When love loses its freedom

In this OpenHalt conversation, psychologist Polina talks about codependency without turning it into a label. Not “you are broken.” Not “you are the problem.” More like: sometimes a person’s ability to care becomes so intense that it stops leaving space for their own life.

Codependency can mean being dependent on another person’s mood, behavior, illness, recovery, affection, rejection, love, or hate. But Polina frames it more broadly: it is a wounded way of building relationships, where honesty, freedom, boundaries, and a stable sense of self become hard to access.

It is not only about loving someone with addiction

Codependency is often discussed in the context of addiction in the family. That matters. Partners, parents, children, and friends can become consumed by someone else’s drinking, drug use, relapses, promises, and crises.

But the pattern can also grow in families shaped by illness, poverty, violence, overprotection, early responsibility, or weak separation from parents. A child may learn to scan the room, predict danger, care for siblings, parent the parent, stay quiet, and need very little.

Later, being needed can feel like love.

Who can be vulnerable to codependent patterns

Polina names adult children of alcoholics, people close to someone with addiction, and people who grew up around severe physical or mental illness. She also talks about children who had to grow up too fast, families with deprivation or violence, and homes where boundaries were blurred by overprotection.

There is another group she names gently: helping professions. Doctors, therapists, teachers, caregivers, educators, anyone who works person-to-person and is trained to notice other people’s pain.

Helping is not the problem. The problem begins when empathy stops including the helper.

When care becomes control

If someone you love is hurting themselves, the urge to step in makes sense. You want to stop the damage. You want to prevent the next relapse, the next lie, the next disappearance, the next disaster.

But codependent love slowly turns care into management.

It says: “I know what you need.” “I will save you.” “If I stop watching, everything will fall apart.”

The painful truth is that another person remains separate. Their choices cannot be lived for them.

The fear underneath control

Control often does not feel like power from the inside. It feels like terror.

Checking, explaining, covering, paying, calling, apologizing, predicting, monitoring – all of it can be driven by one thought: “If I don’t do this, something bad will happen.”

The person’s own life becomes smaller and smaller until it is built around someone else’s state.

Another person’s freedom can feel threatening

In healthier relationships, another person’s freedom can still hurt. They may disappoint us. They may choose differently. But their separateness is real.

In codependent relationships, that separateness can feel unbearable. If they are free, they might choose danger, addiction, distance, silence, or someone else.

So love becomes surveillance.

Rescuing: giving what no one asked for

One of the strongest parts of the conversation is about needs. In codependent relationships, people often struggle to say what they want directly. They may not know. Or they may feel selfish for wanting anything at all.

So they give. They rescue. They offer the care, attention, rest, tenderness, safety, or loyalty they secretly long for themselves.

Polina uses a Gestalt therapy term: proflection. It means doing for someone else what you actually want done for you.

It can look generous. But later resentment arrives: “I give so much, and nobody sees me.”

Emotional fusion: where do I end?

Polina also talks about fusion: the feeling of not being able to separate yourself from another person, their opinions, their needs, their pain, or the family system.

Fusion is not always bad. It is natural between a baby and a caregiver. It is also part of early infatuation, when two people want to be together all the time.

But eventually a relationship needs two people again.

If separation never becomes safe, adult freedom can feel like emptiness. If I am not needed, who am I?

Why we can be drawn to what hurts

The most tender part of the conversation comes from Polina’s work with children who were temporarily removed from homes marked by drinking, neglect, deprivation, and sometimes violence.

What surprised her was how much the children still wanted to go home. Not because the harm was okay. It was not. But because a child’s need for attachment is powerful.

If early closeness with a parent was missing, unsafe, or interrupted, an adult may keep searching for it. Sometimes with people who cannot offer safety.

That does not excuse harm. It helps explain why leaving can feel so hard.

There is strength inside this pattern

Polina does not reduce codependent people to victims. Yes, there can be self-sacrifice. But there is also enormous strength.

She describes a woman who cooks, dresses everyone, works, shops, washes, organizes, and carries the whole household’s emotional weather. That is not weakness. That is hyper-responsibility.

The problem is direction. All that strength goes outward.

Recovery starts when some of it comes back home.

What can help

  1. Stop using codependency as a weapon against yourself.
  2. Ask: was this help actually requested?
  3. Name three needs that belong to you, not to your partner, parent, or child.
  4. Notice where you rescue someone else to avoid your own pain.
  5. Separate the decisions that belong to the other person.
  6. Find support for yourself: therapy, peer support, trusted people, community.
  7. Reclaim one small part of your life: sleep, food, body, work, friends, rest.
  8. Practice saying: “I want,” “I can’t,” “I need help.”
  9. If there is violence, coercion, or danger, seek professional and emergency support.

FAQ

What is codependency in simple terms?

Codependency is a relationship pattern where a person loses contact with themselves and begins living through another person’s mood, behavior, illness, choices, or crisis.

Is codependency only about addiction?

No. It often appears around addiction, but it can also grow from illness, violence, overprotection, poverty, early caregiving roles, and blurred family boundaries.

What is the difference between care and rescuing?

Care listens to both people. Rescuing guesses what someone needs and often gives help that was never requested.

Why is it so hard to stop controlling?

Because control can feel like safety. When it stops, a person may face fear, grief, helplessness, and the question of what their own life is.

How do you begin to heal from codependency?

Start with curiosity about yourself: what you feel, what you want, where your boundaries are, and where you are living someone else’s life. Therapy, support groups, honest conversations, and small daily choices can help.

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OpenHalt

OpenHalt is for people who need support after addiction, near addiction, or inside relationships where it has become hard to hear themselves. If this article feels familiar, you do not have to solve your whole life today.

You can start with one honest message: I am tired of rescuing, watching, waiting, and losing myself in someone else’s pain.

Join the chat “Loving them, losing myself”