Dishonoring Your Limits: Key Signs of Codependency

Children can sometimes persuade their parents into doing dangerous stunts. These can be dangerous because the parents are not as young or as fit and flexible as the children. The stunts in question can be as simple as doing a cartwheel or bending over backwards. If the parents accept their limits (perhaps after learning the hard way through injuries and strained muscles), they won’t go beyond them.

In relationships, this is important. A key sign of codependency is failing to honor your limits and personal boundaries in relationships. Knowing the signs of codependency can help you avoid the pitfalls of this unhealthy trait in your relationships. It is important to be self-aware of our tendencies to do for others and to consider the question, “Why am I doing this?”

Codependency, But Briefly

Just as we have limits in terms of our flexibility or strength, we have other kinds of limits. These limits include time, our resources, our capacity to handle problems, our sense of humor, and so on. These limits and personal boundaries, in addition to self-awareness, are an important part of who we are, and they’re helpful in distinguishing ourselves from other people. Individually, we can only do so much with what we have and who we are.

When you’re codependent, you derive your sense of self from others. When you look to others for validation and your sense of self-worth, you have a poorly defined self-image. Codependent people will often find themselves by meeting others’ needs and in feeling useful to them. This results in violating your own healthy decision-making ability to meet others’ needs, often while neglecting your own.

Codependency can masquerade as several things, including being nice, dependable, and generous. Perhaps it looks like making offers to help others with things that you did not have the capacity for. Codependency is a pattern of relating to others where you sacrifice your well-being to meet others’ needs.

Some examples of things you might take on but don’t have capacity for could include:

• Assuming family responsibilities leaves you feeling drained.
• Staying up way later than your bedtime to help a friend with a project.
• Volunteering for one more team or event at church.

These things aren’t bad, and they aren’t inherently problematic. The issue is when it becomes a pattern, and your well-being is consistently sacrificed for others’ needs.

Stepping in and being helpful toward others can make you feel dependable, kind, generous, and perhaps one would venture to say godly. The issue with codependency is that it can mask unhealthy tendencies, and it can create inner turmoil, anxiety, and a depressive mood. This takes a toll on a person’s physical, emotional, and mental well-being. At the heart of codependency is a malformed sense of self. It’s a pattern of feeding internal brokenness by wanting to be helpful to others and be considered useful.

Why People Become Codependent

Codependency will often feel like it’s something else and be mistaken for other traits. One reason for this is that it often starts quite early in life. For some, growing up in a household where being loved feels conditional was their path toward codependency. If you’re never quite sure that you’re loved, that insecurity can lead you to focus mainly on others’ needs, making yourself useful, and in that sense, lovable.

In other circumstances, this tendency can occur if you’re in an unstable home environment where peace is fragile. Perhaps keeping the peace meant you had to regularly place someone else’s feelings first, which could result in developing codependent traits.

You learn to ignore what you need or want for others’ sake, and you carry that pattern with you into the rest of your life. You may start to place more value on your perception of that person’s need than on your ability to meet the real need.

Another possible scenario would include being in a dysfunctional situation where you were required to step up and take care of others, setting aside your own needs and limitations. If you’re a child in a home where substance abuse, addiction, or mental illness incapacitates the adults, stepping into the parent role can potentially result in codependent traits.

Though these are different scenarios, they both instill a mindset that one’s value stems from what one does for others rather than from who one is as an individual. This mindset often gets reinforced in adulthood by structures such as our culture, local community, or even faith community. These spaces can praise constant self-sacrifice or help perpetuate relationships where you only feel valuable when you’re needed, helping, or fixing.

Key Signs of Codependency

Some of the signs of codependency have been hinted at, but it’s important to highlight them. Recognizing the signs of codependency helps you take the first steps toward a healthier way of relating to yourself and other people. Take time to reflect on these things, to see if the following resonates with you. The main signs of codependency include the following:

• Setting boundaries or limits to what you can do or get involved with feels uncomfortable for you, and maybe even selfish
• You experience feelings of guilt when you prioritize your own time and needs
• Your sense of self-worth or value falls and rises based on whether other people approve of you, or find you useful or helpful
• You struggle to say no, even when you know you’re exhausted, already overcommitted, stretched thin, and without adequate capacity to meet that need
• You step in to rescue, manage, or fix others’ problems, often with a streak of controlling behavior
• While you are willing to help others, you feel resentful about it
• You struggle to hold your own opinions, especially when they go against the crowd

Consider these different signs and see if they apply to you and how you go about your life. Your worth, sense of self, and value aren’t rooted in what you can do for others. You are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), an awe-inspiring creation (Psalm 8), and one who is loved deeply despite your flaws (Romans 5:8).

How Codependent Behavior Affects You

Codependency can seem and feel virtuous. After all, loving others as we love ourselves is a biblical command. It doesn’t help that society praises altruism, self-sacrifice, and being endlessly patient. There is a place for these virtues. However, it’s important to distinguish true virtue from codependency, which stems from an inadequate sense of self, and slowly erodes your sense of self even further.

In the long run, codependency is unsustainable, and it is unhealthy for you and the people around you. It doesn’t leave much room for you to become your authentic self or develop authentic, healthy relationships with others, all because the codependent person tends to disappear behind the constant accommodations they make for others. Becoming a living sacrifice leaves scar tissue and a wounded heart and mind.

It may seem a bit intense to say this, but codependency can rightly be seen as a form of self-abandonment. Codependency leads a person to set aside their own needs, and the thrust of their life is meeting others’ needs and expectations.

Instead of nurturing a healthy mutual respect, the relationship becomes one-sided and unequal. This is a recipe for unhealthy relationships, due to not establishing limits and healthy boundaries for yourself and others. As your needs go unmet, and others don’t learn to look after their own needs.

Codependency can leave you feeling confused about who you are when you’re not serving or helping other people. One-sided relationships where your effort is expected but is rarely reciprocated can leave you feeling burned out as you constantly overextend yourself. You may feel anxious, overwhelmed, emotionally exhausted, or even resentful because your needs get neglected.

Undoing Codependent Traits

Relationships are meant to be spaces where everyone there is seen, heard, receives understanding, has space to be themselves, and there’s room to take care of themselves because they matter. Being codependent undermines limits and healthy personal boundaries, well-being, and the building of healthy relationships. It’s possible to turn the tide and recover from codependency and codependent traits.

Some first steps you can take to begin unraveling codependency in your life include the following:

Being aware of codependent patterns Watch how you interact with others, including noticing when you say yes to others out of habit, guilt, or fear. Learn to be okay saying, “I’m not available.” It is a complete sentence. You should agree to something because you are genuinely willing to do it, without feeling emotionally obligated.

Reconnect with yourself Developing a deeper sense of self will often take concerted efforts to nurture that identity. Take time to explore what you care about, enjoy, or need.

Set boundaries When you become more aware of who you are as an individual, you can set boundaries. Make the small but important choices that honor your limits, such as declining a request if you’re tired or have work of your own that you need to attend to.

Allow discomfort When you set up boundaries and say, “I’m not available” to others, allowing them to solve their own problems, it can feel wrong or awkward at first. Even though it’s uncomfortable, push through the discomfort, as that’s part of the healing.

Seek professional support Going for therapy or counseling can help you to learn healthier ways of relating to other people without undermining your well-being. With support, you can reclaim your sense of self and grow in your ability to build healthier relationships.

A counselor can offer support and resources as you overcome codependency. Contact our reception team to schedule an appointment with me or another counselor in our online directory. God can provide direction, wisdom, and discernment when we seek wise counsel.