[Coda]

Your excuses sound just like mine. Too busy, too much to do, can't afford it. Just feels like more stress instead of something that'll help with stress.

Codependency isn't the same thing as dependency. Codependency is a psychological addiction to having people depend on you. If you're the kind of person who can't say "no" when someone needs help, if you're hard on yourself for missing an opportunity to support someone you care about, if you'll sacrifice more and more of your own life and time and health for the sake of helping others... you might be codependent. The hardest part of being codependent is that it feels noble. It feels sleazy to want to change it. It feels offensively selfish to put priority on yourself instead of others.

I broke down crying when it clicked in my head that my resistance to solving the problem was itself a symptom of the problem.