The word codependency has gotten lots of attention lately. Unfortunately, lots of people misuse it and apply it to relationships that are not codependent. As you read through these signs when identifying the types of codependency, take care of yourself and take breaks when needed.
Remember that you are not alone. With the help of mental health professionals, you can develop healthy relationships, feel confident in yourself, and understand that you are worthy just by existing.
This post is all about signs when identifying the types of codependency.
What is codependency?
Codependency refers to two people who rely on each other for identity. One partner needs care and the other partner provides it. Even though this dynamic is painful and unhealthy, it meets the needs of both partners, which makes it hard to escape.
Codependency has become a buzzword lately, and it has a lot of people worried about how they fit into it. Originally, codependency was used to describe the relationship addicts have with their partners.
When both people get a sense of identity from an unhealthy relationship, they get their needs met in some way even if that way doesn’t reflect a healthy dynamic. In other words, both people feel needed in a codependent relationship even if it hurts them.
SIGNS OF CODEPENDENCY:
1. Thrives with some form of control measure
Codependent people thrive on controlling a relationship or situation. Control allows them to avoid conflict, which could ultimately lead to a healthier relationship dynamic that would take away their identity.
When someone is codependent, they can maintain their identity by controlling the situations that they’re in to further their identity. In other words, they can ensure that the other person either needs to take care of them or needs care from them.
This happens when they find ways to care for the other person, especially when it’s unnecessary, or when they find ways to get help from the other person.
2. Needs the approval of others
When someone grows up in a codependent relationship or they experience active codependency for a long time, they learn to define themselves based on others.
They value themselves based on how well they can care for a person’s needs or have someone care for them. This is why the need for approval is one of the easiest codependent traits to identify.
3. Experiences growing up in the context of substance use
Since substance abuse was the original context for codependency, this is a common behavioral condition that leads to the cycle of codependency. If you grew up with an addict as a parent, they might have exhibited codependent behaviors with their partner or you, their child.
Either way, you grew up exposed to codependent patterns, which makes it easier for your brain to revert to those neural pathways. It’s always possible to change our neural pathways, but it takes work and awareness of our signs of codependency.
4. Has an insecure attachment style
There is no inherently unhealthy attachment style, whether you are avoidant, anxious, or secure, as long as you do the work.
Both anxious and avoidant attachment styles come with extra steps to make sure that you are taking care of your own needs as well as respecting the needs of your partner and their attachment style.
Regardless, an insecure attachment style can indicate an attachment trauma experience with your primary caregiver as a young child. Our attachment styles develop when we are infants and young children.
Therefore, we are more likely to be codependent if we grew up with insecurely attached parents who dealt with codependent tendencies, harmful mental health conditions, or substance abuse disorders.
5. Diagnosed with a mental illness
If you suffer from anxiety, depression, or another mental illness, you are more likely to get involved with dysfunctional relationships, like codependency. It’s entirely possible to have a mental illness and lead a relatively normal life.
But, it takes a lot of effort that needs to be conscious. In other words, if you struggle to deal with your mental illness while in a relationship, it increases the odds that you will need a caretaker instead of a partner.
6. Fails to adjust to changes in their life
Codependent individuals often develop a fragile sense of homeostasis in their relationships with others. These relationships cannot stand up to any amount of scrutiny because one person is taking care of the other and they’re both subjected to an unhealthy dynamic.
However, they both need the dynamic to continue to maintain their identities, which is why they don’t like change.
Once someone gets used to this type of unhealthy relationship, they now dislike change as a rule. Change indicates that their identity is at risk and so is the relationship that they’ve built with someone.
7. Demonstrates a pattern of unhealthy behavior
Unhealthy behavior, in this case, is broad. Automatically, when people think of unhealthy behavior, they probably think of a narcissistic partner, an addicted person, or other psychological problems that make it impossible for someone to develop a healthy relationship.
These are all examples of extreme and unhealthy behaviors, and these tend to look very different from the unhealthy behaviors that indicate a codependent partner. Instead, unhealthy behavior can look like unmet emotional needs and seemingly random outbursts.
It can mean self-love deficit disorder, in which someone isn’t ready to love another person because they struggle to love themselves. Lastly, it can look like a struggle with sexual intimacy because of insecure attachment leading to fear of abandonment.
8. Unable to set or maintain healthy boundaries
Healthy, personal boundaries are vital to every healthy relationship. No matter what relationship comes to mind when you think of boundaries, every relationship benefits from them.
Whether it’s alone time in your romantic relationship or no sex talk in your parent-child relationship, it’s important to set boundaries. They can be flexible, depending on the situation, but strict enough that they protect your well-being.
9. Dealt with a history of emotional abuse
Emotional abuse often indicates a codependent relationship with a parent or former partner, though it can happen in any relationship.
Once someone experiences emotional abuse in one of their past relationships, it becomes much easier for them to become a disempowered codependent person with their next romantic partner.
Emotional abuse indicates that someone has undergone a traumatic experience from which they need to heal. Therefore, if they are working on healing from it or not healing at all, they might lean on their new partner more than a healthy relationship can handle.
10. Struggles to make decisions
Codependency thrives when both partners or individuals need validation from the other to make decisions. Once a codependent partner makes a decision, they risk changing the relationship dynamic in some way and they create conflict in the relationship by making the wrong one.
To go further, codependent couples need the approval of others, both within their relationship and outside of it. So, by deciding on their own, a codependent person can be completely responsible for making the wrong decision and losing the approval of others all on their own.
11. Re-creates codependency in adult romantic relationships
Codependent behaviors run deep into someone’s mind and change the way they think about relationships. Whether it’s a formative relationship like between you and a parent or an influential romantic relationship, codependency changes the way we think.
It creates and reinforces neural pathways in our brains that lead to harmful codependent behaviors and patterns. This is why we tend to repeat codependency patterns in other relationships.
We do so by needing someone to care for us or offering our care to someone who doesn’t need it to that extent. In either case, someone can abandon their healthy ways of relating to someone and use this learned behavior to become codependent.
When we become needy, it’s easy for someone to feel the need to care for us and, when we take more care of someone else than is necessary, it’s easy for them to let us even if it goes against their instincts.
12. Deals with consistent low self-esteem
It’s difficult to maintain self-esteem when you base your value on the opinions of others. Even when those opinions remain positive, they still need to be reinforced constantly. So, it’s natural for codependent people, even ones who are recovering, to need validation to value themselves.
They need to be told that they’re a good partner and a good person. Otherwise, they believe they’re failing and have a hard time liking themselves.
13. Avoids conflict wherever possible
Conflict threatens change and that’s what codependency hates. Since codependency creates such a vulnerable system in which a relationship can exist, any change from conflict means the entire relationship can crumble down.
When one person is relied on for caretaking and the other is relied on for needing that, it’s easy to see how they can both become resentful in their respective roles even though they are needed in this relationship.
14. Lacks a clear sense of self
Codependency defines your identity for you and tells you that you’re needed so long as that identity describes you. This means that you don’t have to find who you are or what you want because your relationship gives you the meaning you’d otherwise have to define on your own.
So, codependent people don’t know who they are outside of their relationship. Even if someone has done the personal growth work before, they opt for the easy role they’ve been given in which they feel needed and valued by another person.
15. Over-reliant on the emotional well-being of a family member
Codependency can often get confused with enmeshed, though they differ in a few key ways. In this case, being reliant on a family member or partner for your well-being overlaps with enmeshment.
However, if the other person in your codependent relationship is unhappy, you will also be unhappy because you’re not getting your needs met and you’re not meeting theirs.
Regardless of the roles you two play, the two of you rely on the other person for a sense of identity and value. Therefore, you two become reliant on the other person for your happiness.
