Do You Know What A Co-Dependent Is?

CO-DEPENDENCY ... is an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual's ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as “relationship addiction” because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are one-sided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive.

In sociology, codependency is a theory that attempts to explain imbalanced relationships where one person enables another person's self-destructive behavior such as addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement.

At first, co-dependency was attributed strictly to persons who had to deal with addictive behaviors in conjunction with substance abuse and/or deviant sexual misdemeanors. These days, a co-dependent is anyone who is easily and often grossly manipulated by people with control issues ('takers').

Sycophants, those who follow and uphold politicians or others who are micro-managers or abusers or those who spew vitriol at others by throwing temper tantrums when they can't have their way, are co-dependents of those who may not have any particular substance or sexual abuse issues, but who often behave as if they do.

Some of these abusive types of people may be known publicly as narcissists, but typically their issues are much deeper than what appears on the surface, and those who follow along with them are even worse off than the abuser (narcissist) who craves the attention.

Around such people, there is never any such thing as peace, and any issue that arises -small or large- may set them off or give them an excuse to create consistent chaos.

Their only "soothing mechanisms" for psychotic manipulation are drugs, alcohol, nicotine, infatuation with fast food consumption, and neural sympathies associated with drinking or eating many caffeinated beverages or chocolate, or any combination of these things.

Sadder still are those who may not have any particular addictions themselves, but who are "attached at the umbilical cord" to those who do.

Co-dependents cater to the toxicity of control, micro-management, and abuse issues by giving them anything they want just to make "the noise" go away. They are often pretty self-sacrificing and delay their own gratification or ignore taking care of themselves in order to "obey the commands" put upon them by the self-centered addicts who surround them on a daily basis.

Too often, even a non-addict will begin to exhibit the behaviors of an addict if they stay around them too long.

If this sounds like you, or someone you know, there is help available to sustain healthier relationships or to learn how to walk away from toxic ones.