Information you need to know from Christian Counselor and Life Coach, Maryellen Stipe:

Caretaking can be an addiction, an addiction to other people’s problems.  When you fill your life and brain with obsessing on other people’s issues and fixing them you mood alter on that (worrying, catastrophising, planning to control the chaos, etc) and you do not feel your own pain, or take care of the issues in your own life.  You are so busy living someone else’s life that you don’t live your own life or dreams or purpose. This is why co-dependents are called “co” dependents—they are also dependent or hooked on the addiction of their significant person.  Taking on the role of savior in another person’s life is intoxicating because the co-dependent feels so powerful and comforts himself or herself with what a good person (s)he is to look after this loser in her life.  Caretaking is one of the legal addictions of Christians.  It can seem noble but it also steals one’s life away.  Instead of taking her (or his) cues from the Lord about how to live her life, the co-dependent takes her cues from the problem person.  The co-dependent’s life orbits around the problem person rather than around the Lord.  God’s Lordship in his / her life is diminished.  The co-dependent is not free to obey God’s bidding.  He / She lives life focused on the problem (s) of the significant other.  This kind of activity is modeled in many Christian homes and passed on to generations