This video answers two related questions. What is the difference between codependency and counter dependency? How are these two constructs related to personality disorders? It's important to understand the distinction between codependency and counterdependency. The relationship with personality disorders is actually fascinating. First, I'll go over the concepts of codependency and counterdependency. Codependency is a set of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that actually has a few different meanings, but most of the time when we say codependent, we're talking about an individual who is in a relationship with another individual who has a substance use disorder, a mental disorder, or perhaps extreme personality traits. Most of the time we're talking about an individual in a relationship with somebody who has a substance use disorder. The behaviors we call codependence would be when an individual in that type of relationship supports that other individual who has a substance use disorder in a manner that's unhealthy. It's a boundary problem. A lot of times codependence is considered similar to the concept of enabling. An individual who is codependent enables the individual who uses substances to avoid the consequences of that behavior. There are a number of different features associated with codependent behavior including a need for control, a need for approval, boundary problems, concerns about abandonment, difficulty managing anger and frustration, not being very assertive, and not trusting other people.
Counterdependence is a fear of intimacy, it's not an indifference toward intimacy. It's an aversion to being dependent even in a healthy way. Most individuals are dependent on other people and a lot of times this is normal and productive. With counterdependence, someone is so averse to being dependent in any way that it becomes unproductive. Counterdependence has number of associated features including fear of abandonment, being strong, independence, confident, tough, resilient, self-reliant, self-sufficient, autonomous, productive, low level of trust, being distant, cold, detached, avoidant, self-centered, perfectionistic, feeling that vulnerability is a weakness, being insensitive, and not forming close relationships with other people. Individuals who are counterdependent might believe that no one understands them or that they're too good for other people.
