Answers to Your Questions About Codependency

People who have close relationships with substance abusers or others with mental illnesses can become codependent. Codependency can also occur in those who have been emotionally or physically abused.

Codependency is an emotional and behavioral condition. It affects a person’s ability to have healthy, mutually satisfying relationships. A person who is codependent becomes over-involved emotionally with someone who has a psychological disorder, usually an addiction. The codependent person becomes easily manipulated and exploited by that person and develops behaviors that support the person's addiction.

“Originally, codependent was a term used to describe people living with, or in a relationship with, an alcoholic or addicted person,” says Judy Stange, Ph.D., Dr. Stange is senior advisor for health care reform at Mental Health America in Alexandria, Va. “Today, however, the term has broadened to describe any codependent person from any dysfunctional family.”

Here are answers to common questions about codependency.

Too much caretaking

Q. What’s wrong with caring for someone who’s abusing alcohol or drugs or has some other problem?

A. Nothing. When someone we care about is in pain, it’s normal to try to help make the person’s life better.      

“But codependency is caretaking to an unhealthy degree,” says Dr. Stange. A person who is codependent feels overly responsible for the troubled person’s feelings and behaviors. A codependent person gets angry when help isn’t accepted. This behavior is harmful to the person who is codependent as well as to the addicted person because it perpetuates rather than changes the behavior.

A person who is codependent continues to come to the rescue of the alcoholic or addict. But making excuses for that person or bailing him or her out when in trouble enables the person’s addiction or behavior.

For example, a wife may cover for her alcoholic husband when he can’t go to work. A mother may make excuses for a truant child. A father may pull some strings to keep his child from suffering the consequences of delinquent behavior.

You could be in a codependent relationship if you find yourself trying to control others or avoiding rejection at any cost.   

Dysfunctional family

Q. What’s the relationship between dysfunctional families and codependency?

A. A dysfunctional family is one in which members suffer from fear, anger, pain, or shame that’s ignored or denied. Underlying problems may include any of the following:

• An addiction by a family member to drugs, alcohol, relationships, food, sex, or gambling

• Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse

• A family member who suffers from a chronic mental or physical illness

“Dysfunctional families don’t acknowledge that problems exist,” says Dr. Stange. Family members bury their emotions. They ignore their own needs. They develop ways to cope that help them deny, ignore, or avoid difficult emotions.

As a result, attention and caring is wholly focused on the family member who’s ill or addicted. Other family members’ needs are ignored.

What are the signs?       

Q. How can you tell if you're codependent?

A. Codependents often have these traits:

• An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of a particular person

• A tendency to do more than their share, all of the time

• An extreme need for approval and recognition

• A tendency to become hurt when people don’t recognize their efforts

• A drive to do anything to hold on to a relationship

• A sense of guilt when being assertive

• A need to control others

• A lack of trust in self and/or others

• Difficulty identifying feelings

• Problems with boundaries

If you see several of these traits in yourself, talk with a mental health provider, Dr. Strange says. “Effective treatment is available.”