Codependency
One reason we must create healthy environments for children to grow and develop is to help them acquire the skills and character needed to build healthy relationships and thrive in the real world.
A healthy environment is one where a child receives nurturing care. This includes enjoying adequate nutrition, sensitive care, safety and security, opportunities for learning and consequently good health.
Children who grow up in such an environment have their needs met and learn to balance their needs with helping others.
This is not so in situations where the environment is unhealthy and children do not get their needs met. Such children learn to distort reality.
In an environment where the need to be loved and cared for is unmet, children and their ways to survive. As children, they are unable to understand that it is the caregiver who is unable to play his/her role well.
They rather begin to think that there’s something wrong with them or they don’t matter. This response sends the children into an overdrive that makes them want to be so helpful to the caregiver to be noticed.
The outcome of such an attitude can be so pervasive to the point that the child fails to develop his/ her true identity.
They develop an identity that is linked to others and how they can help them. By putting others first, they deny themselves every opportunity to enjoy the benefits of meaningful relationships. The benefits are to thrive, feel loved and full of their potential.
It is one thing to be kind and helpful. Such seemingly loving acts, however, can become codependency when a person’s identity and self-worth are based on how others depend on them.
Codependent people are unable to set boundaries. They are so much in need of other people’s approval. Even when it is not convenient, they are unable to say ‘no’.
They like to rush in to help others and be praised, all along having an exaggerated sense of responsibility towards others.
Codependent people are uncomfortable expressing their needs and need to be deemed competent always.
Even when others hurt them, they tend to feel sorry for the offender. It is hard for codependent people to walk away from relationships that may be harmful to them because they feel the aggressors need their help.
It is not easy to get codependent adults to see and accept that they adopted an unhealthy survival skill in childhood.
Making a change (from not valuing oneself and neglecting personal needs) is, therefore, hard but possible. There is a need to learn new skills. It includes setting boundaries by identifying what one can and cannot do for others.
A codependent person must accept that people will be disappointed when they start saying ‘no’ to them to care for themselves too.
Though the disappointment of others can cause stress to the codependent person, he/she must learn that others are entirely responsible for their feelings.
It’s okay to be afraid of letting go of unhealthy relationships. Learning to embrace that fear is an important step to recovery to develop healthy relationships. It is never a badge of honour to allow oneself to be consumed by others whilst neglecting their own care.
After all, our charge is to love our neighbour as ourselves and not more than ourselves.
The writer is a Child Development Expert/ Fellow at Zero-to-three Academy, USA.
E-mail: nanaesi_19@yahoo.co.uk