Codependency: what it is and how to recognise the signs

When we think about addictions, we almost always look at the person who uses substances or who maintains the addictive behaviour. However, around them there are usually other people who also suffer and who, without realising it, become trapped in an equally painful dynamic. This way of becoming caught up in another person's problem is called codependency, and understanding it is essential both for the person who lives it and for anyone accompanying a loved one with an addiction or another difficulty.

Codependency is a pattern of relationship in which one person centres their life on caring for, controlling or saving another, to the point of forgetting about themselves. It is a way of loving that, although it is born of the best intentions, ends up harming the person who practises it and, often, also the person they are trying to help. In this article we explain what codependency is and how to recognise its signs, so that you can begin to face it head-on.

What codependency is

Codependency is a pattern of behaviour and relationship characterised by an excessive dependence on the needs, emotions and problems of another person. The codependent person lives focused on the other: on their mood, their difficulties, their crises. Their wellbeing depends entirely on how the other person is, and their identity is built around the role of carer or saviour.

The concept initially arose in the context of families with addiction problems. It was observed that the partner, parents or children of a person with an addiction frequently developed a very particular pattern: they threw themselves completely into the addict, tried to control their behaviour, covered up the consequences and organised their whole life around the problem. Over time it was understood that this pattern is not limited to addictions, but can appear in any relationship where one person annuls themselves in order to take charge of the other.

It is important to understand that codependency is not the same as caring for or helping someone we love. Caring in a healthy way is wonderful and necessary. The difference is that, in codependency, that care becomes compulsive, is done at one's own expense and responds to an inner need: the need to feel needed, useful or indispensable in order to have worth.

Codependency as a form of addiction

Although it may be surprising, many specialists describe codependency as an addiction to the relationship or to caring for the other. And it makes sense, because it shares many features with addictions: the codependent person obtains a sense of worth and control from caring, cannot stop doing it even when it is harming them, and experiences deep distress when they try to create distance.

Caring for the other thus becomes the axis of one's own life, the way of feeling good and of giving meaning to existence. And like any addictive dynamic, it generates negative consequences that the person tolerates in order to maintain the bond: exhaustion, giving up their own needs, constant suffering. Understanding this dimension helps to explain why it is so difficult to come out of codependency with goodwill alone.

Signs for recognising codependency

Recognising codependency in yourself is not easy, because many of its behaviours are socially valued: being devoted, sacrificing yourself for others, always being available. However, there are signs that help to identify it:

Signs related to caring for the other

• Feeling a constant need to help, care for or save others, even when they do not ask for it.
• Taking on responsibility for other people's problems and emotions.
• Trying to control the other's life or decisions "for their own good".
• Covering up, justifying or resolving the consequences of the other person's behaviour.

Signs related to yourself

• Neglecting your own needs, wishes and health in order to attend to others.
• Feeling that your own worth depends on being useful or needed.
• Enormous difficulty saying no and setting limits.
• Feeling guilt when you devote time or care to yourself.
• Progressively losing your own identity, hobbies and friendships.

Emotional signs

• A mood that depends entirely on how the other person is.
• Fear of rejection, abandonment or conflict.
• A sense of emptiness or of not knowing who you are outside the relationship.
• Accumulated resentment from giving so much and feeling you do not receive the same.

How codependency develops

Codependency usually has its roots in personal and family history. Very often it is learned in childhood, in environments where the child had to take charge prematurely of the emotions or problems of the adults. When a child grows up in a family with addiction, illness, conflict or instability, they may learn that their role is to care, to keep the peace and to put the needs of others before their own. That learning later becomes a pattern of relationship.

Low self-esteem plays a central role. When a person does not feel that they are worthy in their own right, they find in caring for the other a way of feeling valuable and indispensable. Being needed becomes the way of existing and of deserving affection. To this is usually added a strong fear of abandonment and rejection, which pushes the person to please, not to set limits and to sustain the relationship at any price.

Cultural messages that idealise sacrifice and devotion also have an influence, especially in the sphere of caregiving. "A good mother gives everything", "love is sacrifice", "others first and then you"... These are ideas that, taken to the extreme, can fuel codependent dynamics and make the person confuse self-annulment with loving well.

The consequences of codependency

Living in codependency has an enormous cost, though often an invisible one. The codependent person experiences constant physical and emotional exhaustion, because they take on more than they can sustain. Their self-esteem, far from being reinforced, gradually weakens, because it depends on something as unstable as the recognition and the state of the other.

Over time, the person loses contact with themselves: they forget what they like, what they need, what they want for their life. Their identity becomes diluted in the relationship. Difficult feelings also appear, such as resentment at giving so much without receiving, guilt over any gesture of self-care and an underlying sadness that is hard to name.

Paradoxically, codependency does not help the other person either. Covering up the consequences of an addiction, always resolving the other's problems or controlling their life usually prevents them from taking on their own responsibility and seeking the help they need. In this way, the dynamic perpetuates itself and both remain trapped.

How codependency is addressed in therapy

Codependency can be worked on, and coming out of it is profoundly liberating. The goal is not to stop loving or caring, but to learn to do so from a place of balance, without annulling yourself. The therapeutic process usually focuses on:

• Recovering contact with yourself: identifying once again your own needs, wishes and emotions, so often forgotten.
• Rebuilding self-esteem: learning that you are worthy for who you are, not for what you do for others.
• Learning to set limits: developing the ability to say no and to protect yourself without feeling guilt.
• Distinguishing healthy care from sacrifice: telling the difference between helping from freedom and compulsively taking charge of the other.
• Working on the fear of abandonment: learning to sustain your own wellbeing without depending entirely on others' approval.
• Reviewing your personal history: understanding where the pattern comes from in order to transform it.

Individual therapy offers a safe space to make this journey with support and without judgement. Little by little, the person recovers their own life, learns to care for themselves as much as they care for others, and discovers that they can love without losing themselves.

Codependency and emotional dependence: how they differ

It is common to confuse codependency with emotional dependence, and although they are closely related and often coexist, it is worth clarifying their differences. Emotional dependence is characterised above all by the need to be loved and by the intense fear of being abandoned: the person needs the other's affection and presence in order to feel well.

Codependency, by contrast, places the emphasis on the role of carer. The codependent person does not so much seek to be cared for as to care for, control and save the other. Their sense of worth comes from feeling useful and indispensable. We could say that, while emotional dependence revolves around "I need you in order to feel well", codependency revolves around "I need you to need me".

In practice, both dynamics usually intertwine and share common roots: low self-esteem, fear of abandonment, difficulty setting limits and an affective history in which love was learned in an insecure or conditional way. That is why they are often addressed together in the therapeutic process, attending both to the need to be loved and to the need to care for the other in order to have worth.

Returning to yourself in order to care better

Recognising that you live in codependency is not a reason for guilt, but the first step towards a freer and healthier life. Learning to care for yourself does not make you selfish, nor does it stop you being a loving person; on the contrary, it allows you to love from a more balanced place, one in which there is also space for you.

If in reading these signs you have recognised yourself, or you have recognised someone close, perhaps it is time to ask for help. At Reconectar we are an outpatient treatment centre in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria specialising in addiction and codependency. We offer individual, personalised and confidential care, respectful of your process and your pace, to help you recover your identity and build healthier relationships. Getting in touch with us can be the beginning of a very important reunion: the reunion with yourself.