Welcome to the Co-Dependency Home Page

Welcome to the TRN Co-Dependency home page. From here you can access the Co-Dependency chat room and forums, read articles on education or relapse prevention and check for any Co-Dependency specific TRN Events.

An Introduction to Co-Dependency

Codependency is a term used to describe unhealthy and destructive patterns of relating to others and ourselves. It was first used in the 1970s by Alcoholics Anonymous to describe people in relationships with alcoholics, who became obsessed with trying to ‘fix’ or control the alcoholic’s behaviour. Now it applies to anyone who sacrifices his or her own needs in a relationship to care for, or attempt to control, someone else.

On the one hand we put other people’s needs before our own, going out of our way to please and serve in the hope of gaining validation; and on the other hand, we try to manipulate these same people into meeting our own expectations of them. When our efforts go unrewarded, we experience intense, often disproportionate, disappointment and anger, and feel victimised.

At the root of codependency is a lack of self-esteem, a feeling that we are not good enough, and that only other people can give us the validation that we so desperately seek.  We also have indistinct and muddled boundaries, an inability or reluctance to define our parameters in relation to others. Distinguished from interdependence, which is when two people or more relate as equals in a mature, open  ‘give-and-take’ way, the ever-anxious codependent feels compelled to put others first, at the expense of his/her needs and identity.

Codependence is usually founded on learned and maladaptive strategies that we fostered as children in an attempt to have needs met, and which are subsequently carried, unchallenged, into adult relationships.

If you feel that you may be codependent, help is at hand. For as soon  as we can recognise codependent patterns of behaviour within ourselves, there are measures we can take to get back to a healthy and self-nurturing way of being.