“Letting go of our ideas about how life should go is a choice that sets life’s magic free.”  Melody Beattie

Melody Beattie, the woman who brought the term codependency into normal conversation, died on February 27, 2025, at the age of 76. Her story is grounded in Minnesota. She was born in Ramsey, went to Minnehaha Academy, and graduated from Harding High School. She wrote her first book living in Stillwater.

She escaped her dysfunctional home into alcohol and drugs, beginning at the age of 12. After being caught trying to crawl into a roof top vent of a pharmacy in Mora, she was court ordered into treatment. She found sobriety at 26.

Beattie forged a career path in the recovery world becoming a chemical dependency counselor. It was in that work, listening to the stories of wives of alcoholic men, that she noticed a repeated theme—the need to control a husband while assuming responsibility for his drinking. She recognized the compulsiveness of codependence in story after story including her own. Married to an active alcoholic Beattie followed the same pattern attempting to enforce his sobriety.

Codependency steps in when we feel compelled to help a person solve their problem, even if they don’t see that they have a problem. The existing literature on codependency was limited. She saw the need for a book that helped people recognize the compulsion as well as address how to manage it. No publishers were interested until the Hazelden Foundation agreed to publish and gave her a $500 advance. She and her two children lived on that and welfare for four months while she finished the book.

Codependent No More was a hit from the beginning. Her book differed from the usual writings on the topic; it centered on personal stories rather than psychological jargon. These were stories of real people for real people. She admitted later that some of those heart wrenching anonymous stories were her own.

Her most recent update to Codependent No More was in 2022. It has sold over seven million copies since its original publication in 1986.

As I reread this classic, I see how timely it remains. We continue to create and support codependents. I still wrestle with my own codependency, twenty years after my first Alanon meeting. I appreciate her succinct definition: “A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.” She also says, “A codependent is someone who loves someone else more than she does herself.” I think of codependency as a behavior I move into periodically rather than a perpetual state of being. I believe many of us can relate to recurring slips into an obsession of caring for others when they are quite capable of caring for themselves.

Codependency does not require that the other person be an alcoholic. We can be codependent with people who are mentally or physically ill, immature, narcissistic, or in other ways happy to have someone else be their outside manager. Codependency is not to be confused with appropriate caring for people who cannot care for themselves such as young children, people with limited capacity, and people in times of crisis. Codependency steps in when we feel compelled to help a person solve their problem, even if they don’t see that they have a problem.

Here are a few of the codependence characteristics Beattie offers:

• Think and feel responsible for other people’s feelings, thoughts, actions, choices, wants, needs, well-being, and ultimate destiny
• Feel anxiety, pity, and guilt when other people have a problem
• Anticipate other people’s needs
• Try to please others instead of themselves
• Find themselves attracted to needy people
• Feel angry, victimized, unappreciated, and used
• Blame themselves for everything
• Lose sleep over problems or other people’s behavior
• Have a lot of “shoulds”
• Center their lives around other people
• Worry other people will leave them
• Feel controlled by others’ anger
• Find it difficult to have fun and be spontaneous

Melody gives us suggestions for how to deal with the scourge of codependency. The first step is detachment. “Detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for him (or her) self, that we can’t solve problems that aren’t ours to solve, and that worrying doesn’t help.…detaching does not mean we don’t care. It means we learn to love, care, and be involved without going crazy.” Here we again pull out our trusty serenity prayer and ask for the wisdom to know what is ours to change and what isn’t.

It is easier to be detached when I live in the present moment. I let go of the past with its regrets and refuse to fear the future. I let each day be its own. She asks us, “If you did not have that person or problem in your life, what would you be doing with your life that is different from what you are doing now? How would you be feeling and behaving?” Good question. I would sleep better, have fun, laugh aloud. We don’t have to sacrifice our joy for someone else’s problems or behaviors or choices.

When we are under the illusion that we can control someone else we are being controlled by that person and their behavior. When our self-esteem is tied up with someone else’s choices, we gaslight ourselves, refusing to see things as they really are.

Here are some things that we can do on our journey out of codependency:

• Learn to say no
• Recognize my own anger, listen to it, address it
• Notice when I am reacting and pause to choose my response
• Replace the word should with could
• Set boundaries
• Ask myself, “Is this my job or is it someone else’s?”
• Watch for my victim story and leave it behind

We are socialized to take care of others over ourselves. We must learn to care for ourselves as well. I am grateful for Melody Beattie’s wisdom and experience. Seven million books later, the journey continues.

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Mary Lou Logsdon is a Spiritual Director. She can be reached at Logsdon.marylou@gmail.com.

Last Updated on May 4, 2025