Rejecting The Term Codependency
Codependency: noun
excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction.
I do not find this words helpful or accurate. I agree with Dr. Sue Johnson, my favourite attachment based couples therapist who says:
“there is no such thing as codependency, there is only effective and ineffective dependency.”
The label codependency pathologizes relationships when what we need to be doing is helping people see the power in our relationships. Pathologizing supportive behaviours and attributes in relationships — reinforces the “codependent myth”
There is no proof or even accurate measurement of ‘codependency’. It has extensively been used to stigmatise those with loved ones who have addiction, and for those with insecure attachment dynamics. When in fact all the research now points to compassionate harm reduction strategies and relationship building being much more effective than ‘tough love’. Unsurprising when you consider both addiction and a great deal of disease is rooted in emotional pain.
Where did this term come from?
In a patriarchal society where emotions are labeled as weak and hyper individualism is praised, this can be troubling. Even my field of trauma and healing is currently swamped with trendy exercises to do on your own. Yes we need to learn to self regulate and meet ourselves. But we cannot and do not heal or thrive in isolation. Community is our medicine. We are hurt in relationship and we heal in relationship.
The term further reinforces the idea that we must give ourselves everything we need and if you’re not fully satisfied on your own, then you must be “codependent”. This is also echoed in some spiritual communities who say do not be attached to having any needs, otherwise you are in lack. This is not how we are biologically wired. I have discussed this before in my polyvagal classes and blog posts. Our biology is geared towards a need for connection in order to survive and thrive.
As it turns out, aspiring to a healthy, dependent partnership is not wrong. It is healthy interdependence that has space for our individual wholeness but space for feelings and needs to be communicated and met - not always, but in a ‘good enough’ fashion to promote secure attachment. What’s wrong is settling and staying with a partner who doesn’t support you because you deem yourself “codependent”. Turning this word in on ourselves can further reinforce patterns of disowning our needs and shaming ourselves for them, which perpetuates core beliefs like we are not worthy of being met, or do not deserve to have our feelings and needs take up space and be met.
Language matters - moving towards effective and ineffective dependency instead of codependency
Ineffective Dependency
If we are reliant on someone or other people to give ourselves the feelings of accomplishment, nurturing, and helping that makes us feel purpose or worth in life, then that is ineffective dependency. This yes can be seen in a partner of someone with addiction but also in a whole spectrum of people with more insecure attachment styles, which is not a pathology in any way. It is how we learned to stay feeling connected to our caregivers, and how we managed our distress when we could not be met by them. So what we see now in adulthood in our behaviours, thoughts and feeling is simply a guide for how we can better care for ourselves and one another. It is part of the path of growth in our lifetime.
How we learned to try and attachment needs, and how we managed distress from them not being met is not shameful.
Attachment needs we have:
The child feels safe.
A child needs to feel secure and safe in their environment so as to flourish. ...
The child feels seen and known. ...
The child feels comforted. ...
The child feels valued. ...
The child feels support for being their best self.
We ALL have these needs. There is no right or wrong way for a child to resolve this need; a child may meet their attachment needs in a range of ways, depending on their experience with a caregiver.
Sometimes how we tried to get these needs met: (people pleasing, giving a lot of energy to others, pushing down our needs, helping, caregiving, appeasing for example - these will be different for all) no longer work in adulthood. Some of these ways are deeply socially conditioned in terms of gender and social identity roles too. So please be aware that as we come to look at these, we are working on a deeper level than individual - we are healing familial and cultural burdens too. How our brave child self and nervous system adapted was heroic, but those parts may need some help here and now to help them learn new ways of being.
How we managed our distress if they were not met (protesting, complaining, dislocating, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, shutting down, retreating, criticising - these will be different for all) can often now cause distress individually and in our relationships. Those parts of us that help us manage our big feelings and distress are also heroic, but they too may need help to complete any stuck cycles so we can feel and heal our distress and other emotions.
We often form painful core beliefs about ourselves when we are children from the type of care our caregivers gave us and the resultant distress of not being met, for example ‘I am not good enough, I am bad, I am not worthy, there is something wrong with me, feeling is bad/wrong’, which now serve to hold us back from our authentic expression and joy.
All of these can cause us difficulty , disease and emotional pain (the same as physical pain in the brain) due to now being maladaptive for our adult selves lives, hence the term ‘ineffective dependence’ being much more accurate than codependency. They are not ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. Our nervous system decides for us in the moment what is the wisest way to stay safe, connected and surviving. Our younger selves did pretty well because here you are, reading this. How about we do not judge those young parts or pathologist them, and instead welcome them in and get curious about their story in our mind body.
This is our work. To explore our thoughts, emotions, somatic and neural maps of attachment to see where we can grow more securely attached with those distressed parts of ourselves and heal the nervous system maps of our attachment patterns. These are deep rooted biobehavioural patterns so we need to approach this work with compassion and no agenda to ‘fix’ or ‘change’. Only to welcome in, accept, and extend an invitation for collaboration to our inner world. Increased collaboration and compassion with ourselves is what heals us, not trying to ‘get’ somewhere.
When To Get Curious About Our Patterns
We can without realising give someone the power over our love (relationships, friends, family) by being ineffectively dependent in the ways listed above. But there is an invitation to look in the mirror of relationship and see our own reflection of a valid desire for belonging and our other needs. We must own that and begin to build bridges of validation and compassion to those needs. To learn new ways of meeting them from a place of self esteem (effective dependency) not desperation (ineffective dependency) that helps us know we are worthy of them being met.
If you’re not effectively dependent on your partner, you are ineffectively dependent on each other. Your relationship may be insecure or unstable. You may question whether it will last. It may travel in cycles as each repeat cycle gives us the opportunity to turn inwards and connect with our feelings, needs and wounds. As a result of such instability, you may act in away that embodies ineffective dependency, but that you or your partner may label as “codependent” behavior. For example, you may feel excessively clingy or “needy” due to the distress you feel on the inside about the distance between you and your partner. If someone I work with with is exhibiting such behaviour, it is clear to me that their needs are simply not getting met.
Maybe because of a history of trauma, or a lifetime of not having a safe someone to connect to (which is traumatic in itself), their level of “neediness” is higher than others, but this does not make them co-dependent. It means they needs aren’t getting met. Perhaps they don’t have a template of how to be effectively dependent on another or a roadmap of how to begin to give that to themselves so they can then even receive it from another (and feel worthy of receiving it). Women especially have been socialised to minimise their needs, bleed themselves dry to care for others, to be ‘good’, not feel angry and now in this era - to also make money as this is needed in late stage capitalism. Is it any wonder we have lost our innate rhythms of effective dependence and reciprocity. We are increasingly sick with stress based illnesses. Men - I do not discount your particular challenges too here, so please know I acknowledge male gender conditioning has done damage in different ways to you and you are equally deserving of compassion and support.
Interdependence - The Myth of Hyper Individualism
Not attach to another and to be chronically lonely is more of a health hazard than obesity or even smoking cigarettes. We are deeply in need of connection for all facets of health. So I suggest we throw the word “co-dependent” in the fuck it bucket and accept the fact that we cannot outsmart our biological needs.
Instead, we can get more intimate with those often disowned needs inside us, legitimise them, brainstorm with safe guidance about new ways to meet them ourselves so we can make healthy bids for support in meeting them from others. Many people are doing this work in the total absence of familial models of healthy attachment. So to label them with ‘codependency’ feels incredibly cruel to me. How about the label ‘cycle breaker’ or ‘ancestral healing badass’ or ‘hero/heroine’. Because that is closer to the truth of people brave enough to begin to notice they would like to help themselves. It is incredibly vulnerable to land in front of a therapist/coach, to begin to learn and understand how we came to be who we are and take radical responsibility for it. So let’s hold out a hand of compassion instead of judgement.
Embracing Healthy Interdependence - Effective Dependency
Please remember this: it is not only permissible, but healthy, to have needs in a relationship and in social contexts. When you are able to clarify your needs, you are being authentic to who you are. We come into relationships, on a spiritual perspective, for the purpose of learning more about ourselves through our mirror. In the moments when we are able to communicate our needs, we take our power back. By establishing, “Hey, this is how I feel and the needs I would like support with, this is how I can learn to depend on you healthily,” there is great medicine in what we can learn about ourselves.
What it is we will and will not stand for offers another opportunity for growth. This is where we clarify our somatic and emotional boundaries, and also happens to be the exact moment we shift out of ineffective dependency and into wholeness. It allows us to connect with our values and own them in the context of relationship - again something we may never have had modelled as kids.
The love you give yourself is the love that will be returned to you. So, if you want to be loved for your beautiful idiosyncratic awesomeness, it is imperative that you give yourself permission to love all these things about yourself. Dare to learn to love what you are right now - all parts of you. This process of self-love heals the disconnection from our true selves that happened often very young and instead places you into acceptance of what IS.
When we mindfully acknowledge where our patterns have come from and then frame growth as creating new maps for needs to be met, is a compassionate empowering path to greater wholeness.
It allows someone to frame their thoughts, emotions, distress management strategies and behaviours in a context that does not create a blame and shame spiral (which can re traumatise someone with internalised shame). Instead it invites us to look at what is alive in us and build a compassionate relationship to it.
Instead of a label, we can dial into the behaviour we observe and what it teaches us about ourselves. For example; instead of saying “I’m codependent”, we can reframe it as: “I have a pattern of “self-abandonment. This stopped a caregiver rejecting me when I was younger” or “sometimes I ignore my own feelings and needs, in order to avoid conflict with someone else. This kept me safe when I was younger”
Instead of codependency………. A reframe
Are you working on yourself?
Are you in the process of healing?
Are you learning to welcome different parts of you with compassion?
Own that. Reject any term that limits you
If you want to rewire your nervous system and set new neural pathways, it’s advisable to speak in the present tense and shift the narrative, rather than reinforcing a dated concept of yourself that is rooted in judgement and disconnects you from what is alive in you (your feelings, needs, values and you POWER)
Reframe your statements. Validate and accept yourself in the process.
Instead of saying “I am codependent” try replacing it with:
“I have a more anxious attachment style and there is nothing wrong with that. We are all wired differently. I am learning to self-soothe in times of stress.”
“A part of me learned to people-please as a way to feel connected/safe and take someone else’s word over mine. I am learning to listen to my instincts and learn to trust myself more.”
“A part of me sometimes falls into self-betrayal/self abandonment because they learned it was safer to put other’s needs first. I am reparenting myself to ensure that all my needs are met first.”
“I was not taught/I did not have the safety to somatically hold boundaries, so I am working on what this feels like and it is ok that this takes time. I will practice noticing my body and speaking up more when they are crossed (and when it is safe to do so).”
For the nervous system to form a new pattern, repetition and emotional meaning is key. We need to focus on what we want MORE OF and what nourishes us, not on looping back to what we DON’T WANT and judgment of ourselves.
Please do not try to break free from codependency like it’s a curse — rather, focus on compassionately healing limiting beliefs, and out of date protective mechanisms.
Challenge anyone that makes you feel like your needs are not valid because you think you are too “codependent”. If you have a therapist that labels this I would challenge them too as this is limiting, can add to shame and is no way empowering.
Direct your energy on building a healthier, more empowered, and securely attached relationship with yourself. And lean into learning and practicing what healthy dependence looks and feels like with others, in little baby steps that are within your capacity to do. Yes take radical responsibility for your life, but reject labels or anything that pathologises how you learned to stay safe and connected when you were young. Both the adult and child parts of you deserve and need compassion in order to grow through what you have gone through.
A final thought from me - after working with one of my buddhist teachers this week
What are we?
Relationship in motion.
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