Top Tips to Heal a Codependent Friendship

You can be codependent in relationships other than romantic ones. It is common for folks with codependent thinking habits to bring those same habits to our friendships. What do you do if a friend doesn’t give as much as you do, if you feel taken advantage of in a friendship, if a friend doesn’t text or call as much as you do, if a friend leans on you for a lot of advice even when you’re really going through it?

Let’s start by talking about boundaries. As codependent and people pleasing thinkers, we are often challenged by the concept of boundaries. Often because we didn’t grow up with healthy boundaries or limits modeled for us by our grownups. Or because we learned that to be the good girl, to be lovable (because the patriarchy). We have to give more than we really want to to keep others happy. 

The core wound of codependent thinking is believing that we have to be everything to everyone, other than ourselves of course. 

When you pair that with sourcing our worthiness externally, it makes sense that we think it's our job in life to manage other people’s lives and moods for them. To be a chronic yes-person. Because disappointing someone by speaking our truth and saying no is just unthinkable at first.

Boundaries are vital to happy, healthy, mutually supportive interdependent relationships, which is the goal of overcoming codependency. In codependency, we don’t know where we end and someone else begins. Boundaries are a way to seperate that out. When we don’t speak our limits or set and keep boundaries—“if you X, I will do Y”—we can get enmeshed with the people in our lives. We can take their life on as our problem, as ours to manage when that’s just not the case. From that enmeshment, we lose our individual identity and take on the likes, preferences, opinions, emotions of the other person as though they were our own.

In codependent thinking, we have lost our anchor within ourselves. We don’t believe in our own worth just because we exist. We have lost our connection with our authenticity. Instead we chameleon, shape shifting to be, say and do what we think others want us to be, say and do. 

When you’re enmeshed with someone else, a friend, partner, job, child, parent, you deepen the bonds of codependency there. 

You lose track of who you are and who you want to be in the world more and more each day.

When you don’t know what YOU truly want, how can you take care of yourself? How can you attend to you? How can you parse out what your own needs and wants are? 

As human mammals we need one another. Connection, communion, co-regulation of our nervous system is a vital part of being a pack animal, which we are. Being connected with other humans, with friends who really have our backs is vital to our wellness. The issue is one of degrees and energetics - the thoughts and feelings you bring to the connection.

There is a huge difference between “I think it would be nice to talk this decision out with my BFF” and “omg, I cannot make this decision without her input!”

What I’m pointing to here is the Buddhist concept of grasping, which is a form of suffering that comes from clinging to something or someone for our emotional safety. This grasping leads to unnecessary suffering when we make one person our everything, instead of making OURSELVES and our own opinion, wants and needs our true north star.

When there is no emotional distance, no detachment, unclear boundaries it’s so easy to slip into making someone else, a friend or a lover, your absolute everything. This can lead to painful imbalances in the power dynamics, which is also a key component of codependent thinking. 

So when one person is the giver and one is the taker in ways that are unbalanced, we become reliant on that energetic exchange, and lose track of our own minds. 

We can get overly reliant on our friends to fill a painful hole in our hearts. We come to depend on them to validate your choices, to give you permission to do what you want to do. We turn to our BFF to tell us that we are okay, good enough, worthy of love in a classically codependent way that takes us out of living in our own power and sourcing our worth internally.

So what are the signs of a friendship all riled up in codependent thinking?

Let’s start with rescuing. The fixer archetype in codependent thinking is where one person feels an urge to fix other people’s problems like it's their job in life. When that’s your mind’s habit then it’s very convenient to find a BFF who wants chronic rescuing and who leans on you to manage their life and their mind for them. Vice versa, if you don’t believe in your capacity to mind your mind, to make your own decisions, to decide what you want without someone else approving of it, if you’re not taking responsibility for your life, it's so cozy to find a BFF who is happy to step in and do it for you. 

I'm not talking about wanting extra support in a pandemic, after a divorce or a loss, but rather the constant chronic daily or weekly rescuing that codependent brains just love to be on either side of. This leads to imbalance in the relationship because the give and take is off. 

Here the giver often ignores their own wants because they are busy rescuing. The taker continues to externalize their lives, trusting and relying on the giver and her opinion more than their own.

This kind of imbalance can often lead the giver to put your friend’s wants and needs ahead of your own, and the taker to put the giver’s opinion and preferences ahead of their own, which is at the core of codependent thinking. This often comes from and leads to a lack of boundaries and limits where one person’s needs rule the roost. In either role, you’re so enmeshed that taking care of someone else takes the place of taking care of yourself.

It makes sense that in a codependent friendship you:

• agree with your friend when you don’t actually agree with her 
• you tell her she's right when you kinda think she wasn’t
• look to them to tell you what to do, think, feel, say instead of checking in with yourself first
• dump on him without asking if he has the emotional room to hear it because you assume he does cause you always do
• make choices for your own life based more on what your friend wants than what you want 

Logically this leads to mixed-together-emotions, where our beautiful natural human empathy gets confused with the desire to be liked and thought well of. Through this process you lose track of what YOU feel and what THEY feel. It gets all jumbled so, day by day, you are less connected with yourself and your own beliefs and truth.

From this emotional enmeshment it feels challenging to want to do what you want to do when your friend wants to do something different. 

• You feel guilty for wanting to spend the night alone, for wanting to go for a walk when she has cramps and wants you to couch it and watch a movie with her. 
• You feel guilty when you start dating because you spend less time with your friend. 
• You worry about having different opinions that your friend might not agree with - like that maybe her boss is right and it's not just that he’s a jerk. 
• Or that her partner really isn’t treating her well and you'd like to share your thoughts about it. But you’re so worried about upsetting or losing her that you bite your tongue and hold back a part of yourself to people-please her without even realizing you're doing it. 

When two people are so deeply enmeshed, jealousy is common. A new friend, date, hobby or job feels like a threat to your source of validation. 

The friendship can get controlling when one friend feels threatened. 

Finally, and this one is a big red-flag for me, and my clients name this one often - feeling just exhausted after spending time with your friend. You’re being asked to give more than you’re able to and you don’t set healthy boundaries because of the enmeshment and people-pleasing. 

When hanging out isn’t a healthy back and forth of support, love and care but rather, you’re giving and giving. Or you’re reliant on that giving instead of looking within and speaking your needs, of course you’re wiped out! That makes sense. 

I love giving - it truly brings me so much joy to be of service - and it has to be balanced energetically in my life and relationships. 

In a loving, mutually supportive, interdependent friendship there needs to be a balance of give and take. 

Not just set roles that don't adjust for individual needs.

If this is resonating for you but you’re like “I don't do this in my friendships, but I totally do all of this at work or with my mom…” then just apply what you’ve heard and the remedies to follow here.

Let's talk remedies:

Awareness, acceptance, action is the ticket!

Awareness:

• I love to pause when I realize that I'm in a pattern I don’t like or want to stay in and I ask myself questions like:
  • How did it get like this? 
  • What were my internal motivators for showing up in a relationship this way by being the chronic taker or giver? 
  • Do I go along with my BFFs opinions or plans because I actually want to or am I doing it so she’ll continue to think well of me? In those moments where I’m putting her ahead of me… do I like me?! 
  • Am I trying to source my self worth by being the dependable one with no needs? Does having frequent crises and demanding my friend’s attention around them make me feel loved and taken care of in ways I’m not providing for myself? 
  • Am I playing out an old family dynamic in either role?

I can answer yes, yes, yes and yes to all of this from both roles for sure. For me, the remedy was learning to support myself, to manage my own mind first, to honor and attend to my own inner children as my most loving parent FIRST. Then I could turn to a friend to give from my emotional overflow, when my cup is full. I could then ask for support when I've done what I can to have my own back.

Recognize that in a codependent friendship you rely on each other so deeply, you source your self-esteem and lovability from the other, and are thereby putting all your proverbial emotional eggs in one basket. 

This can be a set up for a lot of potential pain. That doesn’t mean not to get close to someone, quite the opposite. Rather, to be vulnerable, open hearted and close without resting your sense of self on your friend’s shoulders. It’s not her job to carry that for you, that’s your job to do for yourself my darling love! 

Acceptance:

• Once you have awareness around these habits, you get to do the work of accepting that you do this. 
• Often we create extra suffering for ourselves by fighting reality. We don’t get real with what’s really happening and the impact it’s having on our wellness. 
• Accepting that your boundaries are not clean and clear is vital if you want to set healthy boundaries moving forward. 

“What do I do when my friend is a lousy communicator? When I text and call and they just don’t call back for days or weeks?!” 

If you want to be happy and you want this person in your life, you get to stop judging that person and their capacity and choices. You get to stop wishing and wanting them to be different. They don’t text on the same schedule you do. Okay. They don’t like going out as often as you do. Okay. You get to start with accepting them, dropping the judgement and truly loving them for who they are, not who you want them to be. 

From the place of lovingly accepting your friend just as they are, you can drop your codependent attachment to them. 

You can ask for things to shift if you want something different, and if your friend isn’t game to, for example, text on the schedule you prefer, you get to remind yourself that you have options here. You can love them as they are or you can stop being friends with them. But being mad at them for being themself? That’s not loving or healthy for either of you. 

Take a look at where you may be doing that, and invite some more acceptance in as you manage your mind so you can let others just be themselves. You get to feel as much love as you want to in your friendships, regardless of how the other person shows up.

Action:

The action here starts with understanding what you want, what your limits are so you can practice putting yourself first by setting healthy boundaries and prioritizing them. I find it’s easiest to start with small No’s, like saying “hey friend, I hear you that you’re upset, but I’m having a rough day and I don’t want to go out tonight.” From there you can gain trust in yourself to have your own back and to speak your truth in whatever situation. 

I’ll quote the great Dumbeldore in praise of Neville Longbottom here in saying: “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” 

You get to say what you think and feel, speak your needs and let your friend show up as their best self or you can continue to struggle in a relationship built on codependent thinking.

For you and your relationship to flourish, you get to build your self love outside of the friendship so you can be your authentic self in the friendship!

Practice asking yourself what you’re available for and start asking for and giving emotional consent in your friendships. Before you dump your problems on your BFF, ask them if they’re available to hear about it. Get ready to hear no, which may totally hurt at first. That’s real and it’s also okay. When you honor your own needs and those of the people you love, you’ll start to see when YOU are not emotionally available. Then you can honor when other people aren’t either and can stop taking it personally, cause it never is. 

When I’m not available to hear about a friend’s hard time, it’s not that I don’t want to be their friend anymore, but exactly the opposite. It’s that I love them too much to say yes when I mean no, which I know is a set up for resentment and annoyance. It will make me less likely to answer the phone the next time they call, even if I DO feel emotionally available. 

Healthy limits, direct communication and boundaries are key to taking care of ourselves AND the relationships and people we love. 

It’s not mean to say no, it’s pure love in action. 

Sometimes when we set boundaries where we haven’t before, the other person may no longer be interested in being our friend. That hurts. Let it. Feel it. Be with it. Then you can do your thought work on it to see that their thoughts and feelings have nothing to do with magnificent YOU. 

Then you can ask yourself - do you actually want to be friends with someone who only wants to be friends if you’re abandoning yourself? 

If you realize that you’re in either the giver or taker role, remember that we step into these roles because they’re what we are used to. It was modeled for us in our families of origin, and is what’s cozy for us because it’s what we know. Your friend may not even realize they are giving or taking more than serves them or the friendship. 

This is where we bring compassion to ourselves and our BFF and get bold, even when it’s super uncomfortable. We can address the elephant of energetic imbalance in the friendship and start to shift things. 

From being the taker you can ask more questions about your friend. From being the giver you can ask your friend to hold space for you. 

Pair this with learning how to manage your own needs first. Step out of over-reliance and into connection based on wanting to give or get support. Not from the needing that may be your relational norm. 

You get to realize that it’s not that you will lose friends if you show up as yourself. Rather, the people who really truly love and care for you will love YOU for who you really are. 

If someone doesn't want to be your friend because you showed up in your authenticity, is that someone whose friendship you really want? 

Last but not at all least, start to conceptualize and visualize what a more balanced and healthy connection could look like when you’re coming from love first. This means not asking your friend to sacrifice their needs for yours, and not agreeing to do that either anymore. The more anchored you are in you and your wants and needs, the more you trust yourself to speak them, the stronger your interdependent friendship bond can be. Your friendship will grow deeper as you take care of yourself first, then them second, with love. 

Thank you for taking the time to read Feminist Wellness. I’m excited to be here and to help you take back your health!

 

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