Codependency has no real power.

Codependency has been unnecessarily complicated by a lack of standard definition and absence in professional psychological literature.

Many psychologists don’t believe codependency is real, even though Dr. Timmen Cermak, a world-renowned author and addiction expert, made great efforts to persuade the American Psychiatric Association to adopt a formal diagnosis nearly 40 years ago.

It is impossible to eliminate a problem until you know what the problem is, and it is doubly more difficult when the very people who can help you don’t acknowledge its existence.

Depending on whom you ask, “codependency” can refer to a variety of different reactions, emotions, beliefs, and dynamics. The term “codependent” arose from the literature surrounding alcoholism, which described a “syndrome” that is the “inevitable outcome of living with an alcoholic”.

This is why codependency is often regarded as an addiction, and why the only formal recovery is based on the 12-step program, which only works for between 5% and 10% of people who try it.

The use of “co” before “dependency” is ostensibly to describe a secondary alcohol addiction. The primary addiction is, of course, an individual to alcoholism. The secondary addiction is that of the alcoholic’s romantic partner to the act of rescuing their beloved addict.

Codependency is unnecessary, unproductive, ego-driven acts of heroism. (aka: enabling)

They engage with the addict’s behaviors to give themselves purpose and are hyperstimulated by all the supercharged emotions that go along with it. Some codependents require an unstable, self-destructive person to either take care of, tolerate, forgive, make explanations for, support physically and emotionally, or prevent their destruction.

In the 1990s, sensationalist writers used the term “codependent” to describe women aiding their male partners on a path to self-destruction, and presented codependency as a female experience.

These opinions only contributed to the incoherence surrounding codependency by attributing self-destructive addictive behavior mostly to men and assuming that men rarely have a role in preventing the self-destruction of an addicted female.

Research has since discovered the prevalence of codependency between genders to be close to equal, with men often possessing more codependent traits than women. Codependency is a human problem that many people suffer from, and the only way to address it correctly is to accept it as such.

How do codependents get stuck in toxic relationships? The popular Reddit thread “r/codependency” defines codependency as “dependence on the needs of or control of another”, and further describes codependency as a “syndrome” that “crosses the line into cyclical, controlling, self-martyrdom. As a result, [codependents] derive their self worth [sic] and self-esteem from being needed by others.”

Codependency is total reliance on external forces for safety and happiness.

This is typical behavior of what Mary Lamia explores in her book, The White Knight Syndrome, which describes the compulsive need to rescue others in the pursuit of healing our psychic wounds.

Keeping the addict alive, pacifying a borderline parent or spouse, and rescuing someone from their incompetence all seek to pacify the codependent’s existential abandonment fears. It requires amazing mental and emotional acrobatics that inevitably result in deeply rooted toxic beliefs.

Even though the term began in alcohol recovery literature, it has since been rebranded, referring colloquially to infatuation, abusive relationships, over-involved in-laws, and heartbreak, as well as compulsive people-pleasing, romance obsession, and toxic self-sacrifice. In the small selection of professional literature that studies it, codependency refers to unique mix of behaviors commonly observed in personality disorders.

People often say “codependent” when they mean “dependent,” “disappointed,” “heartbroken,” or “lusting,” turning the word “codependency” into an enigma consisting of too many subjective parts to understand or talk about.

This makes reality extremely difficult to accept, since understanding what reality is continues to be so difficult.