Codependency is defined as the process of losing yourself in intimate relationships, friendships and parenting. It’s easy to lose yourself when you give so much.
Women oftentimes become codependent because they are natural caretakers.
Symptoms of Codependency
- Low self-esteem or feeling you aren’t good enough
- Comparing yourself to others
- People pleasing
- Letting the needs of another take precedence over your own
- Poor boundaries to increase one’s feeling of value
- Taking care of people because it makes you feel better, not because they need the care
- Dysfunctional communication
- Trying to control others
- Anxiety
- Shame
If you’re flooded with feelings of shame and not being good enough, you’ll reach outside of yourself to try to control a situation that you see as causing the anxiety.
You have to learn how to heal the inside instead of looking for something on the outside to fix it.
Codependency usually begins in childhood and builds over a lifetime. Families generally do the best they can with what they have. Sometimes it’s learned over generations and children pick it up.
Saving others may protect you from feeling all those intense emotions you feel around YOU.
Exploring your own thoughts and emotions may help you find the root of your codependency. Bring emotionally healthy people into your life who want to know what you think, feel and need. Find a tribe. Psychotherapy can help. Exercise is a great therapy, especially walking to clear your thoughts.
Listen in as Kristina Wandzilak shares how codependency works for women and how to work through it.
Kristina Wandzilak has been a leader in the addictions industry since 1995. Kristina is highly respected and renowned for her compassionate and effective work and is credited with helping thousands of addicts and their families through her work as an international interventionist, author and television expert.