When we hear the word codependent, we often think that this means we cannot live without someone else or that we spend all of our time with another person. While these definitions can be true, codependency goes far beyond that, and the key to deconstructing our own codependent patterns lies in understanding where these patterns come from. The clinical definition of codependency is something along the lines of “chronic self-neglect in order to gain love, approval, and validati