How to help an extremely anxious and codependent friend?
I’ve got a friend who I’ve known for quite a while, and she’s always kinda been this way. In private with friends, she’s calm, generally confident, and pretty pleasant to be around.
Right when I go anywhere with her in public, she becomes wildly anxious, acts quite strangely, and is extremely codependent. She seemingly cannot make any independent decision, cannot talk to any strangers without me, and has to be right by my side at all times. She’s also an alcoholic, and she’s convinced that alcohol is her only way to be normal in social settings. Which it really isn’t. I love her, and I try to kindly encourage her to be more independent and socially confident but nothing works.
It’s frankly exhausting and it makes me intensely frustrated. It almost feels like a burden to go out in social settings with her. I’m a very outgoing and independent person that likes to talk to a lot of people, and her presence often prevents that because she is almost completely unable to make any normal conversation with a stranger, especially without my presence.
But ofc taking out frustration on her doesn’t make the situation any better. I just really don’t know what to make of the relationship because I don’t want to be frustrated, and I want her to be better in her own skin.
TLDR:
In social settings and in many other settings, my friend has a codependency problem with me. It’s getting to a point where I’m very frustrated underneath but I don’t want to make it worse. What can I do to make this better?