For quite some time I have been involved in psychotherapeutic work with people who have suffered love losses, call these divorce, separation, dating breakup, etc. Also, at the same time I have worked with people who suffer from severe toxic relationships or at least quite dysfunctional, which means that they are related to couples who violate, assault, manipulate and / or destroy their emotional balance or, as we call it in psychology, his homeostasis.
Then and after observing repeated patterns of behavior, hearing - over and over again - the same stories of suffering and noticing identical relationship dynamics, it is quite clear to me that these people share something more than the simple fact of maintaining a relationship. harmful relationship or suffering a lot from a relationship ended. These people share with each other something called codependency.
I have always believed that this condition is the cancer of the emotional problems of the couple. Almost all the other feelings and behaviors that assail a person when suffering from an unhealthy or dysfunctional relationship (jealousy, humiliation, violence, loss of self-esteem, etc.), are derived -directly or indirectly-, from being codependent.
Codependency is a mental and emotional condition, that is, psychological, that appears in someone who repeatedly shows excessive - and usually exaggerated - concern for others, for example your partner.
Codependency is also called attachment affective, because it is formed by the belief that without the person I am attached to and who takes care of me or who I take care of, my life does not have much meaning. Therefore, codependency is a conflictive and addictive relationship with the other person.
I say that it is conflictive because it generates wrong ideas and behaviors that directly collide with what a good relationship is and also with the emotional stability of the people involved. The matter is complicated because being also addictive, this type of relationship causes these wrong ideas and behaviors to be maintained regardless of the level of physical, mental and / or emotional damage that we are suffering or generate in the other.
The addiction in codependency has to do with two factors basically. In the first place, there is the issue that in a codependent relationship the prevailing thought is that of "getting away with it" by each of the members. And this works in a dynamic of "I give" and "I get". For this to happen, it is necessary that in a codependent relationship there are two types of codependent.
First there is the "enslaving" codependent, which is the one we all associate with codependency: the one who depends on the other, that is, the one who enslaves his partner. But there is also one more that is the one that we do not usually consider as codependent, which is the "rescuer" or as I love to call him, codependent "ambulance". He who is in charge of allowing himself to be enslaved by his partner in order to "save".
The second point that has to do with addiction in codependency is that both the "enslaving" codependent and the "rescuer" have two specific ways of obtaining gain from the other (although this gain is not - in codependency - real).
The enslaving codependent displays a mechanism of dominance over his partner using the handling and, more specifically its harmful part: the emotional blackmail. That is, it enslaves the other by means of “if you don't do what I want, you will pay the consequences”; but he does not do it directly, but secretly. Something like "poor me, look how I suffer for you guilt".
As the “ambulance” couple, they exercise this dominance over their partner in a more frontal way than the “enslaver”. And this he carries out through the control. This type of codependent tries, by all his means, to impose his will, his points of view, his way of behaving and feeling the other. And this control is direct, usually based on mechanisms such as emotional, mental and / or economic restrictions. More or less like “why don't you do what I tell you? Don't you see what it is best for you?".
As you can see, this - broadly speaking - is the codependent mechanism in couple, And while it is true that the codependent couple moves from "rescuer" to "enslaving" and vice versa throughout the relationship, it is also true that one of the two permeates your personality more.
However, I also want to give you in this article the 7 characteristics that can tell you if you are codependent. These characteristics, as I told you at the beginning, are the product of observations, studies and work with codependents of emotional and mental health professionals..
Of course, the factors listed below are not determinative (use your assertiveness) but they are influential on the issue of codependency. These characteristics are:
1. You grew up in a dysfunctional home (Like all people, but the issue in which they develop codependency is the extent to which the dysfunction has elapsed). You probably lived with addicted parents who fought or were violent - not necessarily physical violence - all or most of the time. This violence in parents also occurs when they "loved each other and had no problems", but behind there were behaviors such as ignoring the other, alcoholism or infidelities.
2. No matter how hard you tried, you did not receive recognition from your parents. Usually they were so engrossed in their own neurosis that the last thing they did was pay attention to you.
3. This is one of my favorites. If you were an extremely mature girl or boy for your age, it was out of necessity, since you had to grow up fast to take care of your siblings, your parents and even to survive. This "maturity" caused you to skip the healthy stages of your child or youth development..
4. You are unable to set limits, because that would mean saying no to people, And since -according to you and your codependency-, that implies that those people stop loving, accepting or protecting you, you prefer to lower your head and accept things that you do not want to do, think or feel.
5. Another of my favorites. Other people are always more important than you. Since you lived in a dysfunctional home, no one used to listen to you unless you were useful for someone else's purposes. In this way you grew up with the conditioning of satisfying the needs of others to exchange it for affection or acceptance..
6. You feel excessive weakness for the weak, the oppressed and those who suffer injustice (or at least what you consider injustices). Your thinking is almost to consider yourself a super hero (remember the "ambulances"?).
7. Finally and paradoxically, you can't stand showing yourself vulnerable because you think this is synonymous with weakness. This occurs because in your family of origin the expression of your feelings was not allowed and when it occurred, it was censored or seen as a defect.
As you can see, there is quite a forcefulness in these signals and I am sure that at this moment you are realizing that you present several of them -if not all of them.- .
The good news is that codependency can be changed. You can stop being codependent if you really put your mind to it. This is achieved through hard work with a mental health professional and particularly the recognition and understanding that you may begin to have about it. That is the end of this short article. Until next time.
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