Interdependency was foreign to me for a long time. It felt like I was learning to live in a different culture, language, and world. It was especially confusing at first as I couldn’t see the differences between interdependence and codependence.
This quick-list gives you insights into the differences I learned in my journey in building healthy interdependent connections with others.
Use it to guide you in your own growth and healing.
Note: Quick-lists & Infographics are snapshots on a concept or topic. They are, by nature, limited in their scope. It is entirely expected that the quick-list does not cover everything or may lack certain nuances. Keep that in mind while using them.
CODEPENDENCY
- Give up self to get their approval
- Seeks value through approval and praise
- Apologizes for existing, having boundaries, being different, having feelings, wants, needs
- Absorbing the other person’s life as their own
- Emotionally enmeshed
- Seeks self through the relationship
- Attempts to fix problems and feelings of others in order to be valuable to them
- Over-empathizes by absorbing the responsibility for other’s pain and situations
- Ignores and denies their own feelings
- Blurry boundaries & muddy sense of self
INTERDEPENDENCE
- Acknowledges & respects the individual thoughts, feelings, wants, needs of each other
- Keeping your worth, identity, and sense of self while asking for their contribution to your needs and wants
- Sharing yourself as you are; receiving them as they are
- Having personal goals and desires while also sharing in mutual goals and desires
- Feeling secure to rely on the other to hold shelter and space for you & vice versa
- Needs and wants are mutually respected and valued
- Individuality and the mutual relationship are valued
- Clear boundaries and definition of self
