Codependency: what the term names and what it does not
It is used to describe someone who lives watching over another person until they lose themselves along the way. This guide explains where the word comes from, which dynamics it describes well and at what point it turns into a label that does more harm than good. You are not going to find a verdict about yourself here.
Where the word comes from
It is not a diagnosis. It does not appear in any clinical manual and it does not describe a disorder.
It was born in the nineteen-seventies in the support groups for the families of people with alcoholism, to name something that kept repeating: the person alongside ended up organizing their whole life around the other one’s problem. They arrived exhausted, with no plans of their own and with the feeling that if they eased off for a day, the whole thing would come down.
From there it moved into everyday language, and today it is applied to any relationship — a partner, a father or a mother, an adult child, a friend — in which one person holds things up and the other lets themselves be held up.
What it usually describes:
- Life gets organized around the other person’s mood. If they are all right, the day goes well. If not, everything else steps aside.
- Helping has become the place you stand in inside the relationship. Not something you do sometimes, but the role.
- It is hard to know what you want. When you have spent a long time watching what another person needs, the question “and what do you want?” gets answered with an odd silence.
- The tiredness comes with guilt. Being fed up and feeling bad about being fed up, at the same time.
Recognizing one or two things on this list does not mean anything on its own. Half of humanity would recognize themselves in the first one.
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Caring is not the problem
It is worth saying this early, because the word has turned into a reproach.
Taking care of someone you love when they are going through a bad time is not a symptom: it is what people do. Holding up a partner through a hard year, being there for a sick parent or staying on top of a child who has gotten into trouble does not make anybody codependent.
The difference is not in how much you care. It is in two things:
- What it costs you. If in order to hold the other person up you have gone months without seeing your own people, without sleeping well or without remembering what you used to enjoy, the price is no longer paid by the situation alone: you pay it.
- Whether it does any good. There is help that resolves and help that only postpones. When the same thing repeats year after year and each time it takes a little more of you, it is worth looking at what that effort is really holding up.
And there is something this guide is not going to tell you: to step aside, to stop helping, or that the other person needs to fall in order to react. That gets read a lot and it is not advice anyone can give blind from a text. Setting a boundary is something else — it is deciding what you do, not working out what will happen to the other person.
Where the label stops helping
It has two limits, and both of them show up in session.
The first: it explains one single person in a relationship that has two. It names very well what the one who holds things up does, and it says nothing about what goes on between the two of them or about why that way of being together has become the only one possible.
The second: it is used as an accusation. “You are codependent” turns up in arguments more than in sessions, and often it is said by exactly the person who benefits from the other one no longer asking. That somebody has called you it does not mean that you are, nor the other way around.
That is why the work here is with the concrete and not with the word: what happens, with whom, when it started, what you do then and what it costs you.
If the person you are worried about has a problem with something
If you have arrived here because someone in your home has a problem with alcohol, with another substance or with a behavior they cannot stop, there are two better places than this one:
- The guide for family members trying to save someone, written for exactly that situation.
- The page on support in substance dependency, if that is where the problem is.
And if what you are after is for the whole of it to be looked at and not only your part, there is family therapy. Not to share out the blame: so that everybody’s role stops being so fixed.
If what you recognize is the bond
When the person you are holding up is your partner, this looks a lot like what is called emotional dependency, and sometimes it is the same thing seen from the other side.
It may also help you to read anxious attachment, which explains where the fear of the other person pulling away comes from, and toxic relationships, if what is going round your head is whether this relationship is hurting you.
Frequently asked questions
Is codependency a diagnosis?
No. It is not in any diagnostic manual and it is not an illness. It is a way of describing a pattern in relationships, useful for understanding what is going on and limited because no person fits whole into a category.
Can it be worked on without the other person coming?
Yes, and that is the most usual thing. The person you are worried about does not have to want therapy for you to be able to look at what is costing you and what is in your hands. In fact, waiting for the other one to take the step is one of the things that wastes the most time.
Is setting a boundary the same as no longer loving someone?
No, although the first few times it feels that way. A boundary says what you are going to do; it does not punish the other person or withdraw your affection. The hard part is not usually deciding it: it is holding it when the other person gets angry, and that can be practiced.
I have been told I am codependent. Am I?
Nobody can answer that for you from an article, and whoever said it to you was not in a position to diagnose you either. What can be looked at, with someone and calmly, is what is happening in that relationship and how you are inside it.
How much does a session cost?
An individual session costs €70, a couples session €100, a family therapy session €120 and a group session €45 per person. Prices are the same in person and online, and asking commits you to nothing.
Almost nobody asks for help for themselves the first time they think about this: they ask for help for the other person. That you have got this far reading about what is happening to you is already a change of place.
Shall we talk it over for fifteen minutes?
You do not need to know whether the word describes you, or for the other person to want to change anything. Tell us what is going on and we will look at it with you. The first call is free and commits you to nothing.
You can also call us at 600 21 57 83.
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