Redefining Codependency: From Stigma to Survival Strategy
- Cayla Townes
- May 12
- 4 min read
“Why do I always put other people first?”
“Why do I lose myself in relationships?”
“Why does it feel like I don’t know who I am unless I’m needed?”
These are questions that often lead people to stumble across the word codependency. But what they frequently find is a tangle of outdated ideas, stigma, and shame. Codependency has become a buzzword in pop psychology—a shorthand for being “too much,” “too needy,” or “bad at boundaries.”
But what if we’ve misunderstood codependency? What if, instead of seeing it as a flaw, we saw it as an adaptation?
What if it’s not what’s wrong with you—but what happened to you?
The Roots of Codependent Patterns
From a trauma-informed lens, codependent behaviors are not random. They’re survival strategies—especially common among people who grew up in environments where their emotional needs weren’t met consistently or safely.
Children are incredibly attuned to their caregivers. If your caregivers were unavailable, volatile, enmeshed, neglectful, or emotionally immature, you may have learned early on that your needs were “too much”—and that the best way to stay connected was to focus entirely on someone else.
This is especially true if love was conditional:
You were only praised when you were helpful.
You were punished or ignored when you expressed needs.
You felt responsible for someone else’s moods or wellbeing.
When basic attachment needs like emotional attunement, safety, and stability go unmet, children adapt. They learn to fawn—to appease, please, or overfunction in relationships as a way to avoid abandonment or conflict.
Over time, this pattern of hyper-focus on others can harden into something we label “codependency.”
Codependency and the Fawn Response
Many people are familiar with fight, flight, and freeze responses to threat. But there's a fourth response that often goes unrecognized: fawn.
The fawn response is when a person seeks safety by merging with others' needs, minimizing their own, and becoming indispensable. In relationships, this might look like:
Always saying yes, even when you’re exhausted.
Feeling anxious or guilty when you set boundaries.
Believing your worth depends on being needed or liked.
Avoiding conflict at all costs.
Losing a sense of identity outside of caregiving roles.
These aren’t signs of dysfunction—they’re signs of survival. For many people, especially those with complex trauma (CPTSD), these behaviors were learned in order to feel safe and connected.
Why the Pop Psychology Narrative Misses the Mark
Popular discussions around codependency often sound like this: “You’re too clingy. You need better boundaries. You need to stop taking care of everyone else.”
While boundaries and self-awareness are important, these messages can be deeply shaming—especially for people whose codependent patterns were developed in response to chronic emotional neglect or trauma.
They overlook the why.
They miss the grief, the fear, the wiring beneath the behavior.
They treat codependency like a defect, rather than the incredible adaptability it truly is.
How Experiential Therapy and Memory Reconsolidation Can Help
Many people enter therapy aware of their patterns. They understand their people-pleasing, their exhaustion, their difficulty asking for help. They’ve read the books. They know they should speak up more or say no.
But knowing isn’t always enough.
That’s because the root of codependent behaviors lives in the implicit, emotional memory systems of the brain—not just in conscious thought.
When emotional learnings from early relationships are stored without a timestamp, the nervous system continues to react to present-day situations as if the past danger is still ongoing. Saying no to a friend may feel as threatening as saying no to an unpredictable parent at age six.
This is where experiential therapies—and particularly memory reconsolidation—become so powerful.
Through approaches like IFS (Internal Family Systems), Attachment-based work, Coherence Therapy
or Somatic and body-based therapies clients can begin to access and update the emotional learnings at the root of their codependent adaptations.
Memory reconsolidation works by helping the brain “unstick” outdated emotional learnings. In practice, this involves:
Accessing the emotional truth learned in early experiences (e.g., “If I have needs, I’ll be punished.”)
Evoking a new, contradictory emotional experience in or outside of a therapeutic context (e.g., “I shared a vulnerable need and was met with care.”)
Holding both experiences together, creating a mismatch that allows the brain to rewrite the old learning.
The result isn’t just insight—but real, embodied change.
Redefining Recovery
Healing from codependent patterns is not about becoming “independent” or never needing anyone. That’s another myth. We are wired for connection. Recovery is about creating safe, reciprocal relationships where your needs matter too.
It's about:
Reclaiming your right to take up space.
Learning that your needs are not a burden.
Discovering who you are outside of caretaking roles.
Setting boundaries without fear of losing love.
And most of all—it’s about treating yourself with compassion and allowing yourself to be a person.
Final Thoughts
Codependency isn’t a label you have to wear or a problem you need to fix. It’s a language your nervous system learned to speak in order to survive environments that didn’t meet your needs.
When we stop pathologizing codependency and start listening to it, we can hear the deeper story it’s trying to tell: I did what I had to do to stay safe. Now I want something more.
And with the right support, healing is possible—not by rejecting who you were, but by honoring your story and creating space for something new.
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