How to Help Co-dependent People

You may have had a friend or family member who showers you with attention, time, money and even energy. Although being on the receiving end of these things might seem ideal, you could be encouraging and enabling their behaviors by accepting all that they try to bestow upon you. It's important to know what codependency and enabling is and how you can help the codependent person.

Instructions

• 1

  Understand what codependency is and recognize it. Codependent people often function as the hero of situations. They tend to seek out people who are weak in nature, whether consistently or due to a particular circumstance. Codependent people find it difficult to focus on their own lives and tend to focus on other people. Understanding that there is a higher incidence of dysfunction (such as drug and alcohol abuse) in the backgrounds of codependent people and that they grew up trying to fix things and 'make it better' can give you a better understanding of why codependent people behave the way they do.

• 2

  Distance yourself from a codependent person. If you think you have identified a codependent person you will want to ensure that you don't enable them. Those who enable do so by taking advantage of codependent people (even though codependent people don't look at it as being taken advantage of) by recognizing the inordinate amount of attention given to them and accepting it anyway.

• 3

  Approach the codependent person in a nonthreatening and nonjudgmental way about what you have observed. The first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem and if the codependent person admits that she has a problem, offer suggestions for counseling and therapy. However, she may not recognize or admit that she has a problem. In this case, let her know that your door is open if she would like to talk with you at a later time about her codependency but remain distant in the meantime in order to avoid encouraging her self destructive behavior.