Codependency: What It Is and How to Recognize It

Codependency is often mistaken for a personality flaw or a lack of willpower. Dr. Saulitis offers a different explanation: it is, fundamentally, a state of consciousness — a kind of mental "film" that the brain keeps replaying, until the person living inside it mistakes it for reality.

How the Brain Constructs Its "Film"

The brain does not store memories like files in a folder — it reconstructs experience anew each time. When the same situations, people, or emotional patterns repeat, stable neural pathways literally grow in the brain: a well-worn road along which impulses travel automatically. These pathways determine which "film" a person sees — one of anxiety and helplessness, or one of strength and agency.

The Mechanism of Codependency: Induction

The core mechanism of codependency is the influence of one mind over another. Dr. Saulitis describes this as a process of induction, comparable to hypnosis. When such influence persists over time, the person stops noticing that their picture of the world was shaped from outside. They are convinced they are seeing reality — when in fact they are playing out someone else's script.

How to Recognize Codependency

Some signs that you may be in a codependent state:

• You respond to another person automatically, without conscious choice — as if by conditioned reflex.
• Your mood, self-worth, and sense of reality are governed by another person's behaviour or condition.
• You struggle to tell where someone else's patterns end and your own thoughts and decisions begin.
• Telling yourself to "just stop" doesn't work — because this is not about beliefs, but about an established pattern of neural connections.

Recognising that codependency is not a character flaw but a grown structure of the brain shifts the entire relationship to the problem: it is not a verdict, but a condition with a mechanism — and therefore a path toward change.