What Is Codependency?
Because your patterns were never a reflection of your worth but of the resilience that kept you safe.
For years, I thought this was just who I was. Always giving. Always caring. Always feeling for the other.
Until I realised it wasn’t love, it was survival. And that what I called my personality was, in truth, a deeply ingrained coping mechanism.
You’re not “too sensitive.” You’ve simply learned to stay tuned in to danger.
Codependency isn’t a character flaw. It’s a survival strategy that took root when, as a child, you had to earn safety, love, or recognition.
By adapting.
By taking care of others.
By putting yourself second.
What once helped you survive is now a pattern that shapes your relationships, your choices, and the way you see yourself.
What is Codependency?
Codependency means:
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Ignoring your own feelings and needs to avoid losing connection
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Constantly attuning to others’ moods, needs or reactions
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Struggling to feel or express boundaries
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Feeling responsible for how others feel
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Confusing pleasing, adapting and caring with love
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Repeatedly ending up in unequal or toxic relationships
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Always seeking validation, yet never truly feeling yourself
How does codependency develop?
Codependency begins early in life:
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If you grew up in an environment where love had to be earned
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If you were taught that taking care of others mattered more than being yourself
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If your feelings were ignored, denied or dismissed
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If you carried the emotional weight of your parents
You learned: I must adapt to be loved.
And that pattern is still running your life today.
Why many forms of help don’t reach the root
Maybe you’ve tried therapy.
Read the books, meditated, practised boundaries.
But if your nervous system is still wired to please and scan for danger, saying ‘no’ will feel unsafe. As long as the body isn’t part of the recovery process, old pain will keep shaping your choices.
Real healing begins with recognition – and the body
Recovering from codependency requires:
Awareness
Seeing where you lose yourself instead of judging yourself.
Nervous system regulation
Learning to feel that you are safe within yourself, not in someone else's reaction.
Reprogramming your limbic system
So that love no longer feels like survival.
Recovering split-off parts
Your inner child, your teenager, your protective strategies – everything you ever had to give up to fit in.
Feeling and guarding boundaries
Without guilt, without explanation. A “no” to the other person is a “yes” to yourself.
Building a healthy relationship with yourself
Because as long as you don't feel yourself, you will continue to seek recognition outside yourself.
What if no one ever truly saw what happened to you?
Codependency often goes unrecognised in traditional care.
What people do see are the symptoms:
- Anxiety, depression, overwhelm
- Burnout, emotional exhaustion
- Difficult relationships, fear of intimacy or abandonment
- Addiction sensitivity
- Labels like HSP, borderline or personality disorder
But the underlying pattern, the constant adjustment, often remains invisible.
Even to yourself.
You are not your pattern
You are someone who learned to survive in a world that felt unsafe. Maybe you became so good at it, you forgot what it means to simply be yourself.
Without people-pleasing
Without fear
Without losing yourself in someone else
There is a way back.
Back to calm, self-respect and a deep sense of inner safety.
In my 16-week programme, I guide you step by step:
- Nervous system reset – learning what real safety feels like in your body
- Limbic rewiring – releasing the patterns that confuse love with danger
- Inner work – healing the child and teenage parts within you
- Rebuilding your relationship with yourself – so you can finally feel whole again
You don’t have to do this alone.
I see you. And I’m here to walk with you.