Codependent and More

You know you're codependent when:

• You bring your own Kleenex to the therapy session rather than use the ones the therapist put out.
• You feel guilty about Global Warming because once you discarded the whole pizza box rather than cut out and recycle the clean sections.
• You pretend the allergy pills worked so that your doctor won't be disappointed.
• When people ask, "How are you?," you tell them how your spouse is.
• Your kid gets a B and you conclude that you've failed as a parent.
• You stand on the subway so the seat can go to someone who needs it more -- and you're 78.
  
  Maybe you have some more of these? Email them to me.
  
  Not everyone would agree that these are all indications of codependency, and they certainly don’t cover the whole area – more the un-entitled variant. Codependency, of course, is not a scientific term, not in the diagnostic manual, so probably no two clinicians define it quite the same way.
  
  I first came across the term as “co-alcoholic” around the late 1970’s. At that time, it referred to the alcoholic’s spouse, the Enabler, who played her/his own role in keeping the alcoholic behavior going. When rehabs expanded their horizons to other substances and adopted the term “Chemical Dependency”, the term “codependent” arose – in other words, it did not refer to the individual’s dependency, but rather on his/her collaboration with the behavior of the person who was chemically dependent – this often involved putting aside one’s own needs and taking on responsibilities that properly resided in the spouse’s hands. Codependent individuals had often grown up in alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional families.
  
  Over time, the term codependent came to apply more broadly to people who, regardless of whether they had an alcoholic/addict in the family, shared certain characteristics. In my book, the organizing belief is, “I am responsible for you, and not necessarily for me.”