As you know, man is a social being. The environment has a huge influence on the formation of personality. But relationships with other people develop according to different scenarios: some help to open up, others make you hide your true face. What distinguishes dependent relationships and can they be turned into healthy ones?
In psychotherapy, there is this premise: the self, that is, my sense of myself, appears due to the other. In other words, I feel the way I was treated by my elders who took care of me, most often my parents.
There are two conclusions from this: on the one hand, others create me like a puzzle and give me as a gift that I did not choose. On the other hand, by changing my environment and relationships in the present, I can choose who I want to be.
Broadly speaking, we can say that there are only two types of relationships. Conditionally autonomous, within which I can develop, and my psyche becomes more complicated. In them I gain experience that changes my self-perception.
And dependent, where there is no development, but only the reproduction and alternation of the usual ways that I resort to to hide my true self from whoever is nearby. In this relationship, I affirm my dark fears about myself, others, and the world at large.
Sartre once wrote: «Hell is others.» This phrase has received many explanations. I will offer my own: it is that with the help of other people we open portals to our personal demons. The therapeutic experience convinces me of this: how often my clients see in people they barely know their parents, classmates, former partners! And they build relationships according to an already known model, even if it does not please them at all.
What are dependent relationships? The first ingredient is called projection. We project feelings and expectations from the past onto others. What specifically? This is what we find out in therapy in order to separate past experience from the current situation.
With the help of «negative» feelings, we can discover reality
The second ingredient is hope. It maintains our illusion that we can change our partner by our personal effort, giving him more love, increasing control, or surrounding him with even more care. It makes us believe that a little more, and we will deserve what we lack — tenderness, sincerity, understanding.
The third ingredient is fear. Fear of catastrophic consequences if dependent relationships are interrupted.
My client, a successful young woman, was afraid that she would not be able to survive the feeling of rejection that would arise if she did not live up to her boyfriend’s expectations. But in the course of the work, she clearly saw that she had already been rejected — from the very beginning of such a relationship in which much was forbidden to her. Rejected by the fact that she was destined for a very minor role. What she feared the most had already happened to her for a long time. Is it possible to turn an addictive relationship into a healthy one? Only when both partners are aware of what is happening to them and are ready to change their lives.
Common sense tells us that only «positive» feelings can be a resource — support, joy, gratitude. But this is not entirely true: “negative” feelings — disappointment and rejection — can serve as an equally important resource. Because with their help we can discover reality.
Do you give yourself the right to refuse what does not suit you?