Childhood Trauma Causes Lasting Codependency
Get In The Car
“Let’s go.” Mom demanded with bloodshot eyes, tears dried to her face, and a 6 pack in her grip.
“Where?”
“To look for your Dad. That son of a bitch is somewhere with Jane. I know he is.”
“But, I have homework to do. I’m already behind on this algebra stu-“
“Ahhhhhh ohhhhhhhh!!!!!” She wailed like someone had just stabbed her in the gut with a dull sword. Her skeletal frame crippled over. “Why?! Why doesn’t he love me anymore?! Katyeeee, oh whyeeee?!” The dried tear paths refreshed with a new wave of pain.
My heart broke for her on a daily basis. Her despair was like a black hole that sucked all of my emotions and wants away. It was all about her. Is she ok? What does she need? How can I help her? I was 11 years old. No one gave a shit if I was ok. No one. Not even me. It was all about her.
We never found Dad. Where we even looking? Often times the car would just float around aimlessly on the small roughly paved roads that cut through the woods of Runaway Bay until she ran out of beer. He would show up at the house when he felt like coming home. He always did.
But, every day, Mom and I would repeat this ritual. I was her therapist, her best friend, her sidekick, her caretaker. I was everything to her except for her daughter. “Get in the car” was my life from age 11 to age 15.
Runaway Bay is a strange name for a little lakeside town in Texas, I know. It’s where I grew up. At least I went through the motions of growing up, but my dysfunctional childhood had stunted something inside me. Something I could always feel holding me back.
In this article, I explore how childhood trauma causes lasting codependency and provide resources for how to overcome it.
What is codependency?
Merriam-Webster defines codependency as: a psychological condition or a relationship in which a person manifesting low self-esteem and a strong desire for approval has an unhealthy attachment to another often controlling or manipulative person (such as a person with an addiction to alcohol or drugs.)
How Does Codependency Show Up In Relationships?
Codependency can show up in a variety of ways, as it is a complex psychological issue. Some of the major ways codependency shows up are listed below:
- Clinging to toxic relationships. Being afraid of not being in a relationship. Falling hard and fast for the wrong people. Clinging to the good times of the past or the potential good times of the future, despite the unbearable times of the present.
- Getting into and staying in relationships with people that you think you can fix or help, often an addict, as if they were a project and not a person. Taking it personally when people don’t change their unhealthy behavior for you. Feeling unimportant and unloved. Thinking that you have to earn love by saving someone from themselves.
- People pleasing / pretending: Going above and beyond to be everything to everyone while ignoring your own needs and wants. Thinking you must serve others to earn love. This often leads to emotional and physical burnout and feeling unappreciated and unseen.
- Perfectionism: Thinking you are unworthy of love unless you are perfect. An unhealthy relationship with ambition and image.
- Withholding: Never or rarely sharing feelings. Afraid to be vulnerable. Wanting a connection deep down, but terrified that if you open up to someone and share your feelings, they will just use them against you.
- The victim: Always blaming others for anything and everything that is wrong in your life. Go out of your way to make people feel sorry for you. Do not accept accountability. Points the finger and shifts blame. Depressed. Often suffers from addiction to alcohol or drugs which damages the brain and feeds this psychological loop.
Codependent Attachment Personality Patterns
The Victim / Clinger
My fantabulous life coach, Heidi Rain, says that her clients will often say, “I’m not the codependent one, he is!” But, the word “codependent” implies two people, because “co” means “two.”
In her many years of experience helping 1000’s of clients, Heidi has cracked the code to understanding how codependents attract each other by identifying and studying codependent attachment personality patterns.
Let’s use my Mom as an example to examine 2 codependent personality patterns displayed in one person. She was obviously a victim and a clinger. The woman had been using meth probably since I was an infant, possibly while even pregnant with me. This was evident by the fact that she always wore size 0 jeans and her teeth were in such wretched shape that she had to get dentures before age 40.
My Mom’s meth habit was extremely self-destructive, but she had actually played the part of a good mother very well until Dad began cheating, lying, and drinking. I’m pretty sure my Dad was on a variety of drugs my whole life, too. He just hid it better than Mom. However, both parents managed to provide a sense of safety and belonging for me for the first 10 years of my life.
Don’t get me wrong, finding out your spouse is cheating would crush anyone whether they be codependent, addicted, or completely healthy in every way. However, like a victim, she took a bad situation and made it 1,000 times worse with the way she handled it.
It sucked that one relationship had failed, but in response, she went ahead and burned every other relationship she had to the ground with her increased drug and alcohol use, all while accepting zero responsibility for her role in any of it. She was actively making her own life miserable while demanding infinite sympathy. This is classic victim behavior.
Mom’s clinger attachment personality pattern was strong, too. Despite Dad’s cheating, lying, and not coming home, she desperately wanted to make it work with him. I still loved my Dad, but after about a year of this new nightmare of a life, I was like, “Hey, Mom… Um, I think it might be time to give up on Dad and get a divorce. He has made it clear he doesn’t want to stay married.”
But, she refused and clung to the idea that, maybe someday, he would decide he wanted his family back. After about 3 years of the madness, I snapped and told them they have to divorce or let me move out to live with my aunt. I knew if Mom didn’t get out soon, she would die by suicide or overdose. I was the catalyst that jumpstarted the divorce process.
However, a separation didn’t help Mom as much as I had hoped.
All of the drugs and alcohol did nothing but fuel her victim mentality, and she sang that song as loudly and as often as possible, desperately seeking sympathy from anyone and everyone. She made no attempt to heal from the trauma or move on. Her victim mentality grew so large and encompassing that I became nothing more than a little keychain dangling helplessly from the keys of the minivan that she had no business driving.
This is how codependency is passed down to the next generation. If you want to break this cycle for good, it will require some work.
The Withholder
Like I mentioned above, it takes 2 people to do the codependent tango, and Dad was definitely a withholder.
Heidi Rain says that withholders and clingers are a match made in Hell.
At the start of a relationship, the withholder finds relief in a clinger, because clingers love to overshare their emotions and fill in the blanks if their partner isn’t giving them much in return. A clinger will see what they want to see in order to make a relationship work, because they have already decided, early in the relationship, that this person is their life partner. Forever.
The withholder is off the hook. Since the clinger is doing all the emotional work in the relationship, the withholder is free to do what they do best: withhold. A withholder feels safe and secure when their feelings are hidden, and they will spend decades building defensive walls around their emotions. This type of person would literally rather die than let you know what is going on in their head.
To this day, my Dad was the absolute most quiet person I have ever met. He just didn’t talk. When I was young, and things were good, Dad and I would bond through fishing, swimming, and camping. I can list the things he taught me about life on one hand: 1. How to change a flat tire 2. How to check the fluids in my car 2. How to fry frozen chicken fillets without burning the house down 3. How to put a worm on a hook 4. Umm… Well hell… I ran out… I guess that’s all he taught me.
I don’t even remember Mom and Dad getting in a single argument until I was about 11 years old! But, when Dad finally showed his emotions, it was like an ancient volcano was awakening. Sometimes, a withholder explodes and releases all of the hidden thoughts and rage that had been dormant all along. And, when that happens, it is absolutely terrifying.
He would scream at her most nights so hatefully and so loudly that the walls seemed to shake, and I always assumed he would hit her. He never did, but I remember thinking how badly he must have wanted to judging by the tone of his voice. If Mom and I weren’t driving around “looking for him,” we were at home for the scream fest. Yay…
For the first 11 years of my life, I had a loving, supportive family. Mom made me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We went fishing every weekend and ate catfish on Sundays. I felt safe. I felt like I belonged somewhere.
But, all of that was ripped away quickly and replaced with a hopeless shell of an existence, all of us functioning at 11% battery life. No more meals. No more catfish Sundays. The kitchen was stocked with Doritos, bread, and beer from then on.
How Childhood Trauma Causes Lasting Codependency
So, how does childhood trauma cause lasting codependency?
Heidi explains this very well, so listen up, because this is where healing starts! You have to know yourself before you can learn to heal and love yourself.
Codependency is a survival strategy that we learned in childhood to cope with a dysfunctional situation.
Read that again.
CODEPENDENCY IS A SURVIVAL STRATEGY THAT WE LEARNED IN CHILDHOOD TO COPE WITH A DYSFUNCTIONAL SITUATION. (Sorry for yelling!)
When children are living in a dysfunctional family, they take on certain roles in order to cope, survive, fit in, or gain approval.
Your codependent self is not who you were meant to be. It is not your essence or the real you. It is something you had to learn in childhood to cope with a horrible situation.
How Childhood Trauma Caused Lasting Codependency In Me
Why I Became A Fixer
So, how did childhood trauma cause lasting codependency in me? What role did I play in order to cope with my dysfunctional situation?
I tried desperately to help and fix my Mom. I didn’t even know she was on meth or what meth was until I was about 14 years old. But, I knew she was drinking too much, and I knew she was deeply depressed and suicidal.
When dysfunction ruled my family, I lost my parents, and I became a parent in many ways. It was a trauma response to try and make everything ok.
When I knew Mom hadn’t eaten all day, I tried to heat her up some canned soup. If she passed out drunk and pissed herself, I tried to get her to shower and change clothes. When she was screaming and crying, I tried to play therapist and listen to her for hours. Even when the information was extremely inappropriate and psychologically damaging to me, I listened. Like sexual information about my Dad for example. Gross.
When Mom was really having a meltdown, I even tried to get her to read the Bible with me. I’m not into organized religion these days, but at the time, it seemed like it might help. It didn’t.
I poured out her whiskey when I knew she’d had more than enough. I encouraged her to divorce Dad. She was too depressed to look for work when we lived on our own. So, I gave her advice on how to get a job, even though I literally had no idea how to land a job myself, being only 14 at the time.
It is extremely obvious that I had adopted the fixer personality. This isn’t the only codependent personality pattern I adopted, but it is one of my more dominant ones. The other ones I adopted are the: clinger, controller, and people pleaser. Heidi says it is common for people to develop more than one codependent personality attachment pattern.
Check out this incredibly insightful video about the fixer / victim codependent attachment personality patterns. She explains things perfectly. Seriously… This beautiful lady knows her stuff.
Why I Became A Clinger
I have been aware of my clinginess for a long time. But, I have only recently started to understand why I became a clinger.
One of the many downsides to having a victim as a Mom was her manipulation tactics she used to turn the entire family against me. As if life wasn’t bad enough for a kid with addicted parents, Mom turned me into a scapegoat to take the attention off of her. True to victim form, she would point that bony finger at me any chance she got and proceed to blame her problems on me.
It was incredibly obvious that she was on meth. Everyone knew it. Hell, dogs knew it. But, my grandparents were in denial about it I guess. Anytime we were around them, I remember being chastised without mercy for my slipping grades in school and new choices in friends.
Family got off on telling me how I would never make anything of myself. I swear they seemed to enjoy putting me down. It didn’t used to be that way. When I was a kid, they were loving and supporting. People love to hate teenagers.
You would think that a room full of adults ought to have the sense to realize that my grades were slipping, because from age 11 and on, I was literally prevented from doing homework either from the screaming in the house or from the drunken car rides that I was forced to attend.
On top of that, I was visibly malnourished at that point and had dizzy spells at school where I’d see black spots and almost lose consciousness. When I did eat, it was either something fried or something that came out of a vending machine. Girls at school made fun of me, possibly out of jealousy, for how thin I was. I remembered thinking, “Why you gotta make fun of me? Can’t you invite me to a sleepover, so I can get a nice meal?!”
Mom had started taking me to bars on school nights, (which is totally legal in Texas as long as you’re with a parent,) and she was still driving me around drunk until 2 am, threatening to kill me by sleeping on the steering wheel while running through red lights.
Or, if she was conscious, the death threats would be more direct. “I’ll drive us both into that oncoming 18-wheeler. That will teach your Dad.”
Yeah, Grandma…. Let me just go to school after a night like that, make straight A’s and fit right in with the cheerleaders and jocks. Right… I’m the problem here.
Dad’s side of the family was no different. After Mom kicked me out around age 15, I moved in with Dad and his new girlfriend. Living with them was refreshing at first, because Mom used to smoother me by dragging me around everywhere. However, the neglect I felt living with Dad and Jane was intense. We barely spoke.
On top of that, Jane would make casual threats to slap me for things like playing my music too loud. One time, I told her if she ever hit me that I’d beat her ass down. It caused a huge argument, and we never spoke again after that despite still living together.
My Grandmother took Jane’s side, cussed me out, and told me that I would never amount to anything, just like my other grandparents had said. She also informed me that if I didn’t start talking to Jane, Dad would literally die from stress, and it would be my fault. Before my family fell apart, all of my grandparents, aunts, and uncles treated me with so much kindness. But, after my parent’s drug use escalated, I became everyone’s favorite target.
Cool magic trick. Now they love me. Now they don’t.
I ended up getting kicked out from different family members houses a total of 5 times before actually breaking free for good and being old enough to work and share rent with roommates. I didn’t deserve to be kicked out by any standards and was surprisingly very well behaved considering my circumstances. My family simply didn’t want me.
To say that this made me feel unloved would be an understatement. It made me feel like I didn’t even exist, because according to family, I really didn’t, and I still don’t.
I was a spec of dust. An annoying hair stuck in their eye. An outcast that made them look bad just by proximity, because deep down everyone probably knew that I deserved to be treated better. And, that probably made them feel guilty. So, to remove the guilt, they simply removed me.
I became a clinger, because I had become numb to psychological abuse, thinking that it was normal, because everyone in my life was abusive. I truly thought that my only options were to settle for an abusive relationship or live in complete isolation.
True To Clinger Form
As a teenager, I began to cling to whichever boyfriend I had at the time. Eeenie Meenie Miney, you’ll do. I never took my relationships too seriously, as I had always planned on them being temporary. But, I wanted a boyfriend at all times. Obviously, I wasn’t getting the love and attention that I needed from family, so I attempted to synthesize that in my relationships.
Everything is learned behavior, and I made a choice to never be dumped, as Mom made it seem like the worst thing ever. Like Missy Elliot says, “I break up with him before he dump me,” ha! I did the dumping, and just like Dad, I made sure I had a replacement first. Boyfriends were exchanged like used cars, although I can’t really say any of them were upgrades. It was just a “next,” mentality.
Maybe this sounds like normal teenage behavior, but the scary part is that, the older I got, the more I realized that I was actually terrified of being alone. That’s why I was never single. This means that I was willing to overlook major flaws in people and things that should have been deal breakers. I’d settle too quick and too often seeing only the good in people while completely ignoring the bad.
Settling for my first husband ended up causing me serious psychological harm. I often wonder…. If I had a less dysfunctional childhood, would I have more self-esteem? If I belonged to a loving and supportive family, would I have been comfortable being single and just focusing on myself? I think so.
After I finally saw my ex husband clearly and divorced him, I tried to be single. At 30 years old, it was my very first attempt at solo life. Financial independence had always come easy to me from age 16 and on. But, I lacked emotional independence and healthy relationship skills. I lacked standards for who I let into my life… and my pants.
I failed miserably as a single adult, because all I did was work all week and look for some new stranger to sleep with on the weekends. This was obviously very dangerous, but I somehow made it out unscathed.
The scariest moment was when I went to a stranger’s basement for sex. I was completely sober at the time. Sex was my drug. He pulled out a stun gun and kept flashing it on and off while laughing maniacally staring down at me on the bed. Good thing he was just messing with me. Good one, random stranger / bad lay. Super funny.
I could have been a star on your next entertaining true crime podcast episode!
After only a year of being single, I settled and clung to a man that I never should have. He was by far the scariest person I’ve ever spent time with. True to clinger form, I stayed with him after he called me a “bitch” and a “liar” for going to the grocery store. I even moved in with him to try and calm his fears that I was cheating.
I clung to how great our past had been and how great our future could be while ignoring all of the red flags that were right in front of me in the present moment. And, like a fixer, I thought maybe if I loved him enough, his anger would subside. I felt sorry for him and actually thought I could help him.
Obviously, moving in together didn’t calm his suspicions about me cheating, and the verbal abuse escalated. Luckily, my fear of him was stronger than my urge to cling, and I moved out without warning while he was at work one day and booked it across the country to escape the impending doom. I knew assault was just around the corner, so I left.
How To Break The Codependency Cycle
This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase the services or goods offered in this link, I will earn a commission at NO extra cost to you! I am recommending this product/service because of my experience with and love for it.
Admitting You Are Codependent
The first step to breaking the codependency cycle is to admit that you are codependent. This was very hard for me.
In many ways, I’m ferociously independent! I moved out from my family and lived with roommates at age 16, got a job, graduated high school with perfect attendance and AB Honor Roll, got my Bachelor’s Degree, and have always been financially independent.
After all of my tangible successes, it was painful to admit that childhood trauma had caused lasting codependency issues in me.
My ambition towards financial independence was a direct defense mechanism to avoid becoming like my Mom. When she divorced Dad, she had very little job skills and no money. I vowed to never let a man make me feel that helpless and small.
But, somehow I was still very dependent on men, not financially, but emotionally. And, after examining all of my major relationships, I knew it was a serious problem and that I needed to break my codependency cycle if I wanted to be truly happy in life.
Seek Help
It may sound ironic to seek help for codependency, but the truth is that humans are not solitary creatures. Even hermits and loners need help sometimes. We all need some sense of connection.
The goal is to move from codependency to interdependency, whether that means making improvements in your current situations with family or a significant other, or deciding it’s time to seek new relationships. The difference between codependency and interdependency is that codependency is an unhealthy attachment that is psychologically damaging, and interdependency is a mutually beneficial and healthy relationship.
It’s important to seek help from qualified professionals and not just your friends when it comes to codependency. The last thing you want is a blind leading the blind type of situation.
Hire A Life Coach
I highly recommend hiring a life coach to help you break the codependency cycle for good. I tried therapy when I got sober to help me process some of my trauma. The first few sessions were helpful, because venting felt really good. But, it reached a plateau when I realized that venting wasn’t making me feel better anymore. In fact, I’d feel nauseous for the entire day after my sessions.
My therapist didn’t do or say much. All I did was vent to her. My problem with therapy is that venting is only part of the healing process. At some point, guidance and actionable steps need to be offered. I craved exercises, journal prompts, and mental health homework! And, I desperately wanted advice from a professional.
So, I did what all of us do when we need advice. I asked the internet. That’s how I found Love Coach Heidi‘s free YouTube videos! Her message spoke to me so hard that I found myself agreeing out loud with her videos saying, “yep, uh huh, YES, Thank You!”
Heidi has a way of describing things that will help you get to the root of your codependency issues. She explains perfectly how childhood trauma causes lasting codependency. More importantly, she provides clients with the guidance and strategies to overcome codependency.
How The Codependency Breakthrough Course Helped Me
I watched Heidi’s free YouTube videos for about a year and a half before purchasing her Codependency Breakthrough course and semi-private coaching sessions. I entered the program feeling completely broken and lost, as I had recently experienced a lot of sudden trauma with family and in my marriage. My mental state was extremely fragile, and I was feeling very afraid that I was slowly unraveling.
The course was the missing piece in my mental health journey that I needed all along. The journal prompts, practical techniques, group Q and A sessions, and direct advice from Heidi were life changing.
My therapist probably would have secretly loved it if I had continued to pay her to listen to me rant for the rest our lives. She didn’t want to help me too much, because that would have resulted in a decline in her income stream.
Hiring Heidi Rain as my life coach was a better mental health investment, because the courses are temporary but they provide lasting results! (However, clients are welcome to come back through the program at anytime if they want extra support.)
I see the world and my place in it so differently now. Now that I understand codependency so deeply, I can never go back to the way I was.
I’m at peace with everything. No matter what happens, I finally know that I am enough. I’m content with my separation from toxic family. No matter what happens with any of my relationships in the future, I have a compass now, and I feel deeply rooted in my standards for how I want to live my life.
Why You Should Consider Love Coach Heidi
This article contains affiliate links. If you buy a service through one of these links, I will earn a commission at NO extra cost to you! I am recommending these services because of my love for and experience with the services/products.
Heidi developed a curiosity to study and understand codependency and addiction because of her childhood trauma and personal experiences. She has many years of experience working at one of the world’s leading drug and alcohol treatment centers where she created an empowerment program and facilitated psychoeducational lectures, seminars, and group therapy. She specializes in codependency, self-love, dysfunctional/unhealthy relationships, and dealing with addiction in the family. She co-created the Revolutionary Family Program and Love Yourself First Empowerment School.
Over the years, Heidi has worked with 1,000’s of clients and has gained incredible insight into the psychology behind childhood trauma and codependency. Through her studies and experience, she has acquired the expertise necessary to help you break your codependency cycle for good.
Heidi takes time to get to know each of her clients and cares about them all very much! You will identify your unique codependency attachment personality patterns and learn how to heal from them. The group sessions provide additional support and insight, so you won’t feel alone on your codependency recovery journey.
Meet like-minded people with HUGE hearts and a passion for learning how to love themselves as much as they love others.
Heidi’s lessons provide sanity, release from guilt that comes from being gaslit in unhealthy relationships, and certainty in your future decisions.
If you want to break your codependency cycle FOR GOOD, you should consider working with love coach Heidi Rain. Your childhood may have sucked. But, that doesn’t mean your entire life has to. Remember, you became who you had to be in order to survive childhood trauma, but being an adult means you get to redefine your standards for living.
You deserve to heal and become the person you were meant to be. Here is a quick directory of the courses she offers. Click on any of the following to get started on your road to recovery!
1. Self Study Codependency Breakthrough
2. Unlimited Monthly Semi-Private Coaching
3. Monthly Semi-Private Coaching (one group per week)
4. Boundaries With An Addict Master Series
5. Self Study Addiction Breakthrough
Thanks for reading! See ya next week!
Check out this video below for a quick explanation of the services Heidi offers: