Mar 12, 2025 | Mental Health
Fulfilling relationships and connections are essential for living happy, fulfilling lives. However, we often don’t critically examine whether what we were taught about relationships serves us. Life doesn’t come with a guidebook to tell us how to do these things. I will discuss where relationships can go wrong: codependency.
Healthy relationships are interdependent; both people support each other while maintaining their independence, boundaries, and personal identities. They take responsibility for their emotions/behaviour and have goals/fulfillment outside of the relationship. They remain connected by choice, not out of obligation, fear, guilt, or dependency. Caring for others is not problematic—persistent self-sacrifice is. Consider if any of your specific relationships are dysfunctional instead of labelling yourself “codependent.” The presence of codependency doesn’t mean something is wrong with you, but this doesn’t mean you can’t want better for yourself. Our care for others can coexist with our care for ourselves.
“Codependency” isn’t a clinical diagnosis but is, rather, a broad term used to describe a coping mechanism involving unhealthy attachment; at the cost of personal well-being, codependent people receive security, validation, identity, and purpose from others. Some view codependency as a “relationship addiction,” and I believe some people have even argued (unsuccessfully) for its inclusion in the DSM as a personality disorder in the past. Codependency often involves weak boundaries, low self-worth, fear, and emotional suppression/dysregulation; this leads to things like stress, anxiety/depression, and unbalanced, less satisfying, or abusive relationships. Codependency can affect romantic, platonic, familial, professional, and community relationships. It can be especially damaging for those in “helping” professions or those around people struggling with significant addiction/mental health.
Codependent behaviour is often a reflection of the behaviour learned as a means to survive or navigate a dysfunctional environment. Codependent behaviour in adulthood can also be the unconscious attempt to fill a void that was created in childhood. Often without realizing it, we often model in adulthood some or many relationship patterns we observed in our caregivers (e.g., parents repeatedly sacrificing their own needs to keep the family together/stable, parents being absent due to investing themselves in their work completely to provide for the family, etc.). While significant experiences in adulthood can certainly contribute to codependency, it often starts developing at an early age because of the lessons we consciously and unconsciously learned. There are many reasons why codependency can develop, but I will outline a few common contributors below.
Codependency often stems from childhood environments where emotional needs were unmet, where dysfunction was normalized, and where mental illness or addiction was present. Self-expression, boundaries, and emotions were dismissed, invalidated, or punished; this can lead to the belief that love is conditional on caregiving or peacekeeping. Children in dysfunctional families may suppress their needs to maintain stability, resulting in an identity based on serving others. They may take on caregiving roles for parents or siblings, whether through physical tasks like cooking and cleaning or through emotional tasks like making decisions for them or quelling their anger. The cycle of dysfunctional behaviour from caregivers reinforces their codependency, making them overextend to avoid conflict, rejection, or abandonment. These patterns are often passed down through generations. Without intervention, these patterns continue into adulthood and are unconsciously repeated in relationships, parenting styles, and social interactions.
Cultural and societal belief systems can reinforce values like self-sacrifice, duty, and putting others first. Some messages and lessons passed on might resemble the following:
These types of messages teach us that our personal needs and feelings are invalid or, at best, secondary. Regardless of whether these types of messages were explicitly communicated or implied, we internalize them and, unless we critically examine them, believe them to be objectively correct.
Our identities can become rooted in our relationships when we are denied exploration of our own wants, needs, and values. Being denied this exploration can make it difficult to distinguish personal desires and responsibilities from the desires and responsibilities of others. Continuous reinforcement of external success from family can exacerbate this issue. Praise and acknowledgement for choices or accomplishments caregivers deem valuable followed up with pressure to achieve more can instill the belief that love and approval are tied to external success and service to others. This can cause people uncertainty about what they truly want or need, and they often struggle to give themselves permission to feel their own emotions.
The conditioning I discussed in the previous section often results in certain schemas being developed. Schemas are like mental blueprints/filters that help your brain efficiently make sense of the world. They are composed of past experiences, beliefs, and assumptions that influence how you see things, react to situations, and make decisions. I like to imagine a schema as a pair of tinted glasses, with the entirety of what we have learned determining the colour of the lenses. While glasses help us see more efficiently, we will always see everything in a certain colour unless the tint changes.
We all care about others and what people think of us a little bit—there is nothing wrong with that. However, for people who struggle with codependency, the behaviours of others that challenge their established schemas can feel like threats/attacks against them, as denying them external validation is robbing them of their primary coping mechanism. I will provide examples here of codependent schemas influencing thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.
Thoughts
Feelings
Behaviours
Many parents struggle with the idea of not being able to “provide” for their children because their children have grown into adults. In codependency, the caretaking that was once developmentally appropriate—cooking meals, cleaning rooms, covering costs/rent, etc.—is still present. The move towards independence by the children jeopardizes the very identity of the parents, thus rendering the parents without purpose. To continue feeling needed, parents might sabotage their independence. However, the set of criteria for fulfilling one’s role does not need to be so rigid. Being a “good mother/father” for a child vs. an adult is supposed to look different. A change in behaviour does not necessitate a change in identity.
I describe codependency—which might differ from how others describe it—as attachment to the external. The concept of codependency can be applied to external things we see as extensions of us that we rely on to connect with others (e.g., familial roles, jobs, beliefs about “success,” money, material possessions, etc.). If your codependent schema ties your self-worth and confidence to your appearance, not only do you have to like the way you look on any given day for you to feel valuable and confident, others must also agree (i.e., provide external validation). What happens when you aren’t your desired weight, wearing the clothes you want, able to get a haircut, wearing makeup, looking how you used to, receiving compliments when others are, and so on? Your self-worth and confidence disappear as soon as the external “thing” you attached them to does.
While codependent behaviour does not cause the behaviour of others, shielding others from the natural consequences of their actions enables self-destructive, dysfunctional, irresponsible, and incongruent behaviour. The brain’s stress response is activated when it perceives a threat. When consequences that would otherwise drive change (e.g., financial loss, relationship losses, health Issues, legal consequences, etc.) are blunted or removed by codependent behaviour—called “negative reinforcement” in psychology or “bailouts” in recovery circles—the brain does not register a threat in its entirety, keeping them trapped in a cycle. This pattern can foster an “external locus of control,” where people believe their life outcomes are dictated by external forces rather than personal choices. Over time, this can contribute to “learned helplessness” and chronic stress. The dopaminergic system governs things like satisfaction, pleasure, reward, motivation, and reinforcement. Excess cortisol from chronic stress can deplete dopamine, driving people toward maladaptive behaviours or substances (e.g., drugs, alcohol, gambling, eating, shopping, video games, social media, etc.) to both restore balance and cope with stress, pain, suffering, shame, hopelessness, etc. With addiction, this tendency is not due to a lack of morals, self-control, or willpower. People with addictions or codependency are not inherently different or broken; their coping mechanisms are simply not serving them constructively. However, if you become the primary coping mechanism for others, it is more difficult for them to develop independent stress management skills, healthy coping mechanisms, and internal motivation for change.
Developing self-awareness by recognizing codependent tendencies is the necessary first step to recovering from codependency. To help with this, reflect on whether your own wellbeing, needs, wants, ability to communicate openly, ability to cope effectively, etc. come secondary to your relationship with something external (other people, work, material possessions, money, expectations, etc.). I will provide some more recommendations (in no particular order) below.
Sean Bays has been with Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare since 2014, working in security for 4.5 years before transitioning to the role of Responsive Behaviour Navigator (RBN) for another 4.5 years. Currently, Sean is on a full-time contract as a Problem Gambling Counsellor, while his permanent role remains the RBN. He is an instructor at St. Clair College on the side and has also previously been consulted for post-secondary program evaluation.
Sean holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts (double major in Psychology and Philosophy) from the University of Windsor and a Master of Education (concentration in Teaching and Learning) from the University of Ottawa. Throughout his career, he has been actively involved in psychoeducation for clinical staff and has continuously worked on program development and process improvements. Sean also holds a Canadian Problem Gambling Counsellor (CPGC) certification and is registered with the Canadian Addiction Counsellors Certification Federation.
In his (limited) spare time, Sean enjoys staying active, writing, and spending quality time with his family, friends, and dog. He has co-written a TV show and is currently in the process of pitching it.