Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

by Melody Beattie

We need someone, anyone, to rescue us from the stark loneliness and alienation. We want some of life’s good stuff. But all that’s around us—inside us—is pain. We feel so helpless and uncertain. Others look so powerful and assured. We’re convinced that the magic is in them. So we become dependent on them. We can become dependent on lovers, spouses, friends, parents, or our children. We become dependent on their approval. We become dependent on their presence. We become dependent on their need for us. We become dependent on their love, even though we believe we’ll never receive their love because we believe we’re unlovable. Nobody has ever loved us in a way that met our needs.

But many of us don’t just want people—we need people. We may become driven, controlled by this need. Needing people too much can cause problems. Other people become the key to our happiness. I believe much of this centering our lives around other people goes hand in hand with codependency and springs out of our emotional insecurity. I believe much of this incessant approval seeking also comes from insecurity. The magic is in others, not us, we believe. The good feelings are in them, not us. The less good stuff we find in ourselves, the more we seek it in others. They have it all; we have nothing. Our existence is not important. We have been abandoned and neglected so often that we also abandon ourselves. Needing people so much, yet believing we’re unlovable and people will never be there for us, can become a deeply ingrained belief and a source of inner conflict. Sometimes, we think people aren’t there for us when they really are. This dysfunctional belief may block our vision, preventing us from seeing the love that is there. Sometimes, no human being could be there for us the way we need them to be—to absorb and care for us, and make us feel good, complete, and safe.

“Undependence” is a term Penelope Russianoff uses to describe that desirable balance wherein we acknowledge and meet our healthy, natural needs for people and love, yet we don’t become overly or harmfully dependent on them.4

Some codependents, however, plan destructive escapes. We may try to escape our prison by using alcohol or drugs. We may become workaholics. We may seek escape by becoming emotionally dependent on another person who is like the person we were attempting to escape—another alcoholic, for example. Many codependents begin to contemplate suicide. For some, ending their lives appears to be the only way out of this terribly painful situation.

Emotional dependency and feeling stuck can also cause problems in salvageable relationships. If we are in a relationship that is still good, we may be too insecure to detach and start taking care of ourselves. We may stifle ourselves and smother or drive away the other person. That much need becomes obvious to other people. It can be sensed, felt. Ultimately, too much dependency on a person can kill love. Relationships based on emotional insecurity and need, rather than on love, can become self-destructive. They don’t work. Too much need smothers love. It drives people away. It attracts the wrong kind of people. And our real needs don’t get met. Our real needs become greater, and so does our despair. We center our lives around this person, trying to protect our source of security and happiness. We forfeit our lives to do this. And we become angry at this person. We’re being controlled by them. We’re dependent on them. We ultimately become angry and resentful at what we’re dependent on and controlled by because we have given our personal power and rights—our agency—away.5

Maybe we’ve been taught not to trust ourselves. This happens when we have a feeling and we’re told it’s wrong or inappropriate. Or when we confront a lie or an inconsistency and we’re told we’re crazy. We lose faith in that deep, important part of ourselves that feels appropriate feelings, senses truth, and has confidence in its ability to handle life’s situations. Pretty soon, we may believe what we are told about ourselves—that we’re off, a tad crazy, not to be trusted. We look at the people around us—sometimes sick, troubled, out-of-control people—and we think, “They’re okay. They must be. They told me so. So it must be me. There must be something fundamentally wrong with me.”

We need to value ourselves and make decisions and choices that enhance our self-esteem. “Each time you learn to act as if you are valuable, not desperate, it gets easier to repeat that new behavior in the future,” Toby Rice Drews advises in Getting Them Sober.5