How did you become co-dependent in the first place?
The following factors typically influence co-dependent behaviors:
- As a child you learned a set of behaviors and methods of solving problems that helped you survive a family or environment of great emotional pain and stress.
The stress could have come from:
- Living with someone with a chemical dependency
- Physical, sexual or emotional abuse
- Dealing with a family member with a chronic illness either mental or physical
- Being raised in a non-loving or hyper-critical environment
As an adult, a codependent person has little to no sense of self. If you were to look back on your life, you might see that your whole life has been spent in extreme acts to meet others' expectations. Your emotions and thoughts about yourself are based on people's responses to you. For example, if you're nice to me, I'm a good person. If you disagree with me or snap at me, I'm a bad person.
A co-dependent person typically:
- Deals with trust issues – you’ve learned not to trust other people or yourself.
- Feels a continual sense of disappointment – you may have felt continually let down or disappointed.
- Becomes a people pleaser – you seek fulfillment in pleasing other people; but that never really works. You don't feel you deserve the gratitude or compliments you may receive. It may feel like it's never enough.
Some of the behaviors you adopted to help you survive became compulsive, which means you do them against your will; you have no control over them. You may not even realize you are doing them. Those behaviors and problem-solving methods are now keeping you from living a life where you feel safe, secure, loved and fulfilled.
Because of them, you keep repeating the same patterns over and over, sometimes with different partners, and you still aren't happy.
Giving and being kind, considerate, empathic, and of service is great and something the world definitely needs. It turns into codependency when the driving need is when you have to please others in order to feel whole as a person. A symptom of low self-esteem is you think it's not right to take care of yourself or to be assertive.
Finding your identity in being a rescuer or martyr is not healthy.
