You have experienced trauma in your lifetime and you’ve never resolved it with treatment: Codependency is often born out of untreated and unresolved trauma. Trauma is an experience most people will have in life but few will develop the symptoms of struggling from. Having unresolved issues with trauma is not the same as having a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder. However, the pain of unresolved trauma can manifest in problematic behaviors, like codependency.

You regularly experience feelings of shame about your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and your idea of self: People who struggle with codependency often struggle with feelings of low self-esteem and low self-worth. Their experience with these struggles comes from the many behaviors in which codependency takes form. Self-esteem can be defined as having respect and admiration for the self. Most often, those who are codependent do not act out of self-respect or would say that they admire who they are. They would more likely say that they do not deserve to be admired. Ashamed of the thoughts in their head, the feelings they have, the way they behave, people who are codependent feel deeply ashamed of who they are as a person.

You find yourself distracted by thoughts of others and other’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and their idea of yourself: In order to cope with their feelings of shame and low self-worth, people who are codependent invest themselves in the lives of others. Rather than think about their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, they obsess about those of others. In addition, those who are codependent are more fixated on what others think of them than what they think of themselves. Their idea of self is completely based on what other people think of them.

You are responsible for many other people’s lives: Codependent behavior typically includes taking on too many responsibilities than one is able to handle. In order to keep people close and keep a tab on what other’s are thinking, the codependent slowly enmeshes themselves in other’s lives, taking on responsibilities for them. One of the most striking ways a codependent takes responsibility is by taking responsibilities for other people’s feelings, especially their feelings about the codependent. As a result, they prioritize other people’s feelings above their own to the point of not understanding their own feelings anymore. When asked about how they are and what they are going through, codependents will often start to talk about other people, their thought, their feelings and what is going on in their lives.