What does it mean that codependency and emotional boundaries?

When you feel responsible for others emotions your boundaries need strengthening.

Example: Marcus notices that his evening mood is almost entirely determined by his partner's day. If she comes home frustrated, he immediately begins strategizing how to fix whatever upset her — not because she asked, but because her frustration feels like his emergency. If she is happy, he relaxes. If she is distant, he spirals into anxiety, scanning his memory for something he might have done wrong. He does not experience this as a choice. It feels like love. But when she goes on a week-long trip, Marcus notices something disorienting: he feels calm, unmonitored, strangely free. He has no one's emotional temperature to track, and for the first time in months, he can feel his own feelings without them being overwritten by someone else's. The relief frightens him, because it suggests that what he called devotion was actually a compulsive monitoring system that erased his own emotional life in service of managing hers.

Try this: Draw three columns on a page. In the first column, list the five people you interact with most frequently. In the second column, for each person, write what you believe you are responsible for regarding their emotional state — be honest about the felt sense, not the intellectual answer. Do you feel responsible for making them happy? For preventing their anger? For absorbing their sadness so they do not have to carry it alone? For anticipating their needs before they voice them? In the third column, write what you are actually responsible for: your own behavior, your honesty, your respect, your follow-through on commitments. Compare the two columns. The gap between what you feel responsible for and what you are actually responsible for is the territory of codependency. Circle the person where the gap is largest. That relationship is where your boundary work begins.