I Called It Love, But It Was Actually Hypervigilance
The codependent pattern I didn't recognize for years.
I knew exactly how loud to laugh at family gatherings.
I gauged the temperature of a room like my life depended on it, because I’m sure at some point, my life (at least metaphorically) did depend on it.
I could walk into a room and within about sixty seconds, read the barometric pressure — who was off, who was fine, what might be coming. And then, before anyone had said a word to me directly, I was making adjustments and anticipating what I needed to do in response. Whether it was fawning over Aunt Mary or laughing too hard at cousin Stew’s abnoxious jokes, I knew exactly what to do. You could count on me to keep the peace. I was your girl.
I was getting ahead of everyone else’s discomfort before it could land anywhere near me, or create a situation that felt unmanageable.
I called it being thoughtful and kind. I called it being a good partner, a good mother, a good friend.
I called it love.
But it was something else entirely.
It was really a coping strategy. A sophisticated, exhausting, effective-in-the-short-term coping strategy for a nervous system that didn’t feel safe.
You can follow the logic like this: if everyone around you is calm, there’s no conflict. If there’s no conflict, nothing bad happens. If nothing bad happens, you’re safe. Therefore, the way to feel safe is to manage everyone else’s emotional state.
When you say it like that, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
Back then, I didn’t know this was what I was doing. I genuinely thought I was just being a good person. It wasn’t until I started doing the real work - therapy, Al-Anon, the honest reckoning with my family of origin - that I began to see the pattern for what it was…codependency.
Here’s what codependency actually is, underneath the clinical definition: it’s putting your worth and value in the hands of other people, and expecting them to do the same for you. It means your sense of being okay is tied to whether the people around you are okay.
Which means (and this is the hard truth)…you are never free because other people’s states of being are not actually under your control, no matter how hard you try.
And you will try. Lord knows I tried.
The kitchen cabinet method of communication, you know exactly what I mean. The slow, deliberate slam that's somehow louder than a shout. I've spoken that language myself. I was also fluent in dramatic sighs, loaded tones, and insisting I was "fine" when I was anything but. None of it was honest communication. It was an attempt to create a reaction in someone else that would hopefully make me feel better without having to say what I actually needed.
It never really worked (imagine that!). You can manage, smooth, and accommodate and strategically deploy your emotional states for decades, and the safety you’re trying to manufacture never quite arrives. Because safety built from the outside in depends on other people’s behavior being a particular way. And that, my friend, isn’t actually safety.
It’s a form of hypervigilance and (dare I say) manipulation and control.
And no matter how good you get at it, you can never monitor enough, anticipate enough, or smooth it over enough, to actually feel free.
Real safety doesn’t come from controlling the reactions of the people around you.
It comes from trusting yourself. Knowing that whatever happens out there, you can handle your own interior. That your needs are real and worth naming. That you don’t need every room you walk into to be pre-calibrated in your favor in order to be okay in it..
That’s the shift, and it happens in small decisions, accumulated over time.
The moment you let someone else be uncomfortable without rushing to fix it, the moment you say the honest thing and don’t walk it back, the moment you stay in your own lane long enough to discover what’s actually in it.
That’s the beginning of the way toward freedom.
If you recognized yourself in this, I want you to know there is nothing wrong with you. This kind of thing is an adaptation. And like all adaptations, it was useful once, but it costs too much to keep. I made something specifically for this moment: my Stepping Out of Codependency Workbook. It’s a starting place.
Where do you feel this most — at home, at work, in friendships? Tell me in the comments. Be honest. This is a room where honesty is safe.