Skip to main content

Overcoming Codependency Behaviours

Once, in a classroom, a professor told us that his clientele was equally divided into two parts. One part consisted of patients who visited his office out of necessity or curiosity. The other half, he told us, was made up of the ghosts of those people.

The professor was not emphasising any religious experience — nothing of the sort. Rather, he was illustrating the phenomenon of emotional codependency. Many of the people who visited the clinic would report their experience to friends and colleagues, who, in turn, would only begin to take an interest as they observed changes in the patients.

To some extent, this is organic and natural, but it becomes codependency when the "ghost" can only find motivation to seek care if it is entirely dependent on another person’s account.

The problem with this attitude runs deep. In many cases, it is a form of self-sabotage, postponing self-care under a pretext. These individuals lack the crucial understanding that happiness is not the same for everyone — what is heaven for one may be hell for another.

This passive transfer of responsibility can lead to bizarre situations. On one occasion, a patient felt so good after taking medication that had been properly prescribed to her that nearly everyone around her followed suit — self-medicating instead. Many people ended up buying something entirely unsuitable for them.

Unfortunately, this also applies when we observe people who are only willing to start therapy, follow a diet, or adopt an exercise routine if someone close to them does the same. Health is an exercise in independence — a process of empowerment in which you take personal responsibility for your choices and habits. It is far from healthy to make it a habit to care for yourself only when seeking another person’s validation.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Fallacy of Self‑Sufficiency

Some people will tell you — quite loudly, usually — that they are enough. They need no one, thank you very much. Entirely self‑made. A closed circuit. I, too, fancied myself an island at one time. A small, sturdy principality of one. I paid my own bills. Made my own tea. I even spoke aloud to myself in the supermarket queue, which was meant to prove something. But late at night, when all the heroic independence had been done for the day, there it was — a sort of homesickness without a forwarding address. You know the feeling. You’re supposedly sovereign, but you still wish someone would knock. Self‑sufficiency is a word that weighs a bit too much. It sounds like an insurance policy or a piece of camping equipment. It promises freedom, but only the kind you can fit in a box. Like eating an entire birthday cake alone — which, I confess, I’ve done. Because the truth (and it arrives, as truths tend to, when you’ve just burned your toast) is that we are made of others. We are es...

The Progressive Misreading of Silence

At 5, I entered rooms like a murmur. I was already listening for something behind the noise — something older than voices, softer than footsteps. “He’s such a well-behaved boy,” they said, smiling with relief. But what they mistook for virtue was only quiet intuition. I was not good. I was attuned. At 11, I had mastered the art of presence without weight. I could sit by the window for hours, watching the wind pass through the trees like thought through the body. “He’s quiet,” they would say — gently, but with a trace of discomfort. They couldn’t name the feeling of someone watching without need. At 17, I was called “mature.” But maturity is not a virtue — it is a scar. I had already seen the shape of endings before others saw beginnings. Friends came to me like tide to stone, hoping to be held. I held them, yes — but not always with words. Sometimes silence is the only honest offering. At 24, my stillness no longer charmed. The world asked for brightness, momentum, performa...

Research shows that parental warmth shapes our worldview — how might acupuncture offer a reparative experience in adulthood?

  It is becoming increasingly clear that our worldview — whether we perceive life as welcoming or hostile — is shaped far more by the emotional bonds of early childhood than by material hardship or environmental risk. A recent study, published in Child Development , revealed that an adult’s sense of safety, beauty, and benevolence in the world is deeply rooted in the warmth received from parental figures — more so than in their exposure to poverty or danger. This finding resonated with me on a personal level. Time and again, I encounter patients in clinical practice who, despite being outwardly successful and high-functioning, carry an abiding sense that the world is cold, fragmented, even threatening. In acupuncture sessions, it is not uncommon to witness how such emotional imprints — stored not only in the mind, but also in the body — manifest as chronic anxiety, diffuse pain, insomnia, or emotional detachment. Through the lens of Chinese medicine, these states reflect imbalances...