally used to describe a particular relationship dynamic where one partner had a substance abuse problem and the other didn’t. The individual who didn’t have the substance abuse issue became caught up in a cycle of excusing, tolerating, defending and even enabling the addiction of the other. In Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) the problem became known as an issue not solely with the addict, but also the family and friends who constitute a social network for the alcoholic. Al-Anon (the sister fellowship of AA) was formed in 1951, and holds the view that alcoholism is a family illness. Al-Anon is one of the earliest recognitions of codependency.

The term codependency is not, however, universally accepted in the therapy world. For some clinicians, codependence is an example of over-diagnosis. For them, people could be helped with shorter-term treatments instead of potentially becoming dependent on long-term self-help programmes or therapy. Such treatment, they argue, can be theoretically misplaced as the direction of the treatment can follow the disease model of addiction. For others it is a healthy personality trait, albeit just taken to excess. The key in determining whether you have a problem yourself is to assess the extent of the under-functioning in your own life as a result of caring for another, or indeed being cared for. Does your own life suffer as a consequence of your concentration on the needs of another, or having your needs met by another?

Clients don’t often attend counselling and psychotherapy for codependency, or other addictions for that matter, but might present with problems associated with anxiety in their lives, for example, or relationship issues more generally. Once in the process of attending therapy sessions, however, they can become more conscious of their underlying codependency issues.

In order to understand codependency it is useful to gain insight into what kind of attachment style you operate from in relationships. We develop a style of attaching that affects our behaviour in close relationships throughout our adult life. One of our prime drives, after all, is to affiliate, just like our drive for survival.  Our attachment style is largely dependent upon our mother’s behaviour, in addition to later experiences in childhood and other environmental and social factors.  For more information on this see my article on attachment styles and recovery from codependency.

Recovery from codependency, like all addictions, involves the development of a healthy self and allowing for an expansion of consciousness.  Healthy relationships are when each person can remain themselves and when the relationship dynamic allows for change and flow. If you are in a codependent relationship a recovery path could be to detach with love, face illusions about your life and your relationship, set healthy boundaries and develop your spirituality. This can help build a healthy sense of self going forward when you learn to take care of your own needs and ultimately learn to be happy with your own company.

See also Develop a healthy sense of self to overcome codependency

Noel Bell is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist based in London. He can be contacted on 07852407140 and noel@noelbell.net