By Brianna Boyd Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith have recently made the headlines because of some difficulties they have been experiencing in their marriage. I am not going delve too far into it, however there is one concept that was brought up that I would like to touch base on. There seems to have been an unhappiness present in their marriage, mainly on the part of Jada Pinkett-Smith. This unhappiness caused Jada to seek love elsewhere and she ended up in an extramarital affair. During an episode of her show The Red Table Talk, her and Will briefly talked about what was happening within in their marriage to clear the air, and Jada said something that stood out to me. She said, “I just wanted to feel good. It had been so long since I felt good and it was really a joy to just help heal somebody. I think that has a lot to do with my codependency, which is another thing I had to learn to break in this cycle, just that idea of needing to fix and being drawn to people that need help.” Jada went on to say that “there’s something about that childhood trauma that feels as though it can be fixed through fixing people versus fixing me.” CODEPENDENCY FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA Codependency is a real issue that I do not think many people understand or know much about. Most of the time, people become codependent adults because of trauma they experienced as a child or when a child’s parent(s) is not filling their role. Maybe they were neglected where their emotions were ignored or punished. Maybe they had to witness their parents fighting and were exposed to verbal or physical abuse. Maybe they had a parent that suffered with an addiction like alcoholism. When children experience dysfunction like this within their family, they become “fixers” and they do whatever they can to try and keep the peace since the adults around them cannot. Sometimes the child has to become the adult or the caretaker. Unless they get a handle on their codependency early on, it will most likely follow them into adulthood. SYMPTOMS OF CODEPENDENCY Caretaking – this is the biggest symptom of codependency*** Low self-esteem People-pleasing Poor boundaries Reactivity Control Dysfunctional communication Obsessions Dependency Denial Fear of rejection Problems with intimacy Painful emotions CODEPENDENCY AND RELATIONSHIPS Almost all codependent relationships are unbalanced, unhealthy relationships. Most of the time, you have one person sacrificing their own needs and happiness for the benefit of the other person. An example of a classic codependent relationship is an alcoholic husband and an enabling wife. The wife gets a sort satisfaction with taking care of her husband and him having to rely on her. The wife bases her well-being and self-esteem on the behavior of her husband. This is where the caretaking and nurturing comes in. The wife nurtures her husband when he is engaging in the undesirable behavior (the alcoholism). This nurturing is pleasant to the husband which reinforces his wife. So then it just becomes a cycle—the positive reinforces the negative and the negative reinforces the positive. Now in Jada’s situation, the person she was involved with was suffering from an illness. But nonetheless, that same dynamic of the alcoholic wife and the enabling wife still remains. She felt a sort of happiness by having to take care of someone that she felt needed her help. But it was not true happiness. It was happiness disguised as dependency. Dependency on another person to fulfill something within herself. That is not healthy, and never will be. A person who suffers from codependency will never be able to have a healthy relationship unless they fix what is going on inside themselves—to heal from the trauma that caused them to become that way in the first place. HOW LARTEY WELLNESS CAN HELP Codependency itself does not qualify as a mental health diagnosis but it can still cause severe distress for people. It can easily cause people to develop mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. Our therapists can help a person reduce codependent behaviors and develop healthier relationships. When working with one of our counselors, we can help a person explore the roots of their behavior and learn to balance their needs with those of others.