5 Ways CoDependent Relationships Differ from Healthy Ones | CoDependency Masterclass

Hello everyone, and welcome to this video where we try to answer the question, what is codependency? I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this video, we're going to define dependency codependency and differentiate codependency from healthy caretaking and interdependence. And then we'll explore the possible causes of codependency. So let's start at the beginning. Dependency is when one person relies or depends on another for their safety and well being. Children are dependent on their caregivers. They need to have that other person in their life to keep them safe and healthy and secure. As we get older, we don't depend on our caregivers as much. We start to individuate. In healthy relationships, people with codependency are adults who feel incomplete without another person who depends on them, have allowed the other adults behaviors to negatively impact them, and have become obsessed with controlling the behavior of the other person. Notice I said the adult here, Adam. Again, I recognize that children and even older adults who may have started to develop dementia may have increased levels of dependency. But when we're talking about relatively healthy average adults, we want to strive for relationships that are characterized by interdependence, not codependence. Not where one person needs the other person to exist, not where one person needs the other person in order to survive. Said another way, people with codependency depend on being depended on, and they only feel safe when they are indispensable. So some people have talked about codependency as an addiction, so we'll take a look at that. It's important to remember that addiction is a behavior that people use a lot of times to try to help them escape from unpleasant feelings, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain or both. If we look at codependency as an addiction, what is it helping people escape from? It's helping people escape from that terror of being alone, of being isolated, of being rejected, of being unloved, of being out of control. It gives them a facade that, that helps them feel like they can breathe in some ways. So let's look at how it might be like an addiction. People who are codependent are unable to stop or cut down trying to control what we will call the dysfunctional other. They may have said, okay, fine, I'm going to set this line in the stand and if you cross it, then we're done, or I'm not going to rescue you if you do this again. But. But they find themselves going back on that every single Time, they. They keep trying to set limits, to set boundaries, and they're just unable to do that. They spend more time than intended thinking about preparing, trying to change, or recovering from trying to change the dysfunctional other. People who are codependent are often worried constantly about what the other person is doing, worried constantly about whether they're needed. They're worried constantly about a lot of things, and that's exhausting. They spend a lot more time obsessing about that person and about that relationship than they do about pretty much anything else in their rich and meaningful life, which means a lot of those things start to wither away. They give up important social work or recreational activities because of the relationship. In codependent relationships, there is a lot of rescuing that often happens. So they may start foregoing going to the gym or going out with friends, or doing other things that are important to them in order to rescue or caretake the dysfunctional other. Now, one thing I will point out here. Codependency is not always manifested just in romantic relationships. It can be manifested between parents and adult children. It can also be manifested by people who work in caregiving professions. They are unable to stop trying to control their patients, their clients. They may spend more time than intended thinking about or trying to change their clients. Instead of helping people reach their own goals, the codependent helper is trying to change or mold their clients into what they want them to be. And they often give up important social work or recreational activities because they are trying to rescue that person. They end up being on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They end up going in for emergency appointments. So it's important to recognize, even if you may have maintained a relatively healthy relationship outside of the office sometimes, that codependency is justified. If you work in helping professions, you. You can explain away a lot of what you do until you start getting burned out, until the rest of your life starts falling to pieces, because the only thing you're focusing on is trying to rescue, fix, and change your clients. Important relationships, including self esteem, are negatively impacted burden by the behavior. Yes, that's pretty clear. There's a failure to meet obligations at work, home, or school because of the dysfunctional relationship. Even if you're in a helping profession, if you are approaching it from a codependent standpoint, you're likely not going to get the other things done that you need to do, like your paperwork or going to meetings, or maybe even seeing other clients. So it is important to be aware of that. But the person who's Codependent in their personal relationships may call in sick to work a lot in order to rescue the other person. The person who is codependent may engage in behaviors designed to protect the dysfunctional other that sully their reputation, if you will, and harm their ability to do their job correctly. We've seen this, or I've seen this in law enforcement officers, for example, continuing the relationship despite knowing it has caused or worsened physical or psychological issues. If you're in a relationship and it is causing you so much stress that it's giving you insomnia, that it's giving causing flare ups of autoimmune diseases, or upsetting your stomach, or giving you ulcers, or contributing to you feeling depressed or anxious or angry most of the time, then it's important to step back and take a look and say, is this a healthy relationship? And finally, psychological withdrawal. People who are in codependent relationships, when they are separated from the dysfunctional other, they start feeling very anxious because they're not able to control from a distance. And if they break up, for example, if the, if the relationship ends, then the person with codependency starts feeling extremely anxious and like they're floundering like a fish out of water because they no longer have something that they're anchored to. So what's the difference between codependency and caretaking or codependency and interdependence? There's nothing wrong with interdependence. Caretakers or people who are interdependent, they don't violate other people's boundaries, they don't try to control someone else more than is needed, and I say more than is needed because obviously as a caretaker of a five year old, you're going to do more controlling than you are of a caretaker or a parent, if you will, of a 25 year old. You know, hopefully the 25 year old is pretty independent. The person with codependency has difficulty letting their children grow up, letting their children individuate, letting their friends and family, especially dysfunctional others, individuate. So they are regularly telling those people what to do, how to do it, and whether they are acceptable or not. So that's really violating a lot of boundaries. Physical, emotional, cognitive, you know, it's all over the place. Caretakers maintain their own boundaries. This is what I think, this is what I feel. And my thoughts, wants and needs are just as important as yours. The codependent, the person with codependency often cannot say that caretakers do not attach their self worth to the success or failure of another person. Now as a parent, I am thrilled when my children succeed and I'm heartbroken when they fail. But it's not for me. It's not that I feel bad about myself if they fail or it's not that I feel good about me if they succeed. I am empathizing with them. My self esteem and my self image as a parent is not completely driven by the success or failure of another person. By the whether my children choose to follow what I do, what I say and suggest or not. And my children are late teenagers right now. They're going through individuation and they're still in that place where they don't think I know a whole lot. So there's a lot of times that I have to step back and say, okay, you know, I have done my best to raise you and you may have to stumble a couple of times. I'll be there to help you out if you need it, but I need to empower you to make your own choices. The person with codependency it's that is too terrifying to to envision letting anybody experience the natural consequences of poor decisions. And caretakers do not frantically try to prevent abandonment. Yes, we love people. We love our significant others. We love our children, we love our family. We love people. However, we recognize that not all relationships are healthy. Not all people are going to mesh well. And caretakers can recognize when a relationship is unhealthy and get some distance. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's somebody in your family and you don't want to completely cut them off. Okay, that's a choice. But a person with codependency is terrified of being alone. So they are often going to frantically do whatever to prevent abandonment. They're frantically or constantly going to be hyper vigilant looking for clues that their dysfunctional other is unhappy with them or might not need them anymore. The essential problems for people with codependency are actually not the dysfunctional others in their life. I know. Let that sink in for a second. The essential problems are the ways they've let the dysfunctional others behavior affect them and trigger their inner child's trauma. Most people, not all, but most people with codependency grew up in a household in which there were adverse childhood experiences. There was a caregiver who had a mental illness who could not be emotionally and or physically available to the child. There was a caregiver who had an addiction who could not be emotionally and or physically there for the child as a result of the caregiver or one or more caregivers having a mental health issue or addiction. Life was chaotic, and trying to feel safe oftentimes meant trying to make sure that caregiver did not decompensate the other. The third option, I guess, if you want to look at it that way, is a lot of children who grew up and developed codependent behaviors grew up in environments where caregivers were what I'll call intentionally neglectful. Now you have the caregivers who had the addiction or the mental illness, and they were just struggling to survive on their own. And then you have the caregiver who intentionally. They didn't care about the child. They may have not wanted the child, they didn't know how to parent, whatever the case is, but the child's needs are inconsequential to that caregiver. So the child spends most of their existence trying to get that caregiver's attention. So let's talk about this inner child trauma. When dysfunctional others, other adults that the person with codependency is in a relationship with, when dysfunctional others put themselves out to be helpless, you know, I can't do this. You need to do it for me. I, I just can't. Oftentimes that triggers in the person with codependency remembering their caregiver who would become helpless, who would become unable to function, unable to get out of bed in the morning, unable to. To dress themselves or get them, get the children to school. So that triggers those memories, that triggers that traumatized inner child that felt terrified because that inner, that child was 5, 6, 7 years old and having to take on adult roles because their caregiver couldn't do it or wouldn't do it. When dysfunctional others are broken or sick, and I use the term broken kind of loosely because that can be interpreted as when dysfunctional others are perceived in some way to be not what the person with codependency wants. So the person with codependency says, this is what you need to be. This is how you need to look. This is the picture we're going to paint. And if you don't fit into this, then you're broken. When people, when dysfunctional others are broken or sick, the inner child, the person with codependency, is often awakened or triggered because it reminds them of their caregiver who was addicted or who had mental illness who couldn't function. Again, they're back there. They never probably got resolution or closure on that where somebody told them that it wasn't their Responsibility to be the parent. It wasn't their fault that the caregiver was incapacitated. So they're still holding on to these core beliefs that they need to caretake and they need to control everything in order to make sure that they're safe. When dysfunctional others refuse to do the right thing. As children grow up in dysfunctional environments, they start to see that their caregivers may have options and may not be choosing options. And children may not understand why their caregivers are not choosing those options. So it feels when their caregiver goes out and gets drunk or gets high or gets arrested again, for the 14th time, the child is going, why? Why did you choose heroin over me? Why did you choose this over me? Why do you refuse to do the right thing when it's right there? Is it my fault? Am I unlovable? Am I driving you to do it? Remember, children think in all or nothing terms. You either love me or you hate me. They think in egocentric terms that are overly personalized, so they think they have a lot more power than they really do. And when their caregivers are dysfunctional, whether dysfunctional, then the child often takes responsibility for that. They think it's their fault that their parent has to use. They think it's their fault that their parents angry or depressed all the time. When dysfunctional others abandon the person with codependency, oh, boy, does this just rip open an old wound? Because it reminds them of all the times that their caregivers, when they were younger, disappeared or withdrew into their room, and they were maybe physically in the house, but they were not emotionally or cognitively present for days at a time, or when dysfunctional others take advantage of them. Going back to the dysfunctional household, the child grew up in an environment in which their caregivers may have stolen their money, may have had them work jobs in order to pay bills, because the caregiver either couldn't or wouldn't. The dysfunctional others, or the caregivers may have had the children, as they grew up, intentionally take on that parent role because they were like, I can't do it. I can't be a parent. You need to make sure you get your siblings to school to do this, to do that. Now, why the caregiver did this, it depends on the person. And I truly believe that in a lot of the cases, the person, the caregivers were struggling with some form of mental illness and addiction, and they were doing the best they could with the tools they had at that time. But that is not what the child sees, that is definitely not what the child feels, and that is not what the inner child remembers, even when the person is older. So when dysfunctional others in the present start reenacting behaviors from the past, it triggers that inner child and it triggers the terror in that inner child. And that child didn't have healthy coping skills. They didn't have people to rely on. So they did what they did best. They tried to control the situation as much as possible. Maybe if I do X, Y and Z, then I can keep the lid on things for a little while. People with codependencies, unhealthy ways of responding to the dysfunctional others, distress by trying to control, fix, or rescue them instead of controlling what they can, which is themselves, is the other essential problem. In recovery, we recognize that we cannot change another person. The other person has to want to change. We cannot fix another person. We can provide them the tools, we can provide support, but they have to be willing to do it. And in recovery from codependency, it becomes important for the person with, with codependency to recognize, at what point do I have to let this person make a choice? At what point have I done all that I am required to do? And it is up to this person to pick up the reins and move on. How might unhealthy ways of responding to a dysfunctional other have developed? And I talked about this a little bit, but I also want to point out, when you grow up in an environment in which caregivers are either not there because they don't want to be, they're intentionally neglectful, or they are not there in emotionally or physically because they just can't be. They have a mental illness or an addiction and they're just struggling to put one foot in front of the other every day. Whatever the reason doesn't really make a big difference to the child. Ultimately, the child is not able to form a secure attachment where they can consistently or they can count on their caregiver to be there and to help them to respond appropriately, to help them deal with emotions and issues when they come up to validate how they're feeling, help them learn how to identify and modulate their own emotions and develop emotional intelligence to learn how to set and maintain boundaries. You know, all of this stuff comes from secure attachment. And when people, when children don't feel like they're in control of their emotions, when children feel anxious most of the time, when children are regularly feeling stressed, that ends up leading to dysfunction of their stress response system, their HPA axis Which ends up leading to emotional dysregulation. And without going deep into that right now, children who have grown up in dysfunctional environments often go from 0 to 200 just like that. They may not get upset about every thing that happens, but when they do get upset, it's a tsunami of anger. And it's important to recognize that. Why might that happen? Well, remember, anger and anxiety are a response to threats. When children do not have a secure attachment figure on whom they can depend because they are dependent, they cannot do it without an adult figure. When they don't have a secure attachment figure on on which to depend, they don't feel safe. So let's go back. When the dysfunctional other in adult life triggers those memories, the person with codependency, their inner child, wakes up and goes, oh, crap, here we go again. Back when the child was small, favorite saying of around our house is not my circus, not my monkeys. Well, back then, it was their circus and it was their monkeys. It was their family. And if their caregivers, the monkeys didn't do what they needed to do, it was going to be a really big freaking problem for the child. The child may not get fed. The child may not get to school. Worse yet, the child may end up in foster care. So there were a lot of problems that would happen if the caregivers couldn't hold it together. Therefore, the child took the reins and said, okay, I'm going to try to keep everything together so even worse things don't happen. Codependency is a set of behaviors often developed by people whose caregivers had addictions or mental illnesses, or unfortunately, were just intentionally neglectful. Trying to respond to and control the caregiver's behavior was essential for safety and was the only way the child knew how to try to be loved. If I do everything that you want me to do, will you love me? Will you pay attention? Will you make sure I get fed? As adults, people with codependency often have an unstable sense of self. They never figured out who they were. They never got to explore what they liked. They were so busy trying to control everything and everyone else in their environment to keep it from falling apart that they got lost. So they have an unstable sense of self, a terrifying fear of abandonment, and they regularly feel unsafe. They often fail to see options and their personal power in situations and continue to try to feel safe and manage their anxieties by controlling others and making themselves indispensable. If they keep controlling someone, if they're indispensable to someone, then they have someone that that needs them, that depends on them, that they can also somehow depend on. And when we get into talking more about codependency characteristics in the following videos, you'll understand how that logic is a little bit wonky. Just like the child growing up in the dysfunctional household, the child was trying to depend on someone who just was not dependable. There was no way that person was going to be dependable no matter what the child did. So we'll cover that in the upcoming videos.