Criteria for a Dysfunctional (Co-Dependent) Family

In a dysfunctional family, members may suffer from insecurity and fear manifesting in any of the following obsessive/compulsive behaviours:
Overeating
Work addiction
Shopping addiction
Gambling
Alcohol
Drugs
Sex

Description of a Dysfunctional Family in Denial
Dysfunctional families do not acknowledge that problems exist. As a result, family members learn to repress emotions and disregard their own needs. Also:

They become “survivors”
They have no personal identity, switching between roles to make people happy
Their emotional development is inhibited and they fail to “grow up”
They develop behaviours that help them deny, ignore or avoid facing difficult emotions
They detach from reality by eating, drinking, gambling, working, shopping, etc.
They don’t feel
They don’t trust
They don’t touch
They don’t talk
They don’t confront

Passive co-dependent people sacrifice their own needs in order to take care of others. They place other people’s health, welfare and safety before their own and often lose contact with their own needs, desires and sense of self. This often leads emotional overeaters to resentment and self-pity when their own needs have not been met. To counteract these feelings, they seek solace in food, which gives them a “chemical” and “emotional” short-term satisfying feeling.

How Do Co-Dependent People Behave?
Co-dependents have low self-esteem and look for anything outside of themselves to make them feel better. They find difficulty being themselves and try to feel better through the use of food, alcohol, drugs and nicotine, or they develop compulsive behaviours like workaholism, gambling, shopping and indiscriminate sexual activity.

A co-dependent person can be very passive, or very bossy and controlling, or both.

Controlling people try to change everyone and everything around them. They are not happy unless they get their own way – all the time. Tyrannical and dominating, some co-dependents rule with an iron first from a self-appointed throne. They are powerful individuals who make life a misery for everyone around them.

Other co-dependents do their controlling under cover. They hide behind a costume of sweetness and nicety and secretly go about their business – controlling other people’s business.

Others use sighing and crying to announce their overall victimisation, and successfully control through weakness. They are so helpless. They need your co-operation so badly. They can’t live without it. Sometimes the weak are the most powerful manipulators and controllers. They have learned to tug at the guilt and pity strings of the world by using emotional blackmail.

Whatever the tactics, the goals remain the same. Make other people do what you want them to do. Make people behave as you think they should behave – control, control, control.

Being a controlling co-dependent is one of the biggest emotional weights to carry around. Why waste an incredible amount of energy in attempts to make others behave in ways they don’t want to?

Being physically overweight, combined with carrying around emotional weight, is self-destructive. Emotional overeating is but a symptom of a more serious underlying emotional problem. Want to lose weight? Get rid of the emotional weight that is sabotaging your ability to lose physical weight and you will “break FREE and win!”

Typical Behaviour of a Passive Co-Dependent’s Rescue & Caretaking Role of Other People

Some co-dependent people rescue others from their responsibilities. They take care of people’s responsibilities for them, inhibiting their ability to mature emotionally. This can include:

- Doing something we really don’t want to do
- Saying “yes” when we really want to say “no”
- Always putting other people first
- Meeting people’s needs without being asked
- Fixing people’s feelings
- Doing people’s thinking for them
- Suffering people’s consequences for them
- Solving people’s problems for them
- Not asking for what we want, need and desire
- Doing something for someone although that person is quite capable of doing it for himself or herself
- Taking the blame for other people’s behaviour
- Giving gifts and favours for approval

Co-dependents are often nice people with thoughtful motives but they attempt to help by continually taking control of other’s lives and doing things that others really need to do for themselves.

A protective, controlling co-dependent will attempt to shield another from the negative consequences of that person’s behaviour. A mother may make excuses for a truant child or a father may “pull some strings” to keep his son from suffering the consequences of delinquent behaviour.

People become dependent upon the co-dependent and as this reliance increases, the co-dependent develops an unconscious sense of “reward” and satisfaction from “being needed.” It feeds their ego (self-image). When a co-dependent’s “needs” are not being met, he or she seeks solace in food and the cycle continues.

Co-dependents view themselves as victims and are attracted to that same weakness in their love and friendship relationships, often ending up in toxic relationships. They may seek relationships with overeaters, alcoholics, gamblers or drug-addicted people, which continues the unhealthy pattern. A partner with an addiction can often be controlled or manipulated and, in turn, may seek out someone who can organise their lives, cover up for their behaviour and clean up their messy life situations.