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The term “codependency” is often used to describe relationships in which one person needs or depends on another person.

In its simplest terms, a codependent relationship is when one needs the other, who in turn needs to be needed. This circular relationship is the basis of what experts mean when they describe the “cycle” of codependency.

A codependency can exist in any kind of relationship: partners, parent-adult child , friends, in a profesional relationship… Here I put the focus on the codependency relationship with the partner.

In the codependent relationship common reasons for staying together include children, finances, time invested, and fear of embarrassment that separation can bring. But the most important problem is that the person believes they deserve to be abused.

The codependent person usually:

• Doesn’t find satisfaction or happiness in life  out of the activities with their partner.

• Stay in the relationship even if they are aware that their partner is doing hurtful things.

• Do anything to please and satisfy their partner regardless of the cost to them.

• They feel constant anxiety about their relationship due to their desire to always make the other person happy.

• Use all their time and energy to give their partner everything he asks for.

• They feel guilty for thinking of themselves in the relationship and therefore do not express personal needs or desires.

• Ignores his own morals or needs in order to do what the other person wants.

This type of personality is formed in childhood:

1. In families when one or two of the parents have a problem with alcohol or drug addiction or lack of maturity and emotional development, which turns out to be focused on their own egocentric needs. This is the way they teach the child to focus on the needs of the parents and never think about himself.

Needy parents can teach their children that children are selfish or greedy if they want something for themselves.

As a result, the child learns to ignore his own needs and thinks only of what he can do for others all the times.

These situations damage the child’s emotional development and lead him to seek codependent relationships later on.

2. Live with a family member who suffers from mental or physical illness.

Codependency can also result from caring for a person with a chronic illness. Taking the role of caregiver, especially at a young age, can result in the young person neglecting their own needs and developing the habit of only helping to the others.

A person’s self-esteem can be built around someone else needs and not getting anything in return.

3. Abusive families

Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse can cause psychological problems that last for years or even a lifetime. One of the many problems that can arise from past abuse is codependency.

A child or adolescent who is abused will learn to suppress his feelings as a defense mechanism against the pain of the abuse. As an adult, this learned behavior results in caring only for the feelings of others and not acknowledging their own needs.

Sometimes a person who is abused will seek abusive relationships later because they are only familiar with this type of relationship. This often manifests itself in codependent relationships.

How to help:

1. Individual or group therapy is very helpful for people who have codependent relationships. An expert can help them find ways to recognize and express their feelings that have normally been buried since childhood.

Treatment for codependency often involves exploring early childhood problems and their connection to current dysfunctional behavior patterns. Getting in touch with deep-seated feelings of grief, loss, and anger will allow you to rebuild the proper relationship dynamics. Most of all to rebuild your sense of yourself and to realize why you depend so much on the other person. Codependency is the result of not setting personal boundaries, and learning how to do through therapy, is essential for healing.

2. Reconnect with friends and family. Being in a codependent relationship can lead to isolation, which fuels the loss of self.

3. Time for you. Go back to doing the things you used to enjoy before getting so tangled up with the other person.

4. Seek substance abuse treatment. If you abuse drugs or alcohol, talk to your doctor about treatment options.

Finally, both parties in a codependent relationship must learn to recognize specific patterns of behavior, such as “needing to be needed” and expect the other person to center their life around them.

These steps are not easy to do, but it is worth the effort to help both parties figure out how to maintain a balanced, two – way relationship.

Anita Chukaleska, Psychologist, Gestalt Psychotherapist

Hugging is an essential form of non-verbal communication. If we observe young children, they express all the emotions through hugs: When they feel happy to see you, when they feel sad or when they feel fear. Through hugging, children learn to regulate their emotions. That is why when a child feels upset, after hugging you, it calms down. In this way it learns how to calm itself when it grows older. This way of connecting with others without words and letting ourselves feel our feelings (from the prelinguistic stage) is the most basic and we can use it all our lives.

Hugs decrease anxiety, stress and pain (as well as emotional and physical).

Through the hugs we express protection and provide security, which is very important especially for young children. Through hugs we show value to the person that we hug, we give recognition that this person is someone important to us.

By hugging someone for at least 20 seconds, the hormone Oxytocin begins to release in the body, which relaxes us and reduces anxiety. It also lowers blood pressure and lowers stress hormones.

That is why it is highly recommended to give your loved ones a long hug. Children are wise and use them so much to connect with their feelings. Why as adults we stop using this very beneficial way of communication?

During the therapeutic work I use the pillows so the client can express his feelings and can “hug” the important person. In group therapy, the hugs are a great benefit for the participants.

So, start consciously to use hugs until your body begins to remember this basic and wonderful need and starts to be more spontaneous in the way of expression and connection.

Almost a year since the pandemic began and we cannot hug all the people important for us. But there is always someone to hug: Hug the people who live with you, your dog, your cat, your teddy bear, your pillow and hug yourself.

Anita Chukaleska

Psychologist, Gestalt Psychotherapist

“Not forgiving, it’s like drinking a glass of poison and waiting for your enemies to die,” Nelson Mandela said.

The process of forgiving someone for what they have done is necessary to do it for yourself, it is an act of self-love. If you wonder what that has to do with me, if I didn’t do anything? And if I forgive him, does that mean I approve of what he did?

Forgiveness is necessary in order to free yourself from the chains of negative emotions (anger, rage, sadness, fear …) that keep you trapped in the past like a prisoner. Forgiveness is not approving what the person did, but accepting what happened and leaving it where it belongs – in the past.

In Gestalt Therapy different techniques are used with which you can work to close cycles without the presence of the person with whom you have unfinished cycles. Because all these emotions and thoughts are inside you, they destroy you day by day.

The first step is to recognize these emotions and thoughts, realize how present they are in your actions, decisions, your mood … and accept them, feel them consciously and make a decision to face them and work on them.

Forgive because of you, because you deserve to be happy!

Anita Chukaleska,

Psychologist, Gestalt Therapist. 25 of January 2021

First, with the closure, with the social isolation, the people who have experienced some trauma, all the work that they have been doing in terms of trying to connect, to trust, to be open, re-experience the others, the quarantine has had a real impact, so that sometimes they have ended up, locked in their houses, both in physical isolation from others, also stopping any contact with others. What follows is disconnecting from oneself and I think that is the part that becomes retraumatizing, that if you are disconnected from the present, it is much easier to return to the past and the other part of returning to the past is that there is a, what we call , “A phenomenon of state-dependent memories”. So if you have had a traumatic experience that has involved certain modalities or sensory experiences, and then you find yourself in a similar situation again, they will reactivate and trigger those previous traumatic experiences.

That is one reason why the pandemic has more impact on mental health than people who have experienced previous trauma.

“I really don’t know what it means to overcome, if to overcome is to forget, if to overcome is to be who I was again… I will never return to who I was, and that is ok. Is not about to overcome, it is about learning to live with what happened!”                                                                                                                   María Belón

Anita Chukaleska, Psychologist, Gestalt Psychotherapist 27.11.2020