THE HIDDEN COST OF HIGH FUNCTIONING CODEPENDENCY
If you've ever felt too responsible for the emotional wellbeing of a family member, found yourself fixing a friend’s problem they didn’t ask you to fix, or said yes when your whole body screamed no, this conversation today is for you! I sat down with boundary expert and psychotherapist Terri Cole to talk about what she calls high-functioning codependency. It's the subtle, socially acceptable ways we overgive, overfunction, and override ourselves in the name of being “nice,” “helpful,” or “reliable.” But underneath it? Exhaustion, bitterness, and a creeping sense of being unseen or taken for granted.
In October 2024, inspired by her own life experiences and that of her clients, Terri released her second book, Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency, where she breaks it all down with clarity and compassion—from the compulsive urge to offer advice (guilty!) to the “auto-accommodating” habits that chip away at our peace. We also talk about the cost of constantly managing other people’s feelings and what it means to love someone without turning their pain into your personal project. Whether you’re deep in people-pleasing recovery or just starting to recognize the patterns, this is a conversation that invites truth, humor, and above all, choice.
Welcome to FWD JOY, Terri. What were you like as a kid?
Terri: I was really lit up about life. I was the original FOMO kid, where I was like, I don't want to miss anything. So I would wake up at 6:00 AM—even in the teen years, when other people were sleeping in, I was like, there is way too much life to live to sleep in.
I was the youngest of four sisters, and I was incredibly well loved, to be honest, by everybody. I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college. The only one with an advanced degree. The first person to go to Europe. So I did a lot of the firsts in my family system. I got sober when I was 21. I got two of my three sisters to become sober also. As a kid, I think I was really just very much of a big empath.
I think how I became who I became is I have a really great mother. The way that she related to me with so much affection and holding me in such high esteem, not like ridiculousness, just high esteem, she just thought I was frigging great. She taught me that how I felt mattered and what I thought mattered at a very young age. As much as I had my problems, as much as anyone else growing up, I did think I had a core belief that what I think matters. And I still think that today. So I feel very grateful in respect to that. I have the same friends I've had since 1973, so I've had them for many decades.
Very impressive. You must be a good friend.
Terri: I am a damn good friend. I love it when people say, well, you're so lucky. I'm like, bitch, this is not luck. This is intention. This is intentional effort.
Before we get more into the psychology stuff, I want to talk about the fact that you didn't start as a psychologist. You had a completely different career in Hollywood.
Terri: Correct. I was a talent agent for supermodels and celebrities in New York and LA. As I was leaping up the Hollywood New York ladder, I kept thinking that if I just got that next famous client, if I just made that more money, if I just moved to this agency, if I was just the boss. I thought if I just run the whole thing, then I'd feel the way I want to feel. Then I was running the whole thing. And guess what, Chrissy, if I had to say it, I did not feel the way I wanted to feel. No, and I think that because I was on my own therapeutic journey, I got into therapy at 19, stopped drinking at 21. So I was on this journey, and it was like I just became too healthy to stay in the world of entertainment psychologically. I'm not kidding. It's a dumpster fire.
I believe you, as someone who spent their entire career in the fashion industry, I totally get what you're talking about.
Terri: Oh, fashion is the worst. And listen, I loved the women that I met. The reason I left is that I just could no longer deny that I did not care about the movie contract that I was negotiating, or the Pantene deal, or the money. I only cared about the mental health of my clients. I was getting people into eating disorder clinics, drug treatment clinics, and everyone into therapy. I was trying to change the industry at my last job, which was at Ford Modeling agency. I was running the TV department there. And I kept going to Katie Ford, who was running the agency at the time, and I would go in and be like, is it possible that we stop calling the models girls because they're women? And she was like, yeah, okay, relax, lady. Then I'd be like, we have these young underage models living in these apartments together, and the people who were supposed to be chaperoning them are drug addicts, can we pick different chaperones? Finally, after the fifth time I went to her office, she was like, do you still want to really be in this business? And I was like, I really don't. She's like, it's obvious. That was when I decided to go back to school, get my master's at NYU, and become a therapist.
It's hard to be in entertainment, fashion, these very creative spaces, when you are someone who really cares about others and when you have a certain level of awareness.
Terri: You can't numb yourself out. I couldn't unsee what I was seeing when it came to the dysfunction and how the models were being treated, because it was even worse than before I was in the modeling world, I was working with actors for a couple of years. That was much less unhealthy, if that makes sense. The objectification of the women was so bad, and the way they were treated and the expectations. I was like, I’ve just got to get out of here.
And there's not a lot of protection for them. So, did you automatically know that you would go into psychology?
Terri: Well, my own therapeutic journey changed my life so much, and I was still on that ride, and I still am today. But that was almost 30 years ago, and I just couldn't believe that therapy could change my life or could empower me to change my life more accurately in a way that was so profound. I used to think before therapy, you get dealt a hand, I'm going to make the best of the hand that I was dealt. Therapy was like, look, this hand, I don't like this hand. I don't like this deck. I don't even like this game. There's a whole new game that I'm creating. I don't need this deck. I'm not limited to that. And that's what therapy did for me. It made me realize I could just start from where I am, and I could just achieve my dreams. I could just decide if you're willing to do the work, which I always was. I was always a workhorse.
Whatever it is that I want to do, I could do it. As long as I didn't drink. I stopped drinking because I was an alcoholic. I believe in the medical model of addiction. Once I started drinking, I had no ability to stop until I was either blacked out drunk or sleeping, which is scary. You could black out, and you're not sleeping, and you're still walking around planet Earth doing things that you're going to later regret.
But I feel like those were the two things that sort of shifted for me: having a therapist who was so bold. I was only in college, and she was like, “What you're describing is alcoholism.” I was like, who? And she was like, you. I said, no way, man. Then, everyone I know is an alcoholic. And she was like, maybe, but I don't care. I'm only treating you, and if you don't get help with the 12-step program, I will stop treating you.
I was like, can your therapist just fucking break up with you like that? Who knew? I literally didn't. I'm so grateful to this day. Then I was 21 years old, and wow, eyes wide open in life, feeling everything, which was good and bad. It really tapped into that love of life that we were talking about before, and that the ambition and the desire to have all these experiences and to travel. I immediately moved to New York City. I was just doing my thing in life.
If I hadn't had that therapist, if I hadn't stopped drinking when I did, I think I would've eventually stopped. But probably after a decade of bullshit. Probably after some more not great experiences and clearing, it was almost like I had this epiphany that when I was deciding to stop drinking, partly because I didn't want her to break up with me, but I was also looking at my life with alcohol. I kind of knew what that chaos looked like. I was being apologetic for things that you never would've done if you weren't wasted. All this stuff is just a distraction from living life. Or I look to the left, and it's like this clean slate. I was like, what could I do with a clean slate? I could do anything with a clean slate. So that was sort of my mindset, and what therapy did for me.
Did any of your clients ever become one of your patients?
Terri: Oh yeah. I had this niche market for models, actors, producers, songwriters, and the entertainment business. These were all my clients, which was actually great.
But when I was at my internship, I was at a fancy ass drug treatment clinic in Midtown. It was this guy who, his name is Dr. Arnold Washton, and this was when he had a book called Willpower is Not Enough about coke addiction, because this was the nineties, people, everyone was doing blow. So I was sitting at the front desk in my internship. Keep in mind, I was literally running a talent agency by day, and then the next day I was literally going into this internship, and I'm sitting at the front desk, and it's one of those double windows, I would sit with the receptionist. In walks one of my most famous clients into the drug treatment clinic for heroin addiction. She doesn't know I'm interning at a drug treatment clinic. So I literally just slip off my chair and fall onto the ground underneath the desk.
And of course, this one next to me is like, what are you doing? I'm like, shut up and help her, please. She helped her. And that was when I was like, you guys, you have to have a separate entrance for visible people. You can't send a super famous supermodel into the front door of a drug treatment clinic.
Wow. I really love that you were able to kind of blend your two worlds together.
Terri: That was more like a crashing of two worlds at that moment. I was uniquely skilled and still am, and I do it just on a much higher level now, help people with fame because fame is a whole trip unto itself. How do you not drink your own Kool-Aid? How do you not surround yourself with bottom feeders? How do you not get killed by social media? Because it's such a nightmare to be out there, and the number of trolls and people and energy. How do you protect your energy when you're famous anyway?
So let's talk about you released your second book in the fall of last year, Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency. What inspired you to write this?
Terri: My clients and my own experience. So my therapy practice was super highly capable women (besides having people who are highly visible), but they were like the masters of the universe, and if I would say to them, Hey, what you're describing in that relationship, that's a codependent pattern. The moment I would mention codependency, they'd be like, no, incorrect. No, you are wrong. Because I make all the money, I make all the moves. Everyone depends on me. I'm the rock in my family system. I'm not dependent on squat, Terri. So there's no way that I am codependent. And I was like, oh, my clients don’t know what codependency is. Okay, so we're going to start there. And then I started really looking at the difference. Most people, my clients, were being unduly influenced by Codependent No More, which is the seminal text written by Melody Beattie, who just passed, rest in peace. But in their minds, they were like, I'm not enabling an alcoholic, so I cannot be a codependent. And I was like, listen, I want you to think of this book as a codependency recovery plan for the modern woman. This is how we live now.
So when I went back to my clients and said, what I'm seeing is you're a high-functioning codependent. They're like, oh yeah, I am exhausted. I am doing all the things for all the people. I am high functioning because this is the part that was a disconnect is they thought being codependent was like being meek and weak and sitting at home waiting for your alcoholic boyfriend to bring home the grocery money, but instead he spent it at the track. You know what I mean?
It's so interesting how codependency has become sort of synonymous with enabling people who have substance abuse. What is your official definition of high-functioning codependency?
Terri: Being overly invested in the feeling states, the outcomes, circumstances, relationships, finances, situations of the people in your life, to the detriment of your internal peace, maybe to the detriment of your financial wellbeing, your mental wellbeing. Psychological well-being. Emotional well-being. So what does that mean? That means your best friend calls you up and she's in a crisis. How quickly does her crisis become your crisis? I don’t mean like I'm concerned about my friend, how can I help? When you're a high-functioning codependent, you are literally feeling overly responsible for fixing other people's problems. We’re problem-solving endlessly, but in a different way. And don't worry, we'll talk more about how you can tell, but it's like, check your urgency. Yeah, no doubt it is my friend. But check your urgency around other people's problems. If we look at the traits of being a high-functioning codependent, first and foremost is feeling responsible for fixing other people's problems. Anybody, anyone. A little overly giving, right? Giving till it hurts. Doing things a lot of times that people haven't even asked you to do. Maybe feeling exhausted, resentful, a little bitter. Feeling underappreciated in your relationships. Auto advice giving. As we said, we can't stop fixing.
You didn't even have to ask because I'm going to tell you anyway, being overly self-sacrificing, auto-accommodating. So I tell a story in the book that I was in the city at a really busy salon, which I never go to on Saturdays. It's a zoo. But I had to go on this Saturday and they put a mask on my hair and I was laying in the sink with the mask on for 20 minutes, but I'm not doing anything. Suddenly, there starts to be a backup for the sink. And every new person who's standing online with their little robe on, I'm becoming more and more anxious about taking up a sink that someone could be using. And I'm like, I should move. Why are they letting me sit here? I feel like an idiot. I should call the assistant over. I'm like, Hey, I can move. She's like, yeah, hello. We got it, lady. We do this every Saturday, Terri. I was like, all right, whatever.
And then I realized in that moment that first of all, I've been in therapy for so many years, and the fact that I'm still doing that, I'm positive I'm not alone. I know there are other people who are also doing that. So I did a quick vlog about it, and it went viral. People were losing their shit, being like, oh my God, I'm auto accommodating everywhere in the world. I can't be online at a grocery store in the 12 or less line. And if someone behind me has one thing, I just wave them ahead. If someone behind me has four things, I wave them ahead. Being so dialed into if I'm on a plane and people want to sit near each other, I'm always overhearing. So I can be like, I'll move, I can move. I don't mind moving.
But anyway, this auto accommodating is when we see a need, and even if it's not our side of the street, we feel compelled to be a part of this solution. And then two other things I want to say about this, and then we could break them down:
Anticipatory planning is another HFC, high-functioning codependent move, where maybe you're going to be with someone difficult. I had these two uncles who didn't get along years ago. So I would have my family over for Christmas and I would be like, so Uncle Jimmy drinks this kind of booze. Uncle Bobby drinks this kind of booze. I'm going to make sure I have the booze. They make sure they don't sit near each other. I'm going to assign my one sister to handle Uncle Jimmy, my other sister to handle Uncle Bobby. I was literally puppet mastering, and I'm not the only one who's done this. Rather than being like, if you two grownups can't be grownups, fucking don't come to Christmas.
Instead, you made it your problem.
Terri: Correct. And I wanted to control it because listen, let's just talk about at the base of any kind of codependency, garden variety, high-functioning, is an overt or covert bid or attempt to control other people's outcomes.
So part of getting into recovery, which is the way that I talk about it, because there's no getting cured from this shit. We can get into recovery, though. Is learning to let the chips fall where they may when they're not your mother f-’ing chips. But when you're an HFC, we kind of feel like all the chips are our mother f-ing and chips. You know what I mean? We want to control everything.
What do you say to the people who are like, I'm just a caring person.
Terri: Oh, trust me, on the interwebs, I get lots of people who are like, Terri, maybe I'm just nice. Ever think of that? I'm like, yeah, I've been a therapist for 30 years. I never thought of that. Here's the thing. I have thought of that. And what I want to say to that is, if you can't not do it, it is not you being nice. It's a compulsion. So that's it. You may choose to still do it, but also let's talk about what the cost is to doing it to other people? You're trampling on their sovereignty. When you're just auto-advice giving your ass off to people, telling them what you think they should do, you are blocking intimacy because you're not asking them. You're not giving space for them to just tell you the problem.
Chris, my 2 cents, when it really comes to real love, it's not about fixing other people's problems. It's about can you be in the foxhole with someone you love during a dark night of their soul and not treat them like a problem for you to fix, to make yourself more comfortable, because that's what we're doing. Can you hang with the messy emotions when someone doesn't know what the hell to do when someone is brokenhearted? Nobody wants platitudes. Nobody wants to feel managed, which is what we're doing when we're like, could be worse, better to know now, God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Everything happens for a reason. Oh my God, shut up. Stop saying those things. Nobody likes that. It is so mean. That's about you. That's to make you feel better.
So my point when people say, I'm just being nice, I'm like, I would like to invite you to reexamine what your motivation is. And here's the thing. I'm saying what I'm saying kind of in a tongue-in-cheek funny way, but I'm sincerely not judging. I was the worst offender who ever lived. I originated the concept because of who I was. They say you teach what you most need to learn. So again, there is no judgment, no shade coming from me to anybody. I was the worst. And we can only get into recovery because it'll still be for me. It is still my nature, my natural instinct. I still want to tell people what to do, but I just don't. The same way that being in recovery from alcohol. Do I wish I had this glass filled with wine right now? Maybe, but I choose to not do that so I can still have my life.
But the thought or the desire, when you get into recovery from being a HFC, a high- functioning codependent, you create enough space to choose differently in your relationships because part of the cost to you is exhaustion, is being burnt out, is having an autoimmune disorder, is feeling underappreciated, feeling less joy, feeling put upon, kind of bitter in life. This is what happens if we continue to overfunction the way we do as high-functioning codependents. That's a one-way ticket to bitter land. There are no other stops on that train. Sooner or later, you end up being a martyr, and no, but trust me, all the martyrs in their sixties and seventies, when they were 25, they weren't like, can't wait to grow up and be a martyr. Gonna be amazing. Nobody wants to do that. But if we don't tell the truth about how we feel, what we want, who we are, we don't prioritize our own preferences, needs, desires, deal breakers, then we end up bitter because we feel like other people are taking advantage of us, even though really we're serving ourselves up on a platter.
I'm curious about how much this is possibly passed down, because when I first listened to the podcast you did about this, I think around the time that the book was launching, maybe you read an excerpt, and I was like, oh my God. It gave me the most profound breakthrough because I was like, this is my mother. My mother is a martyr, but also my mother is a nurse. So I'm sure, kind of similar to being a therapist, that you feel like that's just hardwired into you. Your mission in life is to help people and to do things for them and to caretake. But it has really impacted our relationship because she's always over-functioning for me and did my entire childhood. So then I was under-functioning.
Terri: You bring up this really great point. I have a lot of nurses in my crew and a lot of doctors,therapists,coaches,massage therapists and hypnotherapy, anyone in any kind of healing, helping art, anyone in the medical field because there is a lot of selflessness that goes along with that. But what happens is you don't know how to turn it off. It's one thing to be anticipating all the needs at work when you're a nurse. That makes sense. That's literally your actual job. So what I help people do when they get into recovery from being a high-functioning codependent is realize that at home, that's not your job, and in your personal relationships, your mother being that way blocks the intimacy in your relationship with her.
Big time.
Terri: And this is exactly what it's like for anyone. I had a friend who I was helping with a relationship thing just a week ago. After spending a week with me, we were away at this conference and we just really got into her high-functioning ways and the codependency and all this stuff. She and her girlfriend were on a break. They got back together, and she was like, it was the most profound experience I've ever had in my entire life, that when her partner started talking about her feelings, I was aware of my desire to jump in and fix and say it wasn't that bad, and all the things I would normally do, but I didn't do it. And the depth of the conversation and the intimacy that we both were bawling our eyes out, but she was like, I cannot believe, I feel so sad for how long I've been cutting off that deeper intimacy between us. And that's another thing that people really do experience when they get into recovery from being HFC. There's a lot of mourning that we have to do for how long we were the way we were, and we have to give ourselves grace to the best of our ability. But it's okay to be sad that you wish you knew this sooner. You know what I mean?
For sure. I can recognize in myself, and it's something that I've definitely been trying to work on, of how much I want to insert my advice when friends talk to me. And yes, I'm the person that a lot of people come to for advice, but I think a lot of times, yes, someone just needs a sounding board. And so when you're so quick to jump in with advice, you kind of shut things down for that other person. And I can understand how you sort of take their agency.
Terri: That's a perfect way of saying it, Chrissy. We are literally trampling on their sovereignty, even if it's inadvertent. Part of one of the big stories that I tell in the book is about one of my sisters who was in a really bad situation romantically. So she always had bad boyfriends, but this guy was really bad. He was doing drugs. He was physically abusive to her. She was an alcoholic. They were living in a shack in upstate New York in the winter with no running water and no electricity. So I don't need to embellish that story because it's a fucking nightmare. And as an HFC, someone who's like a problem fixer, I could barely focus on anything else in my life. This was many, many years ago. So I finally go to my therapist for the third week in a row. I'm like, what am I going to do? I've done everything. What am I going to do about Jenna? How am I going to get her out of there? And then she just said to my face, Terri, let me ask you something. What makes you think you know what your sister needs to learn and how she needs to learn it in this lifetime?
And I was like, well, I think we can both agree she doesn't need to do it with this piece of shit in the middle of the woods without running water. And she said, I cannot agree though, Ter, because you know what? I'm not God. I don't know what your sister needs to learn, but you need some boundaries. You don't need to talk to her about this guy every two days. You can still be her person. So anyway, I have a conversation with my sister. I say, I love you, and I cannot talk. This is so distressing. I cannot talk about it with you, but if you ever want to get out, I'm your person. I'll always be your person. Less than nine months later, she called, are you still my person? I was like, I’m getting in my car. Went and picked her up. She got into recovery, she went back to school.
She never was in another abusive relationship. This was like three decades ago. And the important thing I know, so incredible crying, oh my God, it was so hard though to do, by the way, to sit back was just hell. I was such a codependent at that point. But what happened is instead of her baby sister putting on her cape and being the hero of the bigger sister story, my sister got to be the hero of her own story. And she got all the good stuff that comes with that, like the self-esteem and the ability to count on herself and to feel good about herself instead of how much shame she'd feel if I got her out of that situation. But it was me, the money, the thing, you know?
Instead, she did it for herself. And that was where I really saw this is what love is. Love is not fixing it. That's compulsion. That's me wanting, not being able to deal with my hard feelings about her being in a terrible situation.
But that's not love, that's control. That is control. And that was a bitter pill to swallow. But once I really got it, I was able to start breathing deeply and stepping back in all of my relationships more, and being like, this is not my side of the street. I do not have to be sweating these details. I am not in control of this. So, instead of auto advice giving, what can people do instead? If they find themselves being identified with what we're talking about, you can say to your friend, how can I best support you right now? You can say, that sucks. That sounds so hard. I'm so sorry you're going through that shit.
You don't know what other people should be doing. And when we auto fix, you’ve got to remember you guys, we’re doing it for us. And another thing I want you to think about, if you feel identified with doing all the things for all the people, but then kind of being a little bitter about it, before you agree to anything else in 2025, you're going to ask yourself these two questions:
-Do I have the bandwidth to do this thing without becoming resentful?
-Do I even frigging want to do it? Because so much of the time, as high-functioning codependents, if someone else wants you to do it, we almost feel like we should do it. We should want to do it. My friend wants me to do it. So much of the time, we don't even step back to go, do I want to do that thing? Is that my thing? The more honest you become, and it's a really valid question, do I even want to do this? And listen, being in a civilized society, obviously we're going to do crap we don't want to do, we have families, we have parents, we have siblings, we have people, we have nieces and nephews, we have kids, grandkids. Sure, we're going to be doing stuff, but I want you to be doing it mindfully, not automatically and not resentfully.
Really think about, are you just a high-level people pleaser, even though you look really successful? So, a lot of times people don't identify with it. But when I think about it, that's definitely what I was, nobody would've pegged me as a codependent or a people pleaser, but I was both because I didn't like anyone being upset. I didn't want there to be any conflict. I didn't want there to be any problems. I just wanted peace. But not saying something that I needed to say to keep the peace, as Cheryl Richardson would say, creates a war within yourself.
Lately, I've thought a lot about how we are all on this earth to learn the lessons that are necessary for our personal growth. So like, who are you to insert yourself in someone else's journey or to let anyone else insert themselves in your journey because this is my mission and that's their mission and we've all got to, of course we're going to need to lean on one another, but at the end of the day, we have to know that we can do it on our own.
Terri: Absolutely. And boundaries play such a huge role in this. I would love for you to go take this boundary quiz if you haven't taken it. It's boundaryquiz.com, totally free, and there are seven archetypes, and it's really helpful. You could be the peacekeeper, or you could be the ice princess. There are all different archetypes of how we relate to boundaries, mostly in a disordered way that once you get a little insight, you can see, oh, I do do that to protect myself, and maybe I'd like to change that. I just figured it's kind of a fun thing for people to do.
Last question. What's bringing you joy right now?
Oh, my pit bull puppy. Her name is Charlie. She just got spayed, so that's been hell. But I haven't had a dog in a long time because of how much I've traveled. The amount of joy that her happy heart and her smiling face brings to both my husband and myself. It's funny. Give empty nesters a dog, dude. My husband was like, no clothing on the dog. I was like, okay. Then I found an article that's like pit bulls don't have a lot of fat. They're probably cold. I sent it to my husband. He came home with a jacket and two sweaters. I was like, I thought no clothing. He's like, well, I don't want her to be cold.