More Than Love: Recognizing Codependency When Your Loved One Has Mental Illness

Codependency describes a relationship dynamic in which the codependent person enables the self-destructive, maladaptive, of otherwise dysfunctional behavior of their loved one. Driven by an overwhelming need for approval and fear of rejection, the codependent person seeks to satisfy their partner or family member’s needs in over-involved, exaggerated, and counterproductive ways, subsuming their own needs and desires in the process. Without a stable sense of your own identity, your sense of self becomes deeply and inextricably linked to caring for your loved one. While the term was originally used with the context of partners or family members of people with substance addiction issues, today we recognize that codependency can occur within contexts of mental illness as well. In these scenarios, codependents may go to extreme lengths to compensate for their loved one’s real or imagined functional challenges, hindering the healing and wellbeing of both themselves and the person they’re trying to help.

Codependents typically grew up in households marked by shaming, silence, and unrealistic expectations. Without early and consistent nurturing to help you form a cohesive sense of self and recognize your own self worth, you were left struggling to find your place in the world and quickly learned to attach your sense of self to the approval of others. As a result of these childhood wounds, you live in desperate fear of abandonment, as abandonment would explosively disrupt your understanding of yourself. In order to guard against this, you seek to make yourself indispensable to your loved one. Common symptoms of codependency include:

• Internalized shame
• A need to control situations and people
• Overwhelming feelings of responsibility for others
• A strong sense of guilt
• Feeling that you do not deserve happiness
• Conflict avoidance and sensitivity to criticism
• Your happiness is dependent on your loved one
• Difficulty identifying your feelings and those of others
• Poor communication skills

One of the most disturbing characteristics of codependency is that it can be extraordinarily difficult for codependents to recognize the nature of their own behavior. Rather than understanding your behavior and the psychological motivation behind it as dysfunctional, you see your actions as expressions of deep love.

When the person on whom you dependent has a mental illness, codependency can be particularly difficult to parse. Many people with mental health disorders do indeed have challenges that interfere with their ability to function and recognizing where compassionate caring and accommodation end and where codependency begins is not always easy. For example, if your partner has depression and can’t get out of bed, it is can be a normal and loving act to care for them, make them food, make sure they take their medication, and drive them to doctor’s appointments. However, in a codependent relationship, you do those things not simply because your partner needs them, but because you need to them to fulfill your own emotional needs. In other scenarios, your overwhelming desire to please and protect your loved one may actually serve to interfere with their ability to heal and grow. You may hide the damage their mental illness is causing, keeping them from seeing the reality of their own psychological state and recognizing the need for treatment. You may underestimate your loved one’s abilities and compensate for their perceived lacks in ways that prevent them from acting autonomously or building new skills. For example, you may support them financially or take care of basic tasks of living based on the assumption that they are incapable of working or performing household tasks. In response, your loved one may assume a kind of learned helplessness that does not reflect the reality of their abilities, leaving them without the motivation or ability to test their own potential. As a result, the codependent relationship dynamic can prevent recovery and improved functioning.

However, codependency is not only damaging for your loved one, it is also a fundamentally self-destructive behavior. Many codependents make tremendous sacrifices in order to please, care for, and protect their loved one; you may take on a disproportionate share of financial responsibilities and stop caring for your own physical and emotional health in order to focus on your partner or family member. Your own needs no longer matter and perhaps you don’t even know what those needs are. Worse still, you remain trapped in a psychologically damaged state, your early experiences of emotional neglect and trauma remaining open wounds with which you are constantly struggling to cope. Many codependent people experience their own mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety that often originate from the same seed as the codependency itself and too often go unnoticed and untreated. However, no amount of codependent behavior is going to alleviate your suffering; in fact, participating in the dysfunction of codependency keeps you from uncovering your authentic self and engaging in the vital work of healing.