Is The Relationship Making you Sick?

Do you have a person in the family who is alcoholic, gambler, or is suffering from any other addiction? Are you the one always present to help this person? Do you sacrifice your own needs to fulfil theirs? If the Answer is “Yes” to all these questions, you may be suffering from

CO-DEPENDENCY.

“ Co-Dependency is the unhealthy habit of sacrificing your own needs to fulfil the needs of someone else”.

How do you know you are Co-dependent?

Co-dependency is not a diagnosable disorder since the signs are broad and the range is wide. The primary symptoms are that you care a lot about pleasing others and have an extreme need for validation and approval; You fulfil this need by caring and rescuing others. You are also fearful of being alone without the intimate partner and deny your own emotions.

An example of Co-dependent behavior could be that a husband whose wife is an alcoholic makes excuses to other people about the wife’s drinking behavior by blaming it on a life situation. The husband here becomes an “Enabler”.Hence, An enabler is a person who enables the habit of the addict wife.

What could be the reason of Co-dependence?

Co-dependency is a behavioral problem, whose roots are in childhood. So, this generally happens when there is a role reversal in the parent-child relationship or a child has grown up in a family of drug addiction or experienced abuse emotionally or physically. In all these cases the child is constantly required to meet the needs of others and hence, he learns to suppress his own needs. So, these behaviors continue to influence the child’s adult relationships.

How to treat Co-dependency?

If you are a Co-dependent person, you will have a very low self –esteem and a lot of need for validation to acknowledge that you are on the right track. Hence, psychotherapy will help you build your self-esteem. Additionally, Childhood behavior patterns are explored and current destructive behavior patterns are evaluated. Individual and group therapy will help a Co-dependent person identify his self-defeating behaviors and rediscover his own identity. Also, treatment mainly focuses on uncovering buried childhood feelings and reconstructing the family structure. Hence, the goal of therapy is to make the co-dependent experience all kinds of emotions again.

To Learn more about Mentriq

Mentriq by Dr. Prerna Kohli is India’s top Mental Health Counseling Provider. To learn more about Mentriq click here  http://mentriq.in/about-mental-health-services/

To schedule an appointment with our Counsellors, please call +91-9-069-069-069