Rachel hadn't had a proper conversation with her friends in months. Her weekends were consumed by her partner Mark's problems—his conflict with his boss, his estrangement from his brother, his ongoing anxiety about finances. She spent hours listening, advising, and trying to fix things for him.

"I don't mind," she told me, "I want to be supportive."

But as we talked, a different picture emerged. Rachel felt responsible for Mark's emotions. If he was sad, she'd failed somehow. If he was angry, she needed to calm him down. Her own needs—her friendships, her career ambitions, her desire for some independence—had quietly disappeared under the weight of managing his wellbeing.

When I gently asked what she wanted, not what she thought Mark needed, she looked genuinely stumped. She hadn't considered that question in a very long time.

This is codependency: a pattern where one person's identity, emotional state, and self-worth become excessively dependent on caring for another—often at the cost of their own needs, boundaries, and sense of self.

TL;DR: Key Takeaways

Codependency involves excessive emotional reliance on another person for self-worth and identity
It often originates in childhood experiences of neglect, dysfunction, or parentification
Signs include difficulty setting boundaries, people-pleasing, and losing yourself in relationships
Codependency is different from healthy interdependence, which balances closeness with autonomy
Recovery involves building self-awareness, practising boundaries, and developing independent sources of self-worth
Therapy can help untangle the roots of codependent patterns and build healthier relating

Understanding Codependency

The term "codependency" originated in addiction treatment during the 1970s, describing partners and family members who became enmeshed in their loved one's substance abuse—enabling the addiction while sacrificing their own wellbeing. Since then, the concept has broadened to describe a relational pattern that can occur with or without addiction.

At its core, codependency involves:

External source of self-worth: Your value comes from being needed, from fixing others' problems, from your relationship status—not from within
Porous boundaries: Difficulty distinguishing where you end and another person begins; taking excessive responsibility for others' feelings while neglecting your own
People-pleasing: Prioritising others' needs and approval over your authentic self-expression
Control through helping: Attempting to manage anxiety by managing others' lives, often disguised as caring
Fear of abandonment: Tolerating poor treatment or suppressing needs because being alone feels worse

Dr Melody Beattie, author of Codependent No More, describes it as "allowing another person's behaviour to affect you and being obsessed with controlling that person's behaviour."

What Codependency Is Not

It's worth distinguishing codependency from healthy caring:

Codependency	Healthy Caring
Doing things for others they could do themselves	Supporting others while respecting their autonomy
Feeling responsible for others' feelings	Caring about others' feelings without taking ownership
Saying yes when you mean no	Honest communication about capacity and needs
Neglecting your needs for others'	Balancing care for others with self-care
Self-worth depends on being needed	Self-worth comes from multiple sources
Trying to fix or change others	Accepting others as they are while maintaining boundaries
Staying in harmful situations out of guilt	Leaving or setting boundaries when necessary

The Roots of Codependency

Codependent patterns rarely emerge from nowhere. They typically develop as survival strategies in childhood environments where emotional needs weren't met, where chaos required hypervigilance, or where children took on adult responsibilities too early.

Family Dysfunction

Growing up in a home with addiction, mental illness, or chronic conflict teaches children that emotions are dangerous, that stability depends on managing others, and that their needs come last. Children in these environments often become "little adults"—responsible, helpful, focused on others—because that's what survival required.

Emotional Neglect

When parents are physically present but emotionally unavailable, children learn that their internal world doesn't matter. They become attuned to others' needs (hoping to finally earn attention) while losing touch with their own.

Parentification

Sometimes children are explicitly put in caregiver roles—looking after younger siblings, managing a parent's emotions, or mediating parental conflict. This reversal of roles teaches that love equals caretaking and that your worth comes from what you provide to others.

Inconsistent Caregiving

When love and attention are unpredictable—warm one day, cold the next—children learn to constantly monitor others' moods and adjust accordingly. This hypervigilance persists into adulthood as the inability to relax in relationships, always scanning for signs of impending withdrawal.

The Adaptive Logic

Viewed through this lens, codependency isn't pathology—it's adaptation. The child who learned to prioritise others' needs was trying to create safety in an unsafe environment. The problem is that strategies that made sense in childhood become constraints in adulthood, applied indiscriminately to relationships that don't require them.

Recognising Codependent Patterns

Codependency exists on a spectrum. Many people have some codependent tendencies without meeting clinical definitions. The following signs suggest patterns worth examining:

In Yourself

You struggle to identify your own needs and feelings. When asked what you want, you draw a blank—or you answer with what you think you should want, or what would please the person asking.

You feel responsible for others' emotions. If your partner is upset, you feel you caused it or must fix it. Other people's bad moods feel like personal failures.

Setting boundaries feels selfish or mean. You feel guilty when you say no, even to unreasonable requests. You'd rather be uncomfortable than cause someone else discomfort.

You attract or are attracted to people who need rescuing. Your relationships have a helper-helped dynamic, with you consistently in the helper role.

You stay in unhealthy situations too long. Loyalty keeps you in relationships that aren't working, long after others would have left. You make excuses for poor treatment.

You need to be needed. Being helpful feels good—but being unnecessary feels threatening. Your value is tied to what you provide.

You have difficulty receiving. Accepting help, compliments, or gifts feels uncomfortable. You'd rather give.

You lose yourself in relationships. Your hobbies, friends, opinions, and goals fade when you're in a relationship. You adapt to become what your partner seems to want.

In Your Relationships

The emotional labour is unbalanced. You're always the one checking in, initiating emotional conversations, accommodating, and adjusting.

Conflict is avoided at all costs. You suppress concerns rather than risk disagreement. When conflict does occur, you take responsibility even when you shouldn't.

Your partner's mood controls yours. When they're happy, you're happy. When they're struggling, you're consumed by trying to help.

You enable problematic behaviour. You make excuses, cover up, or protect your partner from consequences of their choices.

Independence feels threatening. Your partner having separate friends, interests, or time away triggers anxiety rather than being welcomed.

The relationship lacks reciprocity. Your needs, when you can identify them, consistently come second—and this feels normal.

The Codependency-Enabling Connection

One particularly painful dynamic involves codependency with someone struggling with addiction, mental illness, or irresponsibility. The codependent partner often becomes an enabler—someone whose helping actually perpetuates the problem.

Enabling might look like:

Making excuses for your partner's drinking or absences
Taking over responsibilities they've neglected
Bailing them out financially after irresponsible spending
Calling their workplace to cover for them
Minimising or denying the severity of problems
Walking on eggshells to avoid triggering difficult behaviour

The enabler's intentions are good—they want to help, to prevent harm, to keep things stable. But the effect is to remove natural consequences that might motivate change, while exhausting the enabler in the process.

Codependency vs Healthy Interdependence

Healthy relationships involve interdependence—two whole people choosing to connect, each maintaining their separate identity while also functioning as a team. This is distinct from codependence, where identities blur and one person's wellbeing depends excessively on the other.

Interdependence includes:

Sharing vulnerabilities while maintaining self-reliance
Supporting each other while respecting autonomy
Enjoying togetherness and enjoying time apart
Asking for help and accepting help
Clear sense of where you end and partner begins
Both people's needs mattering

Codependence includes:

Losing yourself in the other person
Taking responsibility for others' feelings and choices
Feeling threatened by partner's independence
Difficulty asking for what you need
Boundaries unclear or non-existent
One person's needs consistently prioritised

The goal of recovery isn't to become fiercely independent and never need anyone. Humans are social creatures; we're meant to be interdependent. The goal is balance—connection without enmeshment, caring without losing yourself.

The Path to Recovery

Healing from codependency is possible, though it requires patience and often feels uncomfortable at first. The patterns developed over years; they won't disappear overnight.

1. Develop Self-Awareness

Recovery starts with recognising the patterns. Notice when you're:

Saying yes when you want to say no
Taking responsibility for someone else's emotions
Abandoning your own plans to accommodate another
Feeling anxious about a partner's independence
Struggling to identify what you actually want

Keep a journal. Track patterns. Start recognising the codependent voice in your head.

2. Reconnect with Yourself

If you've spent years focused outward, turning inward feels strange. But rebuilding a relationship with yourself is essential.

Try asking yourself regularly:

What am I feeling right now?
What do I need in this moment?
What do I want (not what I should want)?
What would I do if I weren't worried about others' reactions?

Rediscover your interests: What did you enjoy before your current relationship? What might you enjoy now? Pursue something that's just for you.

Spend time alone: Practice being comfortable with yourself. Notice what comes up when you're not focused on another person.

3. Practice Boundaries

Boundaries are statements of what you will and won't accept, and—crucially—what you'll do if they're violated. For codependents, boundaries often feel selfish, harsh, or threatening to relationships. Our comprehensive guide on setting boundaries offers practical frameworks and scripts for establishing healthy limits.

Start small:

Say no to one request this week
Express a preference instead of deferring
Allow someone to experience a natural consequence rather than rescuing them
Take time for yourself without apologising

Notice what happens. Usually, the catastrophe you feared doesn't materialise. Relationships that can't tolerate your boundaries might not be relationships worth preserving.

4. Tolerate Others' Discomfort

This is perhaps the hardest part. When you set boundaries or stop caretaking, others may react with disappointment, frustration, or accusations. Codependents typically find others' discomfort unbearable—which is exactly why boundaries have been so difficult.

Practice sitting with the discomfort of someone else being uncomfortable. Our guide on emotional regulation offers practical tools for managing the intense feelings this brings up. Remind yourself:

Their feelings are their responsibility
You can care about their distress without fixing it
Discomfort is temporary; unhealthy patterns are permanent if unchanged
Allowing natural consequences often helps in the long run

5. Build Multiple Sources of Self-Worth

When self-worth comes only from relationships and caretaking, losing those feels existential. Diversifying your sources of self-worth creates resilience.

Consider cultivating:

Meaningful work or projects
Friendships outside your primary relationship
Personal achievements and growth
Creative expression
Values-based living
Physical wellbeing

6. Challenge Core Beliefs

Codependency rests on beliefs that often formed in childhood:

Codependent Belief	Healthier Alternative
"I'm only valuable when I'm helping"	"I have inherent worth regardless of what I do for others"
"If I set boundaries, I'll be abandoned"	"Healthy relationships can tolerate boundaries"
"Other people's feelings are my responsibility"	"I can care about feelings without being responsible for them"
"My needs don't matter"	"My needs are as valid as anyone else's"
"Love means sacrificing myself"	"Love involves mutual care and respect"

Therapy can be particularly helpful for identifying and shifting these deep beliefs. Developing self-compassion is also crucial—codependents are often compassionate toward others but brutal to themselves.

How Therapy Helps

Codependency involves patterns that developed over years, often with roots in early experiences. While self-help strategies are valuable, therapy offers something additional:

A different relational experience: In therapy, the therapist cares about your needs. They're interested in what you want, not what you can do for them. For many codependents, this is a novel experience that challenges core beliefs about relationships.

Exploration of origins: Understanding where codependent patterns came from can reduce self-blame and illuminate why change feels so difficult.

Safe practice: Therapy provides a space to practice identifying needs, setting boundaries, and tolerating discomfort—with support.

Addressing related issues: Codependency often co-occurs with anxiety, depression, trauma history, or relationship to an addicted person. Therapy can address these interconnected concerns.

Person-centred and integrative approaches are particularly valuable, offering unconditional positive regard while exploring the historical and relational factors that shape current patterns.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is codependency a mental illness?

Codependency is not a formal diagnosis in the DSM-5 or ICD-11. It's better understood as a relational pattern or style that can cause significant distress and relationship difficulties. Some argue it should be formally recognised; others see it as a descriptive term rather than a clinical condition.

Can you be codependent without realising it?

Absolutely. Codependent patterns often feel normal to those experiencing them—especially if they originated in childhood. Many people don't recognise codependency until a crisis (relationship ending, burnout, health problems) forces re-evaluation, or until someone else names what they're seeing.

Is codependency the same as being caring?

No. Caring about others is healthy and human. Codependency involves losing yourself in the process of caring—neglecting your own needs, taking excessive responsibility for others, deriving self-worth primarily from being needed. The distinction is in the balance (or lack thereof).

Can both partners be codependent?

Yes, though it often looks different. Sometimes both partners focus intensely on the relationship while neglecting individual identity. Sometimes there's a helper-helped dynamic where roles occasionally flip. Codependency can also exist in relationships that appear functional from outside—the costs are internal.

How long does it take to overcome codependency?

This varies significantly based on severity, origins, and support. Some people notice meaningful shifts within months of starting work on the patterns. For others—particularly those with trauma histories or decades of codependency—change is slower and ongoing. Progress isn't linear; expect setbacks.

Can a relationship survive one partner addressing codependency?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. As one partner becomes healthier, the relationship dynamic necessarily changes. Some partnerships adapt and improve; both people grow. Others can't survive the shift—particularly if one partner was benefiting from the codependent structure. The healthy path forward becomes clearer through the process.

Moving Forward

Rachel, the client I introduced at the beginning, eventually recognised that her relationship with Mark had become unbalanced. Her identity had shrunk to "Mark's girlfriend" and "Mark's supporter." She'd stopped seeing friends, stopped pursuing promotion, stopped doing things that were just for her.

Recovery was gradual and uncomfortable. She felt selfish the first time she maintained plans with friends despite Mark wanting her home. She felt cruel when she stopped offering advice and just listened. She felt anxious about who she was if not "the helpful one."

But slowly, something shifted. She rediscovered interests she'd abandoned. She started expressing preferences instead of always deferring. She realised Mark was more capable than her rescuing had implied—when she stopped fixing, he started solving.

"I actually like myself more now," she told me, surprised. "I thought I'd be less lovable if I wasn't constantly helpful. Turns out I'm more interesting when I have a life of my own."

If you recognise yourself in this article, please know that codependent patterns can change. The caring, empathic qualities that underlie codependency aren't problems—they're strengths that simply need better boundaries. You can care deeply about others while also caring about yourself.

Ready to Explore Your Patterns?

Our integrative counselling approach helps you understand where codependent patterns originated and develop healthier ways of relating—to others and to yourself. We create a space where your needs matter, where you can practice expressing what you want, and where change happens at your pace.

Sessions are available in person in Fulham (SW6) or online across the UK. Book a free 15-minute consultation to discuss how therapy might support your journey toward healthier relationships.

If you're in a relationship that includes abuse, please contact the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247, available 24/7.

Codependency in Relationships: Recognising and Healing Unhealthy Patterns