Discovery of self in codependency experiences: An interpretive phenomenological analysis

Codependency is a pattern of behavior and thought that includes self-sacrifice attitudes that lead to the loss of sense of self in order to maintain interactions with other people, and whose boundaries are ambiguous. The experience of affiliation, which is characterized by phenomen a such as extreme altruism, and addiction in social relations, makes it difficult for individuals to initiate and maintain social relations. In this research, codependency is considered as a social phenomenon that each individual can experience at certain levels, and it is desired to explore how people who have experiences related to codependency make sense of these experiences in their social world, and how they construct and present theirselves through these experiences. The problem of this research is how and in what ways individuals construct and tend to present their selvest hrough their experiences related to codependency. For this reason, the self-construals, self-narratives and presentations of individuals with various socio-economic and socio-cultural statuses who indicate their discomfort since they experience codependency-related phenomena were analyzed using the maximum diversity sample. In the study, in which the interpretive phenomenological method was used, the findings about how and in what way the experiences of codependency affect the way individuals express their selves were accessed through findings and analyzed. Keywords: Codependency, codependency experiences, phenomenology, self-narrative, self-presentation, self-construal