Codependency can look like many different things.

The person I highly recommend reading books by if you want to understand and learn more about codependency is Tommy Hellsten.

"It is said that a family suffering from alcoholism - or a similar phenomenon - lives in a house with a hippopotamus in the living room"-Tommy Hellsten

Co-dependency can manifest itself in many different ways, developing different behaviours and survival strategies, which unfortunately are often not very healthy, e.g.

• Over-caring for others - Codependents tend to over-focus on caring for other people and their problems, often at the expense of their own needs, thus putting their own needs aside and focusing on helping, or even saving, others.

• Guilt when you think about putting yourself first, before anyone else.

• Lack of boundaries - Codependent individuals often have difficulty setting healthy boundaries in relationships, making them easily manipulated or taken advantage of, which can have extreme consequences.

• Getting stuck in strength as Tommy H. describes so well in The Hippo in the Living Room.

• Low self-esteem - Often codependents build their self-esteem on the approval of others and feel worthless or inadequate without it.

• Sets high standards for himself, but never feels satisfied.

• Need for control - They may try to control or 'rescue' the other person from their problems, such as addiction or emotional difficulties, and also a huge need to control themselves and their environment, here it is not uncommon for the person to resort to various self-harming behaviors.

• Seeks recognition, and often becomes a performance-oriented person, going beyond their limits, not uncommonly resulting in exhaustion.

• Fear of abandonment - Many codependent individuals fear abandonment and go to great lengths to maintain relationships, even if these are destructive.

• Fear of criticism.

• Sensitive to stress,often 'on' all the time, often leads to exhaustion.

• Helping others before they have even asked for help.

• Often has relationships with other dysfunctional people, recognizes himself in them.

• Narcissistic Personalities & Codependents, there is evidence and research to support the claim that codependents are often drawn to narcissistic personalities. This dynamic is well documented in psychology.

• Often takes great responsibility for others, in the family, at work in friendships, etc.

Always thinking of someone else before yourself becomes a life strategy, for better or for worse.

Many people with codependency do not know what their own needs are, but have lived, and live, according to what is expected of them.

The behavior often comes from living in a dysfunctional environment, growing up in a family that may be anxious and insecure, some have lived in a non-communicative world, where you can not talk, or where everything is "swept under the rug".

You have to guess, through countless attempts to please, how to behave in order to best avoid conflicts, beatings, being seen, getting affirmation, etc.

The good thing is to take help to dare to start putting yourself and your own recovery in the first place to map your behavior.

To dare to start facing what is coming, without rushing away, daring to take place in oneself, there you have a fantastic great help of ex. KMT, ie body awareness training, also clinical EFT. Emotional Freedom Tecnique. To honor boundary setting, let yourself down from the head and start living in the body, etc.