Why Codependent Women Are Drawn to Narcissistic Relationships

Do you feel chronically unseen or emotionally drained in a lot of your relationships?

Do they often feel one-sided, unpredictable, or inconsistent?

If this resonates, you may be experiencing codependent patterns in your relationships. Many women develop these dynamics with people who display narcissistic traits—whether in friendships, family relationships, or romantic partnerships.

What is Codependency?

Codependency can show up in a variety of ways …

Sometimes it looks like a pattern of prioritizing other people’s needs and emotions over your own.

Second-guessing your decisions and the validity of your own emotions and experiences.

Relying more on others’ reassurance or confirmation than your own intuition.

A strong urge to feel needed by another — which often shows up in how you care and give to others (even at your own expense, at times).

If you’re experiencing codependent dynamics in relationships you might:

• Feel like it’s your job to keep everyone happy or okay

• Feel most valued when you’re being there for others

• Worry about upsetting people, being rejected, or abandoned

• Struggle to say no

Codependency can make you so focused on not losing the connection that you start to lose yourself in the process.

This can look like:

• Ignoring your own feelings to keep the peace

• Feeling guilty for wanting boundaries, space, or something different

• Questioning your instincts and relying more on the other person’s reactions than your own judgment

• Feeling anxious when there’s distance, and relieved when things feel “okay” again

• Losing a sense of what makes you happy outside of the relationship

• Finding yourself constantly thinking about them (e.g. – what they need, how they feel, how to keep things okay)

Patterns of codependency can exist within a variety of relationships, including those with narcissistic abuse.

What is Narcissistic Abuse?

Narcissistic abuse refers to dynamics within a relationship that leave you feeling confused, invalidated, emotionally unstable, and unsure of your own reality.

The progression of narcissistic abuse can be subtle and often escalates over time.

Because the progression is often gradual, even more serious forms of harm—like physical or sexual abuse—may not immediately register as unacceptable, and may be minimized, questioned, or rationalized while it’s happening.

Narcissistic abuse often looks like:

Manipulation

Guilt-tripping you into doing things you don’t want to do, twisting situations so you feel responsible for their reactions, or making you doubt your own perspectives so you’ll go along with theirs.

Gaslighting

Being told that your memory of events isn’t accurate, which leaves you questioning your own memory, judgments, or instincts.

Emotional Inconsistency

They’re really warm and affectionate one moment, then suddenly distant, cold, or unavailable the next.

Criticism

They criticize and play the comparison game often. They make you feel like you’re never doing enough or ever getting things right. They’re frequently disappointed in you.

They downplay your accomplishments. They frequently compare you to someone else in a way that makes you feel like you’re always falling short of their standards or expectations of you.

They exhibit a judgmental and patronizing attitude that leaves you feeling unseen and underappreciated.  

Passive Aggression

This can show up as silent treatment, sarcasm that feels hurtful instead of funny, or indirect comments that leave you feeling confused or “punished” without clear explanation.

Miscellaneous Forms of Control

Feeling like you need to run your decisions by them or justify yourself to avoid upsetting them, triggering their anger, or causing them pulling away.

Walking on Eggshells

You carefully monitor what you say or do to avoid upsetting them or triggering a negative reaction.

Emotional Invalidation

Your feelings are dismissed, minimized, or treated like they’re unreasonable.

Narcissistic abuse can be intense, erratic, and destabilizing. But it can also be more covert — showing up in ways that don’t feel obviously harmful at first that may even look like care, love, or concern.  

Why Women Who Struggle with Codependency Attract Narcissists

Women with codependent patterns often exhibit behaviors that are especially attractive to narcissists. This sometimes includes consistent emotional attention, caretaking, and reassurance that reinforces the narcissist’s sense of importance while also feeding their ego.

This creates a strong but unhealthy bond that is often one-sided – where one person gets their needs met while the other is hung out to dry.

Here’s a breakdown of some common qualities that can make women more vulnerable to narcissistic dynamics:

Highly Attuned to Others

You’re incredibly perceptive of others’ emotional states, shifts in tone, and body language. You’re quick to adjust your own behavior to make someone else feel more comfortable.

Empathy & Emotional Intelligence

If you’re very empathetic or emotionally intelligent, you may be more likely to dismiss or misdiagnose manipulation when it’s subtle or disguised as something else.

Derive Your Own Worth from Feeling Needed

If your identity or sense of worthiness is intertwined with your ability to help, fix, or support others – you may feel drawn to individuals who rely on your care, attention, and emotional support.

Struggle to Prioritize Your Own Needs

You’re often attuned with what other people need, but less practiced at identifying or acting on your own needs in the moment. This can make it easy to delay, minimize, or override what you’re feeling in order to keep things running smoothly in the relationship.

Uncomfortable with Emotional Disruption or Conflict

Even small signs of tension, disappointment, or disconnection can feel hard to sit with. You may find yourself smoothing things over quickly, apologizing to restore harmony, or avoiding conversations that could lead to emotional discomfort or conflict.

Familiarity Feels Like Chemistry

If you grew up in an environment where love was inconsistent, conditional, or required emotional caretaking, the dynamic with a narcissist can feel strangely familiar.

This familiarity can be mistaken for love or true emotional closeness because it often mirrors how we learned to receive attention, approval, or maintain connection with the people we most relied on as children. Sometimes these earlier connections weren’t the healthiest.

These learned behavior patterns are ways we survived difficult times as children. They often follow us into adulthood and can show up in narcissistic and codependent relationship dynamics.

Trauma Bonds: An Addiction Cycle Often Confused with Empathy of Shared Experience

A trauma bond is not when you share similar traumatic experiences or go through traumatic experiences with someone else and come out the other side feeling closer or more trusting of each other because of shared adversity or pain.

A trauma bond is actually a cycle of addiction.

It creates chaos, reinforces confusion, and normalizes patterns of deception and inconsistency that keep you emotionally hooked and unable to step away.

These periods are intermittently mixed with moments of affection, connection, and relief.

This creates a powerful psychological attachment that can feel all-consuming – filled with extremely euphoric highs and exceptionally devastating lows.  

Signs of a Trauma Bond Include:

• Can’t stop thinking about them

• Make excuses for their behavior or find reasons to “understand” it

• Overanalyze their words, texts, or tone to figure out where you stand

• Feeling emotionally dependent on their attention (especially when it’s inconsistent)
  

• Feeling emotionally attached, even while your intuition is telling you something isn’t right

• Strong pull to reconnect after conflict, even if nothing has changed

• Experiencing relief and hope when they’re kind or briefly consistent, even after hurtful behavior

• Wanting to leave but feeling stuck, confused, or unable to follow through

• Constantly trying to “fix” things so you can get back to the good version of the relationship

• Feeling emotionally exhausted from the highs and lows

Trauma bonds can cause you to lose perspective of what a healthy relationship actually feels like.

They often create a cycle where the “high” moments feel especially exciting and fulfilling – particularly after periods of emotional distance or conflict.

As the trauma bond progresses, the lows tend to become more frequent, while the moments of connection become less consistent.

This cycle is so hard to break because the longer you go without feeling seen, validated, or emotionally close – the more powerful the relief feels when it returns.

Even brief moments of warmth or connection can feel intense and deeply relieving.

This pattern of intermittent reinforcement gradually conditions your nervous system to become more focused – and reliant upon – those occasional highs for a sense of worth and connection.

Why are Trauma Bonds with Narcissists So Hard to Leave?

Fear of Abandonment

For women with an anxious attachment, the idea of losing the relationship can feel deeply destabilizing because an emotional alarm is triggered when connection feels at risk.

Losing the relationship can feel like losing your own sense of worthiness because so much of your identity is wrapped up in the other person’s perceptions of you. On top of this, your own sense of emotional safety is wrapped up in how emotionally close you feel to them. Or how accepted you feel by them.

Remaining in the relationship can feel like the only way to keep this feeling of safety and self-worth intact, even if parts of the relationship don’t feel good anymore.

Fear of Change

The thought of losing the relationship—even when it’s painful—can feel incredibly scary. It may feel safer to stay in something familiar than to face the emotional uncertainty of being without it.

Emotional Conditioning

You may have learned to equate love with effort, sacrifice, or emotional labor.

Loss of Identity

If your role has been centered around the other person, leaving can feel like losing your sense of purpose.

The Trauma Bond

As mentioned earlier, the intermittent reinforcement creates a powerful attachment that’s not easily broken by logic alone.

The Sunken Cost Fallacy

It can feel hard to walk away when you’ve already invested so much time, energy, and emotion into the relationship. Thoughts like – “it would all be for nothing if I left now” – can keep you holding on, even when the relationship no longer feels healthy or fulfilling.

How Codependency Therapy at Beyond the Labyrinth Counseling Can Help

If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to move forward – Beyond the Labyrinth Counseling in Fort Wayne, Indiana is here to support you.

My name’s Jessi Mann! I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in the State of Indiana who offers specialized therapy support for women experiencing codependency patterns and narcissistic abuse.

Learning new ways of relating in relationships can feel complex, especially when codependency patterns are so closely tied to your own sense of safety, connection, and self-worth!

These patterns often operate subconsciously, which can make them hard to recognize on your own.

Working with a therapist like me who specializes in codependency can help you begin to unpack these patterns to create positive change in your life, relationships, and overall wellbeing.

Over time, codependency therapy can create a space for you to start responding with more awareness, choice, and self-trust.

This can look like:

• A stronger sense of self that feels rooted in who you are (not what others need from you or think about you)

• Feeling clearer about what is and isn’t your responsibility in relationships

• Experiencing less internal anxiety about being “too much” or “not enough”

• No longer minimizing or rationalizing behavior that’s abusive or manipulative

• Choosing relationships based on mutual respect rather than emotional intensity or need
  

• Trusting your gut without needing so much external validation

• No longer feeling drawn to “fixing” people or “earning” love

• Noticing your own needs earlier, instead of only focusing on everyone else’s

• More comfortable saying no without overwhelming guilt or anxiety

• Showing up authentically & no longer shrinking yourself to maintain connection

• Recognizing guilt, obligation, or emotional pressure as cues to slow down and reassess

• Noticing a reduction in anxiety-driven decision making

• Feeling less urgency to fix, rescue, or repair relationships immediately

• Setting boundaries without needing to over-explain or justify yourself

• Rebuilding trust in your own perception, memory, and emotional responses

• Experiencing relationships that feel more reciprocal and emotionally safe

If you’re interested in beginning therapy at Beyond the Labyrinth Counseling, you can schedule a free 15-minute consultation below!

Feeling Anxious and Burned Out? Discover What’s Fueling It.

The Connection Between People-Pleasing, Anxiety, and Burnout

People-pleasing is a behavior pattern where someone frequently prioritizes the needs of others while neglecting their own.

For many women, this can show up as:

• Saying “yes” when you really want to say “no”

• Overcommitting to work or social obligations

• Suppressing your own needs or opinions to avoid conflict and “keep the peace”

• Often checking if others are happy with you or your decisions

• Hiding your authentic self to avoid disapproval from others

• Feeling like it’s your job to make sure everyone else is “doing okay”

• Pressured to keep everyone else comfortable or at ease

• Going out of your way to prevent others from feeling disappointed or hurt

Desiring to help others can be a healthy and prosocial way of living.

However, when people-pleasing enters the mix of things, your own physical, emotional, and mental well-being begin to erode.

This is a place where women often start to feel incredibly exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, depressed, and burned the heck out. Coupled with a growing disconnection from their own needs and dreams.

The world often feels a lot flatter than it used to. Emptier. Much more grayscale than technicolor.

Another pattern that sometimes interplays with people-pleasing and this growing exhaustion is emotional monitoring.

The Impacts of Emotional Monitoring Upon Anxiety and Burnout

Emotional monitoring is when someone compulsively tracks other people’s feelings, moods, and reactions to assess for any signs that something might be “wrong” or that someone is “upset”.

This often presents itself as:

• Paying close attention to tone of voice, facial expressions, or subtle shifts in behavior

• Worrying that you said or did the “wrong” thing

• Changing your behavior, tone, or mood to keep others calm or happy

• Overanalyzing text messages, emails, or conversations for hidden meaning

• Feeling anxious if someone seems upset or distant (even if it’s not about you)

• Anticipating others’ emotional needs before thinking about your own

• Apologizing or overexplaining to avoid conflict, disapproval, or abandonment

Emotional monitoring can feel like empathizing with another.

But it’s actually an attempt to keep yourself safe by attempting to manage others’ emotions and behavior patterns.

This is accomplished through watching the other individual’s reactions and adjusting your own behavior to prevent conflict, disapproval, abandonment, or other negative outcomes.

This is another pattern that requires you to put your own needs and feelings on hold.

It also keeps you in a cycle of stress and heightened anxiety because you feel like you always need to be on “high alert” during many social interactions.

This can make it very difficult to relax and connect with others in meaningful and enriching ways.

You might even find yourself dreading conversations with colleagues and loved ones, because the effort it takes to stay “on” and emotionally attuned to everyone else can be oppressive and draining.

This is where burnout can begin to develop.

Feeling like you always have to monitor, adjust, and keep the peace leaves little room for your own needs and self-identification with your own emotions.

This behavior pattern also contributes to emotional overwhelm, anxiety, depression, and a sense of disconnection from yourself as well as the world within and around you.  

The Roots of People-Pleasing: Early Family Influences and Emotional Patterns

People-pleasing and emotional monitoring are protective strategies children learn early on to adapt to a home that felt unsafe, unpredictable, or emotionally intense.

When an environment is chronically unstable, children quickly learn that their own safety, comfort, and emotional needs may depend upon keeping others calm and avoiding conflict as much as possible.

Within childhood, this could have looked something like:

• Walking on eggshells to avoid upsetting a parent or caregiver

• Overachieving or being extra helpful to gain approval or maintain stability

• Hiding your true feelings to avoid being a “burden”

• Parentification — experiencing role reversal with parental figures, which may include: caring for siblings, mediating conflict, and more

• Saying “sorry” a lot even when you didn’t do anything wrong

Over time, emotional monitoring and people-pleasing become a habitual way of interacting with the world: always watching, adjusting, and prioritizing others’ feelings and concerns over your own.

These ways of relating to the world often persist long after we’ve left our childhood homes and follow us into adulthood.  

While these habits helped us survive as children, they presently contribute to persistent stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, and a disconnection from our own thoughts, feelings, and needs.  

Considering Change: Overcoming People-Pleasing, Anxiety, and Burnout

When we consider the idea of saying “no” more …

When we think about putting our phone down and setting limits on how accessible we are to others during certain days and times of the week …

When we dream about being our most authentic selves, letting our voice speak freely and without shame or fear within our relationships …

When we contemplate standing up for ourselves by communicating firmer boundaries with our loved ones, colleagues, and other relationships …

It’s completely normal to feel guilty, anxious, and unsure.

When you’re used to saying “yes” all the time and not honoring your own feelings and experiences — it can feel very strange allowing space for yourself and your own needs and dreams within your life again.

It may also feel a bit anxiety-provoking to consider an alternative way of relating to others. Especially if people are used to relying upon you to an unhealthy degree.

Beginning to consider the possibility of change often impacts our own sense of self-identity, purpose, and roles within our life journey.

Feeling doubt, confusion, and even some unsureness about our readiness to change isn’t a bad thing at all! That’s actually incredibly normal.

You’re simply recognizing something very powerful:

“Wow! This is a really big pattern in my life that influences a lot more stuff than I once realized! That’s a lot to take in and process in one sitting.”

The good news? Recognizing these patterns is the first step towards creating a healthier future for yourself and your loved ones.

The better news? You don’t always have to feel “fully ready” to start your journey towards that newfound wellness and balance.

At Beyond the Labyrinth Counseling, one of our passions is to help you reclaim emotional balance, space, and ease within your daily life again!

We welcome the inner complexity that the journey of transformation can bring to our doorstep.

You don’t have to navigate these patterns alone—see how we can support you!

How Trauma Shapes Anxiety, Burnout, and Relationship Issues

Trauma Doesn’t Always Look the Way We Might Expect

High-functioning anxiety, burnout, and relationship struggles rarely look like a trauma response at first glance. But so often they’re actually adaptations shaped by earlier relational experiences. These behaviors often began as a way for us to maintain connection, access safety, survive, and feel needed.

Most women walking into my Fort Wayne office don’t immediately say: “I behave this way in order to protect myself.”

They usually say things like: “I overthink everything. I have a hard time saying no. I’m feeling exhausted all the time. I care a lot for others but don’t always feel thought of in return.”

The thing is, trauma doesn’t always look loud and dramatic.

Sometimes it’s a very quiet tenant in the house of your mind whose taken up residence there for such a long time that it might appear as though nothing’s truly amiss.

Save for the occasional panic attack. The times you struggle to stop worrying about that co-worker or friend. Maybe it shows up most when you’re crying yourself to sleep for the third time this week and aren’t quite sure why. Maybe you’re wondering why you feel so tired all the time, even after that vacation last week or following a good conversation with a close friend.

Sometimes it looks like the woman always anticipating everyone else’s needs while neglecting her own. Having a hard time saying “no”.

Other times it looks like the woman who never rests. The one who chronically apologizes for things in her relationships.

These patterns didn’t magically manifest out of nowhere. These behaviors are often adaptations to early childhood trauma and neglect that our nervous system learned long ago in order to survive.

How Anxiety & People-Pleasing Once Protected Connection

Anxiety in childhood often begins as a form of hypervigilance and emotional monitoring.

Meaning, you’re often fixated on minor or major shifts in others’ facial expressions, body posture, mood, and energy. There’s a subsequent attempt to manage another’s emotional reactions through learned behavior patterns to defuse chaos and keep the peace. This might have shown up as:

• Noticing the slight pause before they answered. Feeling your chest tighten in response.

• Watching their face mid-conversation. Scanning for flickers of disapproval or disappointment.

• Revising your words halfway through speaking with someone because it suddenly feels “too much” or “bad” to have said

• Feeling responsible for alleviating the heaviness that you didn’t create

• Laughing to smooth over tension or diffuse discomfort

• Apologizing for a feeling when no one asked you to besides your own inner critic

• Mentally replaying a conversation over and over, searching for a hidden meaning you may have missed

• Offering reassurance when you’re the one who needs it

• Sending the follow-up text to “make sure everything’s okay”

• Softening your opinion the second you sense resistance or anger

These strategies became incredibly ingrained because it was a way of protecting connection.

As a child – (or even a younger version of you) – maintaining connection meant survival. We are creatures that are wired for attachment and community.

The threat of relational rupture and disconnection often registers as danger within the nervous system.

As a result, your nervous system began to ask: “what do I need to do in order to stay connected and receive love, approval, nurturance, or safety in this situation?”

Anxiety, people-pleasing, and silencing your own voice were the answer.

You learned to rehearse conversations and replay interactions. You began to anticipate how to repair a rupture before it may have even exploded forth. These behaviors often became incredibly good tools to prevent perceived danger from escalating or feeling “too out-of-control” in your early family environment. Maybe they protected a felt bond between yourself and a peer, parent, or authority figure.

This was not weakness but adaptation.

As connection became more uncertain or when love felt unpredictable, anxiety and people-pleasing became the path of least resistance to self-soothe and achieve a felt sense of safety.

The problem is not that anxiety or people-pleasing once protected connection … but that the mind and body never learned when it was safe to stop.  

Now, in adulthood, you’re excessively scanning and mentally reviewing social interactions or work performance. You assume that if something feels off, you must have “done something wrong”.

You over-give. Over-function. Over-explain.

These are signs that somewhere deep in your nervous system, disconnection still feels very catastrophic and maybe even a threat to your own self-worth. Therefore, what once protected connection begins to erode it.

When anxiety and people-pleasing are in the driver’s seat, authenticity begins to shrink and exhaustion begins to grow.

Relationships often feel like something you need to “manage” rather than “experience”.

This shows up as:

• Struggling to express when someone has hurt you

• Overanalyzing texts for hidden meaning

• Apologizing quickly just to restore momentary peace or approval

• Feeling responsible for others’ moods

• Confusing intensity with intimacy

• Needing constant reassurance in order to feel “secure”

• Conflict within relationships doesn’t just feel uncomfortable, it’s experienced as a threat to your very identity and perceived self-worth

The heartbreaking reality is … that the strategies which once provided you security within childhood now begin to isolate and distance you from yourself and others within adulthood.

This isn’t happening because you enjoy instability, but rather, because your nervous system is familiar with earning closeness – (often at the sacrifice of your own emotional and physical well-being).

You’re blaming yourself more and more.

Working ever harder.

Your inner critic screams that you need to be:

“more understanding”

“more accommodating”

“more patient”

Until a day rolls around where you realize you’re experiencing burn-out:

complete and total exhaustion from feeling like you have to constantly be the one holding everything together all the time.

For everything and everyone.

Healing through anxiety, people-pleasing, burnout, and relationship issues isn’t about shaming yourself more.

It’s about unlearning false belief systems about yourself which were once reinforced by early childhood neglect and dysfunctional family dynamics.

It’s about helping your nervous system learn that connection no longer requires self-abandonment.

It’s learning how you can rest and still belong.

That security within your relationships isn’t maintained through hypervigilance, people-pleasing, or burnout.

But through learning how to balance honesty with limit setting so that you can experience love, safety, and deeply fulfilling connections within yourself and others around you.

Freedom is found when you are able to show up as your fully authentic self, unafraid to take up space, and speak what it is that you need and will no longer settle for, confidently, and without shame.

The shift from managing connection to actually experiencing it is where real peace begins!

Are you ready to find it?

If you recognize these patterns in yourself and want counseling support with untangling anxiety, burnout, and people-pleasing in your relationships, I invite you to schedule a free consultation with me.

Change is possible, and you don’t have to navigate it alone.