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Codependency

why do I fix everyone

Codependency is organising your own wellbeing around managing someone else's. It often looks like devotion and functions like control, because your stability depends on regulating their behaviour or their mood.

What to do about it

Ask what you would do this week if their reaction were not a factor. Then do one of those things.

How people say it

Nobody looks this up by its clinical name. These are the ways it actually gets said.

  • I lose myself in relationships
  • their mood runs my day
  • I cannot be happy if they are upset
  • why do I fix everyone
  • I do not know what I want anymore
  • enmeshed with my partner
  • I feel responsible for their feelings

Written by Brian Spiker, who has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — the receipts. More terms in the encyclopedia.

About the author

Brian Spiker has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — a real service business with real customers, real Google reviews, and 13 years of work most self-help authors will never do.

He writes the way operators talk: brutal, funny, and built from work that actually has to get done. Verify everything at spikercarpetandtilecare.com.