Codependency is a systematic way of engaging with the world around you where your personal opinions, needs, and values are lost because your desire to be approved of, accepted or not abused. Codependency is a result of routine self-abandonment an effort to appease others. Regardless of how codependency has started, the goal is to limit its effects on personal relating and relationships. Codependency influences every type of relationship that we have because the pattern of relating is not cooperative. Codependent relationships revolve around the other’s needs, wants, dreams and desires- not yours. Because this is how relating takes place, the codependency prompts abandonment of self in exchange for the approval that is desperately desired. 

People who struggle with Codependence often think that:

• They are the cause of problems;

• They can cure the problem;

• They need to control others responses or can control others feelings.

Symptoms of codependency include (from Pia Mellody’s Facing Codependence, 1989, p.4):

1. Difficulty experiencing appropriate levels of self-esteem;

2. Difficulty setting functional boundaries;

3. Difficulty owning and expressing their reality;

4. Difficulty taking care of their adult needs and wants;

5. Difficulty experiencing and expressing their reality moderately.

   • The reason for moderate is because codependence makes accurate exploration and explanation of self difficult. Moderate could also be exchanged for accurately.

Recovery from codependency runs deep. While many of us have codependency in our veins, the good news is that the adventure of finding ourselves is both vibrant and painful at times. Looking to eliminate codependency will take mindful attention to intentions and honoring of self. Both practices are seamlessly abandoned in codependent relationships.

While the codependent system of relating allows for a likelihood that approval will come, it also is not genuine as your true self is not being expressed thereby not being approved of. So while approval is overtly given to the codependent, the genuine self is being further repressed and reinforced to not be known. The pattern is aggressive in this way, thus why codependency will require mindful attention to intentions and your personal needs, dreams and desires.

Too long; Didn’t Read: Codependence is a set of behavioral patterns where people think that they caused problems, need to cure problems or can control situations/people/feelings.

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