Childhood Roots and Development of Codependency

Predisposing Parenting Styles: Neglect and Invalidation

The genesis of vulnerability to abusive relationships in adulthood is often found in the developmental stage between the ages of 0 and 12 years.

During this critical period of neuroplasticity, the child builds his or her internal operating model of the world based on interactions with primary caregivers.

If an infant experiences neglect, emotional abandonment or discrimination within the nuclear family, he or she internalizes a sense of fundamental "defectiveness."

We can draw a parallel to the Spartan education of antiquity (the Agoge), where harshness and deprivation were used to mold character, but at the expense of the individual's emotional security.

Similarly, in a dysfunctional family environment, if the child is ignored or treated as invisible, he or she develops a codependent personality.

This profile is characterized by the suppression of one's own needs in order to prioritize those of others, a survival strategy designed to obtain crumbs of affection or avoid rejection.

Codependency, therefore, is not a character flaw, but a logical adaptation to an environment where love was conditional or non-existent.

Emotional Suppression and the Erosion of Intuition

A particularly insidious early trauma mechanism is the systematic teaching of distrust of one's intuition.

Children possess an innate ability to detect energetic incongruities in their environment.

However, when a child perceives danger or tension and their caregivers deny this reality (saying "everything is fine" when it is not), a cognitive fracture occurs.

The child learns to dismiss his or her visceral cues to align with the narrative of the adult, whom he or she perceives as an infallible authority figure, akin to a divine oracle.

Simultaneously, a ban on expressing emotions of high intensity or negative valence, such as anger, frustration or sadness, is often imposed.

As in Victorian courts where "composure" was mandatory and genuine emotion censored, the child learns that to "belong" he must amputate parts of his emotional spectrum.

Since emotion is "energy in motion," when repressed it does not disappear, but is encapsulated in the nervous system, generating dysregulation and chronic anxiety, and laying the groundwork for a future narcissistic predator to exploit this internal disconnection.

Boundary Violations and the Trauma of Abandonment

Personal sovereignty is built through respect for physical and psychological boundaries. In traumatic childhoods, these boundaries are systematically transgressed.

A boundary violation can be as subtle as forcing a child to eat when he or she is satiated, or as severe as physical abuse; in both cases, the underlying message is that the child has no jurisdiction over his or her own body or experience. This is compounded by the trauma of neglect.

Modern Western parenting practices, such as letting babies cry so that they "learn" to sleep alone, can instigate a primal terror response and sense of abandonment in the limbic system of the infant, who lacks the capacity for self-regulation. This abandonment creates a deep psychic wound.

In adulthood, the narcissist exploits this wound: first promising to fill this void of security (idealization) and then deliberately activating the fear of abandonment (devaluation) to keep the victim in a state of submission and regressive panic.

Summary

Vulnerability to abusive relationships usually originates between the ages of 0 and 12 years, when the child builds his or her model of the world. If they experience neglect or emotional abandonment, they internalize a sense of being defective and develop a codependent personality for survival and affection.

Invalidating caregivers teach the child to distrust his intuition and to repress negative emotions in order to be accepted. This internal disconnection generates chronic anxiety and makes it easier for a future narcissistic predator to exploit this lack of emotional compass and internal disconnection.

Systematic violations of physical and psychological boundaries teach the child that he or she has no jurisdiction over his or her body or experiences. The trauma of abandonment creates a deep wound that the narcissist exploits, alternating between promises of security and the activation of terror of rejection.