Codependency: When Caring Becomes Losing Yourself

Corey J. Nigro (0:01)

Hi, everyone, it's Dr. Nigro again with our next episode of Psychology Unplugged. Thanks, as always, to all of our listeners. I appreciate your continued support and involvement with the podcast. I know a lot of people have reached out through Buzzsprout, which is the hosting platform I use for the podcast, but I can't respond to anybody. I know there's a few people who are studying psychology, working on their doctoral degrees, or in Massachusetts, who wanted to get in contact with me or meet me. So I'll give you information of how to reach me more directly at the end of this. So today's episode has its origins in a text message that was sent at 2.4 in the morning. I didn't see until I got up about 5.30, asking if I could talk about enmeshment and avoidance. And I decided to talk today about co-dependency, because it's how my mind works. And it's a topic that I think really gets thrown around a lot. It's something that is part of something that we can assess for in neuropsych evals, especially when it comes to more of the social-emotional functioning, like the Rorschach and the TAT, and just a lot of clinical background information. So a lot of people, they say, I'm codependent, my relationship is codependent, my mother is codependent.

I keep ending up with narcissists because I'm so codependent. And I want to kind of like to slow this down to explain what, you know, where this came from and how this term manifests itself.

You know, I think it's, you know, why do some people seem to organize their entire lives around rescuing other people? And why is no so difficult for some people? And that's a big part of the therapeutic work I do with individuals with borderline personality disorder. And, you know, the question is, why does someone recognize that a relationship, whether it's intimate, platonic, family, is destructive and still feel incapable of leaving it? And, you know, I think another important question is, you know, when does caring about another person stop being loved and start becoming, you know, like, self-erasure? Like, you lose your identity in that process. So codependency is not a DSM diagnosis. It's not in the personality disorders.

And that doesn't mean that the behaviors people describe as codependent aren't real. And, you know, the whole term, like codependency, I think is important because the history of the term didn't originally mean what it's like on TikTok, and Instagram, and everyday conversations. And the concept really emerged from the substance abuse world.

You know, clinicians started noticing that addiction didn't just affect the person using alcohol or drugs, it affected the entire family system.

You know, everyone in the household begins adapting. You know, someone covers for the substance use, somebody calls the employer, says they're sick, someone pays the bills they forgot to pay, and so on, and so forth. And what actually was the original term, it was, they call it co-alcoholic. And that's the history of the term, what we now refer to as co-dependency. And it really moved beyond addiction.

And an important distinction, I think, is, you know, healthy dependence is not the same as co-dependence because as humans, even as just pictures, like as infants and children, we are dependent on one another. That's, I hate the term, but that's normal. And I would say it's probably more than normal. It's really fundamental to being a human because we are social animals. Children, they require caregivers, they need to be fed, they need to be changed. We need intimacy, we need friendships, we need community, we need people. And you know, the goal of psychological health or psychological, you know, well adjustment is not radical independence. And, you know, people, I think, you sometimes hear the language of boundaries and think psychological health means, well, I don't need anybody. And that's not health.

I think that can also be a defensive extreme, but healthy adult relationships, they involve, I would say, interdependence. Like, I can depend on you, you can depend on me, but neither of us has to disappear for the relationship to survive. So it's ideally the perfect Venn diagram. There's you, there's the other individual, and you intersect healthily, and those are your shared common interests, and ideals, and values, and whatnot. And then the larger part of the circle is your identity, and your aspirations, and dreams, and fears, and whatnot. And the other half of the other circle is the other person, with the same qualities. So, when you talk about codependency, I think what happens is people get caught in a codependent pattern, and repeatedly do things like feeling responsible for someone else's emotions, tremendous difficulty saying no, feeling a lot of guilt when they prioritize themselves. Like, I don't want to go get my nails done, because they may need me to pick the kid up from school, or I just don't deserve that, because they're really stressed with work, repeatedly rescuing people from their consequences. And sometimes you see this a lot with parents, who make a lot of excuses for their, you know, even adult children, staying in relationships when they become destructive, minimizing mistreatment. And I think there's a confusion that people have about being needed with being loved. And what happens is, the person becomes hyper aware of another person's mood, and they abandon their interests, and then they avoid conflict, and they constantly reassurance. And I think what happens is, they over function when the other person under functions. And there's also, you know, this rescuer identity, you know, the knight in shining armor syndrome. And I think this is a really important part in understanding codependency, because there are some people, they derive enormous psychological meaning from just being needed. They're the fixer, they're the caretaker, they're the problem solver, they're the, you know, everybody, the person everybody calls. And I think, initially, that feels good. Who doesn't like being wanted or needed? That's perfectly good. But I think when people start to organize their lives around that, and that becomes almost the psychological fuel and energy to maintain and calibrate their self-esteem, I think that's when it becomes problematic and somewhat pathological.