Codependency is a dependence on a partner or friend or family member that affects mental, emotional, physical, or spiritual well-being. Codependence consists of attachment-style patterns developed in childhood and can overlap with other personality disorders such as dependent personality disorder. Holistic codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut can support rebuilding your self-worth and confidence.
What are common artists of a codependent person?
Someone who is codependent plans their whole life around pleasing the other person as an enabler. Enablers receive satisfaction when someone else meets their needs. In a codependent relationship, one partner needs the other. Also, the enabler needs to be needed. This relationship is what experts refer to as the “cycle” of codependency. Sometimes, therapists may use the word “trauma bond,” to describe a codependent cycle.
To begin, click the button below to start in codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
What are examples of codependency in relationships?
For one, say one person in a relationship has a drinking problem, alcoholism, or a drug problem. Their partner would become an enabler by calling out of work for them when they are too hungover to go in. Another example of codependency might be financial power. Say one partner is the primary decision maker for purchasing a car insurance for domestic partners policy. As well, codependency can look like restricting money or funds. Enabling would be staying in the relationship and making these behaviors acceptable. Some may also consider codependency when one partner makes decisions without consulting the other. Other examples of codependency include, manipulation, emotional bullying, and over caretaking to the detriment of our own wellness. If you feel that you are suffocating in your relationship, codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut can support you.
How does the power dynamic work in codependent relationships?
Codependent relationships usually work like this: The taker has too much power while giving the giver too little, often at their own expense. A codependent person ends up sacrificing themselves for the sake of their partner. Holistic codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut can help you gain self-esteem and clarity instead of remaining in codependency.
Signs of Codependency in Your Relationships
Codependent relationships can exist between friends, lovers, or family members. Often, the relationship includes emotional or physical abuse. A codependent person’s friends and family can recognize that something is wrong. Sometimes, the person themselves doesn’t want to believe or accept that they are in a codependent relationship.
A codependent person tends to think about their situation a lot
To note, over-analyzing is something many codependents do obsessively. For one, you might feel so low in self-worth, that you a doubting your own decisions. The mind keeps going round and round until either the emotional system shuts down completely or the anxiety is too much to handle. Notably, many people in codependent adult relationships had codependent parents that taught them to relate in this way. So, codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut can help you break free from the cycle of enabling and codependency.
Symptoms of Codependency
Other symptoms of codependence include exaggerated emotional responses. Commonly, a codependent person acts as if other people’s actions are terrible. Children who grow up in chemically dependent or traumatized families are taught to expect the worst. And, it is really common for people who have experiences of childhood trauma to end up with attachment challenges. If your parents were codependent on you as a child to meet their emotional needs, you may have a tendency to being in codependent relationships in adulthood. As adults, codependent people interpret everything with the worst possible scenario. From childhood trauma and emotional neglect, your brain and body learned to keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Overcoming fear of change is part of codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut
Frequently, this expectation sets in motion a chain reaction that leads to the very thing they fear. Anxiety and fear are common emotions in a person who grew up with dysfunctional, alcoholic parents. Many parents with immature emotional habits made their children take care of them. As a youngster, you may have thought is was normal. Codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut can help you think freely and confidently and step away from codependent ways of thinking, accepting, and acting.
Seeking Help for Codependency
Codependency tends to cause people to repeat the same self-defeating patterns over and over again. Being in a codependent relationship can lead to low self-worth and low self-esteem. In childhood, you learned you would be treated with disrespect. And, this made a pattern, which can result in these painful behaviors being repeated over and over again in adult years. Guidance and healing can be attained through attending counseling in Southeastern Connecticut. Part of codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut is believing in your self again and learning about enabling.
What is one sign of needing codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut?
One of the most common indications of codependency is finding yourself unable to live with the other person. People suffering from codependency frequently feel a compulsive need to remain in close contact with the other person. You feel confused about why you are giving so much and not getting much back.
How does a codependent relationship develop?
Children who have been exposed to addiction, neglect, or abuse develop social and emotional patterns that do not help them function in adulthood. A classic example of a survival behavior is compulsive caretaking, martyring, scapegoating, controlling, pleasing others, and constantly seeking approval.
To begin, click the button below to start in codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
How does codependency develop?
Adolescents and adults with codependency problems typically had problems with their family relationships as children or teenagers. The children may have been taught that their own needs are less important than those of their parents. A parent who had a drinking problem or drug problem made that their priority rather than their child’s wellbeing. So, a child learns that their own needs do not matter at all. Then, in adulthood, that child finds a relationship where they do not matter and they give too much.
In such families, children are taught to focus on the needs of the parents and never think for themselves.
The abusive parents may teach their children that if they want anything, they are selfish or greedy.
Consequently, the child learns to ignore their own needs and to think only about what they can do for others all the time. As a result, the relationship between a parent and child is often codependent.
The child may feel completely responsible for their parent’s emotional well-being, while parents may feel only entirely responsible for their child’s physical well-being.
Physically and emotionally, it’s characterized by the urge to personalize everything around them, taking everything personally and making them feel angry. Then, that causes paranoia, which results in hostility and defensiveness, along with isolation. In codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, you can find ways to relieve stress and anxiety. You can start to build a loving, nurturing relationship with yourself. As well, your therapist can help you remember that you deserve healthy connections in your life and learn to create them.
Sometimes unmarried couples can enter into a form of a codependent relationship if one partner takes over all types of legal issues, like if you can be the beneficiary of a will as an unmarried partner.
The Enabler and Codependency
Enabler roles are dysfunctional as well. This type of codependency prevents a person from learning how to develop a healthy relationship. The codependent person will feel great conflict if they are to separate themselves from the enabler. Now, the codependent sees herself or himself as the person who must sacrifice themselves for the other person. As noted earlier, this is a learned behavior from childhood caretaking of parental figures.
What is enabling in codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut?
Enabling behavior is when you reroute a problem for your partner. You might call their boss and make up an excuse for them to not goto work. As well, enabling is repeatedly giving them another chance. Essentially, enabling also includes ignoring the problem, accepting excuses, always being the one setting up the schedule, or constantly providing other enabling features. More so, marriage counseling in Mystic, Connecticut has been used to treat codependent relationships. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling help you separate from your trauma bond cycle. You can learn how to build a healthy relationship from codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
Treating Codependency
Learning about unhealthy behavior is the first step towards changing it. Through education, experiential groups, and individual and group sessions, codependents can learn to recognize self-defeating behaviors and rediscover themselves.
How can codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut help release childhood trauma?
Also, a common cause of codependency is childhood issues. And, these are typically explored in therapy clarify the connection between the issues of childhood and present-day destructive behaviors. Codependency counseling in East Lyme, Ct can help you overcome the codependency trauma.
In general, the goal of therapy is to promote an understanding of feelings that are suppressed in childhood. As well, therapy helps rebuild family dynamics.
Therapy is designed to provide you with the opportunity to experience all of your emotions in a safe and healthy manner.
Individual counseling, group therapy, and marriage counseling in Mystic, Connecticut may be beneficial because it allows someone the freedom to express their feelings and behaviors on their own.
Furthermore, codependent people might benefit from making small changes to separate from the relationship. So, self-care skills are essential for build your own identity. Perhaps, they need a new hobby or some time away from their partner. It might mean taking a vacation with a friend or getting lunch with a pal. Friends and family should be supportive of codependent recovery. Overall, counseling offers you a place and time for self-reflection and to gain positive coping tools. Holistic codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut helps you rebuild confidence and a positive view of your self.
Establishing Healthy Relationships
A healthy relationship should allow both partners to express their feelings and needs freely. Additionally, you should feel comfortable with your partner disagreeing with your opinions, or rejecting anything that does not meet your needs. And, there should not be yelling, anger, or an intense emotional reaction. Healthy couples have conversations in calm, relaxed, respectful manors.
How can boundaries help you build a healthy romantic relationship in therapy?
To add, to make others comfortable, you may ignore your own limitations so you must establish boundaries for yourself. So, in codependency counseling in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, you can learn about setting boundaries. A boundary is a limit you set around things you aren’t comfortable with. Often, enabler will let boundaries slide and let them go. Notably, boundaries can be difficult to set and difficult to follow, especially if you have a history of codependent behavior.
Why is self-care important for codependency recovery?
For the purpose of recovering from codependency, it is necessary to take care of yourself. Taking care of yourself in spite of abuse may have deprived you of the ability to express and react to your own emotions.
Similarly, both partners in a codependency addiction must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. This may include the feeling of needing to be needed. Some times it is learning to recognize expectations such as others to center their lives around them.
The topic of codependency is quite complex.
However, with the right help in therapy, you can overcome this phenomenon, resulting in a more balanced and healthy relationship that will serve your needs better. Therefore, the team of counselors at Wisdom Within Counseling love talking about codependency. Working with a therapist can reduce shame. Overall, our team of therapists love helping couples create healthy connections and stop enabling each other.
LGBTQIA+ codependency counseling
People in same sex and LGBTQIA+ relationships also face codependency challenges. If you are non binary, in a same sex relationship, or queer, codependency is something you may be struggling with. In addition to helping couples and individuals gain relationship clarity, we specialize with transgender affirming and LGBTQIA+ affirming care.
Wisdom Within Counseling offers LGBTQIA+ affirming and transgender affirming counseling to neighboring towns including Bethel, Bridgeport, Brookfield, Cos Cob, Danbury, Darien, Easton, Fairfield, Georgetown, Greenwich, Hawleyville, Monroe, New Canaan, New Fairfield, Newtown, Norwalk, Old Greenwich, Redding, Redding Center, Redding Ridge, Ridgefield, Riverside, Sandy Hook, Shelton, Sherman, Southport, Stamford, Stratford, Trumbull, Weston, Westport, and Wilton. As well, our team offers counseling services to Litchfield county. These towns include Bantam, Barkhamsted, Bethlehem, Bridgewater, Canaan, Colebrook, Cornwall, East Canaan, Falls Village, Gaylordsville, Goshen, Harwinton, Kent, Lakeside, Lakeville, Litchfield, Morris, New Hartford, New Milford, New Preston, Marble Dale, Norfolk, Northfield, Oakville, Pequabuck, Pine Meadow, Plymouth, Riverton, Roxbury, Salisbury, Sharon, South Kent, Taconic, Terryville, Thomaston, Torrington, Washington, Washington Depot, Watertown, West Cornwall, Winchester Center, Winsted, and Woodbury. So, video therapy is always available as a positive way to build healthy coping tools.
Vhanessa Hair researches and writes for the auto insurance comparison site, AutoInsuranceEZ.com.
