When most people think of someone who is codependent, they usually think of alcohol or drugs being involved, or some other form of addiction. The dictionary agrees with this idea, but I have looked a little deeper into it and have found that most people are actually codependent to some degree. You might want to argue this statement, but if you consider that codependency is better defined as “Loving others more than you love yourself”, you might be able to agree with me.
See, I have seen codependency in many forms to varying degrees, and although what I have seen did not match the common idea of codependency there were many commonalities, and the one that stood out the most seemed to be self-sacrifice and self-destructive behavior. So, do you ever feel obligated to put aside your desires and your standards to please someone else or to try to avoid making waves? Do you ever engage in helping others at your own expense? I bet you have no problem justifying the codependency if you do, because that is what we do to keep the patterns going. So, think of the parent who tells his teenage son “No” and insists that his son deal with some problem on his own. The parent could give the teenager what he wants and thinks he needs to “help”. This idea of helping is the justification for the codependency. But if the parent says “No” and takes the tough-love standpoint, knowing that in the long run, saying no will help the teenager learn a healthy life skill, even though this action may appear to cause the teenager pain, the parent acts in a self loving manner as well as a loving manner toward his child because he is actually helping the child more by saying no than obliging. Saying no initially may seem to be problematic at the moment, but seeing the healthy outcome later is the payoff for both people.
When you look at what your standards are, you might find yourself confusing what you think are your standards with some kind of expectation, but they are not the same (for more information on expectations, see previous posts). Whenever someone acts out of feeling obligated, or engages with “I should” in regards to another person, that is a sign of co-dependency.
Loving others more than yourself looks a lot like being a good person on the surface, but self-love has nothing to do with self-sacrifice! Self love is loving yourself enough to acknowledge and honor your needs and desires while considering how your choices and actions may affect those around you. But the dictionary lists “conceit” and “vanity” under the definition of self love…and I can’t help but think, “It’s no wonder people are screwed up and confused about self love” because true self love puts you in the position to easily and naturally consider other people compassionately. Conceit and vanity lend to selfishness, which is not considering others, or more directly, doing what you want to do regardless of how your actions affect others.
When you look at codependency, what you might find is that people tend to rely on other people to make them feel special, important, or valued. People tend to guage their self worth, if not consciously then absolutely unconsciously, on how someone “makes them feel”. This is not self love, but dependency. How you feel about yourself, even if not all of the time, is determined by someone else.
But what if you are confident, outgoing, personable, and friendly? Doesn’t this mean that you are self loving? Those descriptions can be aspects of self love, but they are not signs of loving yourself completely. Personality traits like this can be learned to some degree, and in fact, can be learned to help us APPEAR self loving, but the bottom line is if you sacrifice your desires and standards there is something in your consciousness declaring lack of self love. Sacrifice with your standards means that you are giving up something without getting anything productive or healthy in return. You certainly can compromise your standards, because compromise allows you to receive something that you desire in return.
The reason that I suggest that most people are codependent and are not fully self loving is because 1. People in general are confused by self-love and selfishness and 2. Unconsciously people need acceptance and fear rejection. The latter stems from something much deeper that is addressed in previous post about feeling special and losing self-love. And although codependency is difficult to recognize while you are engaged in it, once you start to see it for what it is, you can use it as a guage of where you are at with yourself and then take steps to break the pattern and step into a more self loving position.
Jennifer Tavana
