Are You Codependent?
Sep 16, 2025
Are You Codependent?
What is codependency?
Am I codependent?
Are you codependent? This often comes up in coaching, and to answer it, we start with your sense of self (the inner knowing that you’re OK). This is what creates your building blocks for going out in the world and forming relationships, and that sense of “OK-ness” comes from having your need for security and attunement met in childhood.
Without inner OK-ness, we look outside for it.
We focus on situations or other people’s emotions and behaviors to make us feel OK. In other words, we are codependent. If this sounds uncomfortably familiar, join the club. Most of us fit this description to some degree.
Codependency
Codependency gives us the ILLUSION that we’re loving others when we’re really trying to fill ourselves up. It’s the fool's gold of love…doing a favor to feel appreciation, being agreeable to avoid feeling rejection, fixing problems so we feel satisfied, lecturing our kids so their aggravating behavior changes…
The plot thickens when we understand that we can pass codependency on to our kids…
Codependent parents seek safety through their relationships, including their relationship with their child, who becomes an outside person on whom their OK-ness depends. And the parent can’t help but relate to their child’s emotions and behavior as existing to fill that need.
Codependency interrupts our ability to attune to our child. If attunement is about truly SEEING our children, codependency is a contortion of attunement, because the codependent parent can’t SEE beyond the need they unintentionally rely on their child to meet. And because the child misses that attunement, their sense of self suffers, and the cycle continues. Codependent parents raise codependent kids, unfortunately and accidentally.
Your Emotional Health
This is why, no matter how many other skills you adopt to serve your child, the most important thing you can do for them is to work at being emotionally healthy. This is excellent parenting, and it breaks generational cycles. Imagine if your mom’s mom’s mom had done this for herself! Imagine your child’s child’s child if you do this for yourself!
Take Action!
If reading this inspires you to take action, I'm here to help. Breaking the cycle of codependency is possible, and the beautiful relationship with yourself and your child that awaits on the other side is SO worth it. Click here to schedule a FREE Discovery Call!
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