Understanding Codependency Disorder

It’s a hard pill to swallow, but sometimes you have to let natural consequences play out. By enabling your loved one, you prevent her from getting the help she needs to get well. Codependency is sometimes known as a “relationship addiction” because neither person can function well without the other. Problems arise when one person takes advantage of another, and the relationship gradually becomes emotionally harmful.

Enabling behavior

• Codependency and enabling behaviors often go together, making it hard to escape.
• A wife of an abusive husband will try to live with the pain and thus would facilitate, encourage or enable the abuses.
• Although stepping in to rescue another person doesn’t help, you don’t want to turn your back on a person who is struggling.
• If you find yourself constantly making excuses for your partner’s behavior or giving all of your energy to a child, you may be enabling them.
• Enabling is a behavior, while codependency is a way of behaving in a relationship.

You didn’t cause it, even though the addicted person may try to blame you for their problems. Remember that by taking responsibility for another person’s problem, you are actually making things worse. Addiction is a disease, and you can’t control it any more than you can control another person’s heart disease or cancer. Codependent relationships are one-sided and often manipulative, with the enabler invariably doing more than his share. Enablers eventually become resentful and angry because they’ve sacrificed their own needs for the other person.

It’s also important to note that both people in a relationship can be codependent. When this happens, both people are enmeshed in unhealthy patterns of facilitating each other’s bad habits while also depending on each other to feel needed and valued. They enable each other and use each other as crutches to avoid change. To understand codependency, you want to recognize the signs of this unhealthy dynamic in relationships. People who tend towards co-dependency may exhibit the signs of unhealthy attachment in multiple different relationships, and they may repeat these patterns in relationships that they seek out. Often the person is seeking out emotional validation or looking for others who will enable their own unhealthy behaviors, including addiction, irresponsibility, or poor choices.

How to prioritize your own needs and create healthy boundaries

The irony is that this protection will lead to even bigger consequences. If the addict manages to avoid legal consequences and continues to use, they could suffer severe health consequences. They could lose their job, or even worse, allow their closest relationship to deteriorate to the point that it dissolves. Implicit in any relationship, especially a romantic relationship, is trust. Not only trust that the other will remain loyal but also trust in the ability to take care of ourselves and to conduct ourselves in an intelligent and capable manner.

What is Codependency and Enabling?

Even when the addicted person’s behavior and needs become excessive and unreasonable, the enabler often continues to support and facilitate these needs. Codependency was first recognized and defined in the context of people with addiction problems and the people who support and facilitate addictive behavior in their partners. However, in codependent relationships this desire to help someone you love becomes excessive and unhealthy. Often, the enabler is also using the relationship to fulfill their own conscious or unconscious emotional needs. They may have a desire to feel needed, or a fear of abandonment, or they may feel validated by rescuing other people. These emotional needs get fed when they become enmeshed with a needy and co-dependent person.

After all of this the patient should attend AA or NA meetings to prevent relapse. Codependency occurs when another individual, perhaps the addict’s spouse or family member, is controlled by the addict’s addictive behavior. Codependents become codependent because they have learned to believe that love, acceptance, security, and approval are contingent upon taking care of the addict in the way the addict wishes. In their decision-making process, they allow the addict to define reality.

Get to know the common signs of the two and ways to avoid a codependent or enabling relationship. The topic of addiction will understandably create some conflict. Your loved one may show signs of denial, where they refuse they have a problem with alcohol or other drugs.

Choose Oceanfront for Family Therapy

These are issues his wife understands; she “has his back” in life, and she supports him. Why would anyone allow themself to be manipulated or used over and over again? To start off with, the person in the role of the enabler likely loves and cares about the addicted person very much. It’s difficult to watch someone you love do things that hurt them, and most of us have at least some inclination towards helping those we care about.

Learn More

Enabling and codependency often go hand in hand in relationships. Sometimes we use tough love to protect our children by not letting them do things that may harm them or put them in danger. Tough love is also a concept many of us use when dealing with addicts. It is the refusal to enable behavior that will ultimately destroy the addict’s life. This is a tragic situation and unfortunately, the husband does not bear sole responsibility for the deterioration of the marriage. All along the wife said nothing; rather, she remained in a codependent state and enabled his behavior.

• However, your focus on helping creates an unbalanced relationship leaving your needs unmet.
• Over time, these relationships can get very damaged and might not be fixable.
• As we unravel the complex web of codependency, it’s important to step back and look at the bigger picture.
• Sometimes under the guise of being supportive and loving, those closest to the addict enable and encourage their behavior, either directly or indirectly.
• For information about the terms governing the use of our website and how we handle data, please refer to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
• The term ‘codependency’ refers to the emotional and physical reliance a person forms on another person.

This dynamic may prompt someone to begin giving more energy and time to meeting the other’s needs. One partner is commonly driven by wanting to help — or control — their partner or the situation. The relationship can turn codependent when the partner develops a pattern of sacrificing their time, needs, and sense of self for the other person. Codependency and enabling are closely related and often pop up in unbalanced relationships.

By doing this, we can break free and help our relationships grow strong. Enablers and codependents often get caught in a complex relationship. Individuals with low self-esteem may feel overly responsible for others and struggle to assert their own needs. The codependent works hard to meet the other person’s needs, even if it hurts them. It’s when someone helps the other person keep doing bad things, like substance abuse issues. Enablers make excuses and help out too much, stopping the addicted person from getting help.

You likely have low self-esteem, difficult asserting yourself, and fear of abandonment or being alone. The problem enabling vs codependency is that enablers make it possible for the destructive behavior to continue. Why should a person stop using drugs or alcohol when the enabler steps in to take care of all the problems?

Underneath the fixing and helping, there is anger, shame, anxiety and pain. People who identify as codependent usually play the role of “rescuer” in a relationship with someone who is impaired or ill in some way. You, therefore, become attached to people who have problems of various sorts and need to be taken care of. Perhaps you’ve noticed a pattern of dating or befriending people who need to be taken care of. However, your focus on helping creates an unbalanced relationship leaving your needs unmet. One of the big misconceptions about codependency is that it’s simply being super, duper nice.

Challenging the addict’s behavior changes the dynamic of the relationship and transforms the supportive partner into another person who is against the addict. Enabling someone means helping them in a way that allows their addiction to continue with no consequences. It prevents growth in the person who is enabled and creates resentment in the enabler.

The prevalence is staggering, with some estimates suggesting that up to 90% of the American population exhibits codependent behaviors to some degree. The term ‘codependency’ refers to the emotional and physical reliance a person forms on another person. It can be found in familial, friendly, or romantic relationships. In codependent relationships, the reliance dynamic causes a harmful and unbalanced interaction between the individuals.

For the enabler, this step is the part where things get difficult, because they fear they will lose the relationship and no longer feel needed or desired. Trying to provide support for a friend, family member, or another loved one who may be in active recovery treatment or needs to be engaged in the recovery process is a difficult undertaking. It’s important to establish early on which of our actions is helping those move toward recovery and which are leaving them stagnant. This case study examines the codependent relationship between Sarah and Tom, a married couple in their mid-thirties.

Like healing addiction disorder, it requires honest reflection and a willingness to change unhelpful ways of thinking. Enablers may have good intentions, but they behave in ways that can threaten a person’s recovery. An enabler may downplay the seriousness of addiction or only support a recovering friend in comfortable ways. Understanding the difference between enabler vs. codependent is part of the larger healing process of recovery.