Codependency: chronic insecurity characterized by compulsive people-pleasing in response to attachment trauma.

Embedded in this definition are the essential criteria:

Chronic: Codependency is not a reaction to recent events. It is pervasive throughout most or all aspects of one’s social and internal life and is not relieved by time or circumstances. It is a fundamental, pervasive, and enduring part of an individual’s personality.

Insecurity: uncertainty that extends beyond facts-of-life events like death, war, and disease. The uncertainty is directed inwards, towards an individual’s own worth and sense of self, and results in a feeling of intolerable emptiness.

Compulsive People-Pleasing: Inability not to provide for others. These behaviors are sometimes premeditated, but executing them is almost always beyond the codependent’s control. It is the result of an irresistible urge not unlike the nicotine addict to smokes, or the kleptomaniac who steals to calm their internal discomfort.

Self-sacrifice is often a component of this behavior, but it is not the primary drive. The codependent fulfills their own wishes by projecting them onto someone else and making them come true… often to their own detriment.

Attachment Trauma: While other types of trauma can absolutely create codependency, there is a large and unavoidable connection to codependency and a history of attachment with narcissistic or emotionally immature people, be they parents, family, romantic partners, friends, coworkers, or employers.

If random acts have created the trauma, the young mind will often perceive betrayal from those who should have protected them (primary attachment figures) and thus experience attachment trauma (abandonment).

Codependency begins with the abandonment of yourself.

There is a good chance you were drawn to this site by the desire to address a deep sense of uncertainty within yourself.

That uncertainty, the lack of solid grounding beneath you and your life, has created beliefs, behavior, and relationship dynamics that aren’t serving you. Everyone faces uncertainty in life—uncertainty is what life is.

Only instead of uncertainty about life, codependents are uncertain about themselves, which they experience as unbearable insecurity. This experience, however private, is also extremely normal.

But you are in good hands. Your hands. You have refused the status quo and prescribed yourself the knowledge within these pages in hopes of improving yourself, your life, and your relationships. This is an act of supreme self-compassion, and the energy that long-lasting, bulletproof security is made of.

Creating or recovering a relationship with the unknown may not come easily. It requires you to look at your deepest insecurity, call it by its name, and decide for yourself that you are valuable.

Codependency tries to fill the void with relationships.

If anyone disagrees, once you have recovered, it won’t affect you in the least. Everyone alive is capable of developing a secure sense of self regardless of the chaos surrounding them, including you. Of that you can be entirely certain.

You may have discovered codependency from a friend, bookshelf, internet search, music, movie, or pop psychology. Maybe a therapist mentioned it and you are looking for clarity on what exactly they are talking about.

Perhaps you have some idea already, and want to know what drives your unusual or unwelcome behavior in romantic relationships, friendships, at work, or interactions with family. Something about you is different, and while most people praise you for it, whatever it is, the primal seed of uncertainty planted in you long ago, sabotages your happiness and pursuit of emotional freedom.

You are not alone. There are millions of people who are experiencing the exact same thing at this very moment. While everyone’s story is unique, codependency is most often a reaction to narcissistic abuse, incompetent or emotionally immature parents, traumatic events (financial, social, violent, sexual, or emotional, usually facilitated intentionally by others), and selfish romantic partners.

Abusive people all require you to be insecure, on uncertain footing with yourself, because exploiting that feeling is how they keep control over you. They wouldn’t dare allow you to have independent thoughts, feelings, or emotions, because then you would present a threat to their narrow, scared, insecure worldview.

Codependents learn to survive by denying the reality of their emotions. They cannot accept that their feelings are authentic or valuable and the narcissists attached to them are dedicated to keeping it that way.

Codependency looks for safety in unsafe people.

Believing in their internal experience would force the codependent to face an unbearable reality, such as having an abusive and uncaring parent, being married to a neglectful or amoral spouse, or only having “friends” who use them for their generosity.

So they don’t believe it, ever, and they look for validation of their value everywhere but within themselves. They engage in a life of kindness in search of the acceptance that they are unable or unwilling to give themselves.

While the codependent identity is founded on doing good for others, the inability to do good for oneself results in a fractured, insecure personality defined by unhealthy, painful, and unsustainable behavior.

Identifying codependency in oneself is not a pleasant experience. It is even less pleasant to take real-life here-and-now steps toward securing your independence from toxic relationships. If discomfort didn’t bother you, then walking away from dysfunctional attitudes or abusive relationships would be easy, and you would not be reading this book.

Therefore, discomfort, the one thing from which you try to protect the people you love, is the one thing you need to expose yourself to. It will hurt at first, and then less, and then not at all. Facing it is the only way to walk out of your emotional cage and into a bright, healthy world of emotional freedom.

Once you are free, emotions are easier, safer, and require a fraction of the effort to manage. Recovery from anything requires two fundamental steps to regain your footing once life has knocked you off balance: accept reality, and accept that reality will change.