Codependency is a word that has lost some of its original meaning from overuse. Codependency originated in the recovery movement and was used to describe the behaviors of people who were in a relationship with an alcoholic or substance abuser. Codependency has come to mean addiction to relationships, relationships that do not have healthy boundaries and relationships where the codependent has not been able to protect themselves.

Over the years, however, codependency has expanded into a definition that describes a dysfunctional pattern of living and problem solving, developed during childhood by dysfunctional family rules. These families suffer from poor boundaries (to understand these boundaries and definitions of abuse) and produce adults who have been abused as children. This abuse may come in the form of neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse and/or emotional abuse. Abuse will be have found in families who suffer from mental health issues, problems with addictions and compulsivity, in families where for whatever reason parents don’t have time for children, and in families where the parents were abused as children.

Pia Melody in her book, Facing Codependency, defines the Five Core Symptoms of Codependence:

• Having low self-esteem
• Difficulty setting boundaries
• Knowing yourself, knowing what you want
• Taking care of adult needs and wants
• Difficulty experiencing and expressing reality moderately.

In any family there are elements of accommodation that we have to make, for some these accommodations are little for others it can be a form of abuse. We adapt so we can survive. You couldn’t wake up each day and say “This is hell”; you have to go into some type of denial to survive. Those tools we used to adapt were the tools available to children and as adults we may find that we still rely upon them and they don’t work as well as they did before. Remember: as a child your choices are limited. They are pretty much limited to your thoughts and fantasy, these are the tools of children. “How can I think about what is happening to me in a way that I don’t feel like a victim?” Children blame themselves for the problem: “If I were better, maybe my parents wouldn’t fight or I wouldn’t be hurt.” “If I brought more joy to my family than they wouldn’t be so unhappy.” As children we don’t even usually think things this clearly its not until we are far removed from the situation that we can really allow ourselves to think about it. As a child to feel the problem might be in our parents often makes us feel helpless and hopeless — we do not have the power to change how others respond and as children we don’t have the power to leave or protect ourselves. So to feel a sense of mastery in the world, we become the problem. “This is something I can work on and fix. I can change me and I can’t change them.” But we constantly fail because we are not the problem.