How to Stop Being Codependent

You cancel plans with friends—again—because your partner needs you. You stay up until 2 a.m. managing your adult sibling’s crisis, even though you have an important meeting in the morning. You feel responsible for keeping everyone around you happy, and when they’re not, you’re convinced it’s your fault. What feels like love, loyalty, or just being a good person might actually be something else entirely: codependency.

Codependency is more than leaning on someone for support or being close with another person. It’s an unhealthy pattern where your worth, your time, and your energy revolve entirely around someone else, often at the expense of your own well-being. These relationships can weave themselves through your life for years, and they often have roots that go back decades, frequently starting in childhood as part of family dynamics.

While codependent relationships are common, they can absolutely be changed with the right support and practice. The hard part? You may not even realize you’re in a codependent relationship until you’re already exhausted, resentful, or feeling lost. “Codependency becomes very one-sided and incredibly unhealthy,” says Nona Kelly, a licensed marriage and family therapist at Thriveworks.

Here, learn more about what codependency looks like, how to break these patterns, and how to move forward into healthier relationships.

Highlights

Codependency means your self-worth depends entirely on someone else. You focus on meeting their needs at the expense of your own, often feeling drained, anxious, or responsible for their happiness.
Common signs include people-pleasing, difficulty saying no, and fear of abandonment. If one person takes up most of your time and energy, you may be codependent.
These patterns often start in childhood through experiences like having an addicted parent, acting as a caregiver too young, or learning that love required sacrificing yourself.
Breaking free requires setting boundaries and rebuilding your identity. Key steps include learning to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and reconnecting with your own interests.
Therapy accelerates healing and helps you avoid repeating patterns by teaching you to identify toxic dynamics, process difficult emotions, and build healthier relationship skills.

What Does It Mean to Be Codependent?

Codependency means that your sense of self-worth and stability come from someone else, explains Hallie Kritsas, a licensed mental health counselor at Thriveworks who specializes in relationship dynamics and attachment patterns. Within a codependent relationship, you focus on meeting someone else’s needs at the expense of your own. This can occur in romantic relationships, with family members, and even within friendships.

According to Kritsas and Kelly, codependency often shows up as:

Constantly putting someone else first. You always consider a certain person’s needs before your own, even when it leaves you drained or burned out.
People-pleasing and difficulty saying no. You describe yourself as someone who just can’t turn down requests, especially from this person. The thought of saying no fills you with guilt or fear that they’ll leave you.
Taking on too much responsibility. You feel responsible for managing their emotions, solving their problems, or “rescuing” them from situations, even when they’re capable of handling things themselves. One person ends up taking the majority of your time, energy, and attention.
Losing your sense of self. You’ve let go of your own interests, separated yourself from other people in your life, or can’t remember the last time you did something just for you.
Fear of abandonment and low self-worth. Deep down, you believe that if you can’t help or please this person, they will leave you. Your self-esteem is tied to how well you can meet their needs.
Recognizing real harm. You can see that this relationship has caused suffering in your life, whether that’s damaged relationships with others, financial strain, or declining mental and physical health.

It’s easy to lose yourself in codependency. “Over time, keeping the other person happy becomes the sole focus of the codependent person. All they can think about is how to maintain the relationship, keep the other person from using substances, or whatever goal they’ve attached to their own sense of worth,” Kritsas says. Other people in your life that you trust might also point out these patterns to you.

Comparison Chart: Enmeshment vs Codependency vs Disengagement

Codependency exists on a spectrum of relationship dynamics. Understanding where you fall can help you identify the specific patterns you want to change.

7 Steps to End Codependent Patterns

Codependency often begins in childhood, triggered by trauma or unhealthy family patterns. Maybe you:

Grew up with a parent who struggled with addiction, and you learned to manage their moods and needs before your own
Were expected to act as a caregiver to younger siblings or an emotionally dependent parent, taking on responsibilities beyond your years
Experienced emotional neglect, learning that the only way to receive love or attention was to be helpful, compliant, or indispensable

These early experiences teach you that your value comes from what you do for others—a lesson that follows you into adulthood.

Breaking patterns can mean unraveling decades of codependency, which is challenging work. You deserve a lot of credit for starting. Here’s what to do next:

1. Trace codependency back to its childhood origins.

While you might recognize the problem because of a current relationship or friendship, it’s likely not your first experience with codependency. “We don’t become codependent because of one bad relationship. It often starts in childhood, as you learn about relationships from how people in your household communicate and show each other love and affection,” Kritsas says.

It’s worth looking at what influenced you growing up. Did you learn that love meant sacrificing yourself? Were you praised for being the “easy” kid who never caused problems? Understanding where these patterns began can help you recognize them more clearly now.

“We don’t become codependent because of one bad relationship. It often starts in childhood, as you learn about relationships from how people in your household communicate and show each other love and affection.”

—Hallie Kritsas, Licensed Mental Health Counselor at Thriveworks

2. Ask yourself: What am I feeling right now?

Pause and check in with yourself regularly. Do you feel anxious? Guilty? Responsible for how someone else feels? Are you trying to help, fix, or heal someone because you genuinely want to or is it because you’re terrified of what might happen if you don’t?

These are quick questions you can ask yourself to assess how codependency is affecting you in the moment, Kritsas says.

3. Learn to tolerate uncomfortable feelings without fixing them.

When you start checking in with your feelings—the anxiety, guilt, and sense of responsibility—you’ll likely stir up a lot of uncomfortable emotions. “I will explain to clients that I know they feel anxious or guilty, but we have to acknowledge those feelings and sit in them,” Kritsas says.

She teaches the idea of “loud” and “soft” feelings. When you name your emotions and work through the loud ones instead of immediately trying to make them go away, they can slowly dissipate and become softer.

4. Have an honest conversation about your needs.

Who is the person or people in your life that you feel codependent with? “Can you have a conversation with them?” asks Kritsas. For example, it might sound like, “I feel anxious about not being able to say no to you” or “I feel guilty that I can’t be there for you as much as I have been.”

A good friend or partner will likely say that wasn’t their intention and will work through this with you. But someone who is enabling the codependent pattern may push back, dismiss your feelings, or make you feel worse for expressing your needs.

5. Use the stop-check-choose method before saying yes.

Inevitably, someone you have a codependent relationship with will ask you to break your boundaries. Kritsas teaches her clients this simple method to pause before automatically saying yes to whatever they’re asking:

Stop before acting.
Check if it’s truly your responsibility.
Choose how you want to respond.

This creates space between the request and your reaction, giving you time to make a conscious decision rather than defaulting to people-pleasing.

The Stop-Check-Choose Method

Before automatically saying yes to a request, try this:

Stop before acting
Check if it’s truly your responsibility
Choose how you want to respond

6. Learn about boundaries and set them consistently.

One thing codependent relationships don’t have is boundaries. These can be difficult to establish, but it’s critical when you’re breaking patterns. Boundaries might be:

About your time, such as “I won’t be able to pick up the phone during work hours” or allowing them to handle their own problems
Emotional, like recognizing that if you say no to their request, it’s OK if they get angry or upset (and deciding that you’ll hang up the phone or block their texts if they try to guilt or shame you)
Physical, such as stating that they no longer have access to your phone or telling a friend that you won’t be able to drive them whenever they need a ride, but you can help with specific scheduled trips

(Not sure where to start? Here’s a truly practical guide for setting boundaries without feeling guilty.)

7. Rebuild your identity as an individual.

Who are you outside of this relationship? What do you like to do? Make a list and keep it on your phone for easy access when you need a reminder. Separating yourself by building your own identity and pursuing activities and hobbies that make you feel whole—without people-pleasing—is key to breaking a codependent pattern, Kritsas says.

Once you turn the focus back on yourself, you can build confidence and self-worth that come from within rather than from another person.

How Therapy Helps You Address Codependency

A blend of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) works well as a therapeutic approach that address your thoughts, feelings, and actions. “These types of therapy help people learn new skills when they’re in emotional turmoil,” Kritsas says.

As Kelly points out, some clients don’t even realize they’re in a codependent relationship at first. They might seek out therapy to help them through an unwanted breakup, and through reflecting on the relationship, they spot the codependency. “They realized that they put a lot into the relationship and walked away with very little,” she says.

If that resonates with you, therapy can help you:

Identify the toxicity in the relationship. A therapist can help you see patterns you may have normalized or couldn’t recognize on your own.
Work through difficult emotions. Process the fear, insecurity, sadness, guilt, uncertainty, loss, and denial that often come with recognizing and leaving a codependent relationship.
Build skills for healthier relationships. Develop the self-growth needed to avoid repeating patterns in the future, including boundary setting, building personal interests, and improving your sense of self-worth.
Create an outside support system. Therapy can help you reconnect with people outside the codependent relationship and build a network that supports your well-being.

With these steps, one goal is to help you avoid jumping into another codependent relationship, Kelly says.

Be Patient: Change Takes Time

Codependency doesn’t change overnight. You developed these patterns over the long term, and they’ve shaped how you view yourself and how you relate to others. Although it would be nice to “snap out of it,” there’s real self-work to be done. “Breaking codependent patterns is something that will take time and self-awareness,” Kelly says.

The reassuring news is that change can—and does—happen. “My clients frequently report realizing that they had a good day and they were not obsessing over the other person or the relationship. They feel proud of themselves and the work they have done. This is how they know they are making progress,” Kelly says.

The Bottom Line

Codependency is a one-sided relationship pattern where you focus entirely on meeting someone else’s needs at the expense of your own. This can take a serious toll on your mental and emotional health. But you can break free.

Setting boundaries, establishing a support system, and learning to recognize and honor your own needs are essential steps. Therapy offers a structured way to understand your past experiences, process your current emotions, and build skills for healthier relationships—with others and with yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if I’m codependent?

You’re likely codependent if one person consistently takes up most of your time, energy, and attention—and you put their needs ahead of your own to the point where it harms your well-being. Common signs include difficulty saying no, fear of abandonment, taking responsibility for someone else’s emotions or problems, and losing touch with your own identity and interests. If you feel drained, resentful, or unable to imagine your life without managing this person’s needs, these are strong indicators of a codependent pattern.

Can a codependent person have a healthy relationship?

Yes, with work, support, and skill-building, you can absolutely learn to have healthy relationships. Recovery from codependency involves learning to set and maintain boundaries, rebuilding your sense of self, and developing the confidence to honor your own needs alongside others’. If you’re currently in a codependent relationship, setting boundaries with that person and focusing on your own identity can sometimes improve the dynamic. Other times, breaking up or going low- or no-contact may be the healthiest option for your well-being. Therapy can help you process these feelings and develop a plan that’s right for your situation.

How long does it take to stop being codependent?

There’s no fixed timeline, but many people report feeling significantly better within months of starting therapy and actively working on codependent patterns. For some in long-term romantic relationships, healing may take up to half the length of the relationship. Patterns rooted in childhood can take longer since you’re unlearning decades of behavior. What matters most is the consistent work of building self-awareness, practicing boundaries, and developing a stronger sense of self.

How to stop being codependent and find balance