2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
A scenario I often encounter at work: in families where parents were emotionally unstable and actively used emotional and physical violence in raising children, the character of the latter is formed according to 2 main types. The child develops either a counterdependent bipolar or hypomanic character, with narcissistic defenses, or a codependent, depressive-masochistic character. Often in families with two children, you can see how one child grows up with one character, and the second with a second. Or vice versa. There are also third, fourth children and scenarios. But I have to deal with this more often.
Usually, one of the children in such a scheme turns out to be more functional, often leaves the family early, copes with stress better, is more successful in the profession - he is more resourceful and preserved, at least until a serious crisis occurs. Because narcissistic defenses, although strong, tend to break sometimes under the weight of crises of identity, age, family, or all together. And then depression, grief and other "pleasures" can come to life for a long time. Usually it is at these moments that such clients reach the therapist.
In fact, the threat of depression constantly haunts these people, since traumatic experience, on the one hand, drives them to success - they really can work a lot and literally drive themselves. But as soon as they take a break for themselves, their anxiety increases due to injuries, to which they can only maintain insensitivity in constant movement.
The second child, depressive-masochistic, is more adaptive to the behavior of the parents, and therefore to violence in general. It becomes a continuation and support of the parental identity, which makes it difficult to form its own. Endless acts of reconciliation on his part in response to parental aggression block his ability and desire to use his own aggressiveness and go out into the big world.
Such children are more maladaptive in life - it is normal for them to endure beatings, and then seek comfort in the arms of their rapist, endlessly repeating this cycle. Even if they form paired relationships and leave the parental family, they choose copies of their parents as partners, repeating a well-known scenario with them. Often in therapy, these clients, enjoying the process itself, when they are sympathetic, supported and someone is on their side, are in no hurry to grow up and take responsibility for their lives. They seem to freeze in their suffering, learning over the years of dysfunctional attachment to live only in it and not knowing other forms of relationship.
Some turn into robots and in the middle of life learn to dig up and unfreeze their humanity. Others try to mature through a jungle of savage violence that they have learned to ignore for years. Sometimes the former are dispersed in earnest and turn into the latter, with sufficient pressure from environmental circumstances and individual predisposition. Both of them have problems with establishing confidential intimacy and a tendency to addictive and / or obsessive behavior. Both are filled with toxic guilt, shame and anxiety.
These are basically the results of the idea "I was beaten, and nothing - I grew up a normal person."
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