Codependency And Counterdependence. Counterdependency In Relationships

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Why does a counterdependent person at the beginning of a relationship behave like a codependent, showing their characteristic traits?

What is the essence of this situation? You meet a person, he is completely involved in your relationship, giving them all his free time and completely himself - constant meetings and walks, intense correspondence in instant messengers, joint plans. This is one of the hallmarks of a codependent relationship. Then, at some point, the person "merges", cutting off all contacts, and at best sometimes appears in your life or disappears completely for a long time. After a while, he returns, continuing to build relationships according to the already familiar scenario - constantly there, correspondence, miss, love, cannot live, etc. In general, this is a fairly standard behavior of a counterdependent person. However, an inexplicable sense of duality remains - on the one hand, counterdependent behavior, and on the other, codependent behavior.

Why is this happening? The point is that the essence of counterdependent and codependent behavior is the same - addiction! This is an emotional addiction, a failure at the level of attachment. And this failure occurs in about the same way - both in a codependent person and in a counterdependent person. The only difference is that a codependent person does not feel himself without the other, therefore he grabs onto a partner (he cannot feed himself, see the colors of life, and indeed - he has nothing to enjoy in life if there is no other nearby). Often, such people even wake up lifeless if they have to fall asleep alone.

With regard to the counterdependent personality, a slightly different picture of the world. A counterdependent person is a person who is dependent on their independence. Relatively speaking, he has such a huge love for his freedom (dependent and painful) that relationships for such a person are simply unbearable, cause inconvenience, pain and some kind of rejection. This interferes with both his personal life and inner life.

How were both these characters formed? The basis here is common - the absence of a rather strong emotional connection with the mother, conditionally - point attachment, when the mother left for a long time, and the child did not understand whether she would return at all. In general, this is a lack of emotional contact on the part of the mother. For example, in childhood, a person had a nanny, and his mother was included in his life for only an hour a day, but she did not have emotional trauma in the affection zone (there was definitely a failure, but not so deep, the situation could be corrected in just a few sessions). So, the issue of emotional contact with the mother figure is of fundamental and important importance here. Did my mother notice my needs? Did you pay attention to the changes in my expression? Did you see that I don’t like this, I don’t want this (I don’t want to eat this, I don’t want to wear this), but I want this - buy it for me, please! Did she hear me? Did you negotiate with me?

Codependency is formed a little earlier than counterdependence - approximately at the age of a year and a half, when the child had to separate from his mother earlier than he was ready for it (they took him to kindergarten or started giving them to his grandmother more often, etc.). Accordingly, the baby began to see his mother much less often, which was very critical for him and, as a result, a deep inner need remained: “Mom, do not leave, please, let me hug you”. This is a picture when a child clings to the mother's leg and tearfully asks: “Mom! Don't go away! A similar situation is imprinted in the psyche, as a way of attachment and in adulthood.

What is the difference between counterdependence? The counterdependent character is formed on the basis of the excessive involvement of the mother's figure - the saddening overprotection, the hyper-involvement of the mother, but not in the emotional life of the child, but rather in the functional one (put on a hat; eat even more, otherwise you ate very little; you didn’t wear boots; you don’t cold, etc.). Relatively speaking, the mother knows for the child what exactly he needs. The most important aspect is a gross violation of the child's emotional boundaries (he is not allowed to be alone with himself, although he really wants to).

In fact, which zone the child will go to - codependency or counterdependence - in the absence of important factors of emotional connection with the mother and insufficient merging with her at an earlier age, depends on the structure of the child's psyche with which he was born (a person can be sensitive from birth, and maybe thicker skinned). Given a more sensitive and vulnerable child and, accordingly, a similar strong violation of boundaries on the part of the parents or the people who raised him, he is more likely to go into counterdependence.

So, if on the part of the parental figures there was an excessive violation of boundaries, the child was not allowed to retire, growing up, he will choose the position of loneliness, since for him a relationship is excessive tension, some kind of pain, the need to be involved where he is not interested in being. His emotional sphere is not included in this zone, because he was not directly included in him in childhood.

The counterdependent type can be formed even if there were incomprehensible relations between adults in the family. For example, mom and dad constantly sort out relations, scandals, abuse and beatings, and the child gets involved in this ("Dad, don't hit mom!", "Mom, leave dad alone!"), Each time choosing between the parents. In this case, for him, the relationship became a tension of such a level that the muscles are shaking, because the psyche of the kids is very small, and he has to contain a huge amount of tension in the family. Another option is quarrels between dad and mother-in-law or mom and mother-in-law, and all these showdowns always took place in front of the child. There may be a different situation - the child did not see anything, but the mother, father or other relative close to his heart complained, using the baby as a “container” (“Your mom or dad is like that…”). As a result, the child, equally loving everyone, splits inside his consciousness, while experiencing tremendous stress and trying to keep his psyche in order not to go into psychosis. Subsequently, as they grow up, this person will see the relationship as too stressful. In addition, he can automatically get involved in the problems of his partner, start solving them, getting a lot of stress from this.

However, at the same time, the counterdependent person still has an instinctive need for merging, warm emotional contact, and secure attachment. With age, our entire human essence will nevertheless draw us to other people, because all people are social beings. That is why such a person madly and sincerely wants to have a relationship, he goes to them, meeting a partner with whom he merges, but the internal conflict does not allow him to set boundaries in time.

American psychologist Berry Winehold has books on counterdependence and codependency - "Escape from Intimacy" and "Liberation from Codependency", respectively. " It is better to read them at the same time, because quite often from the outside it seems that the person is counter-dependent, but inside he experiences himself as codependent (and vice versa).

Both codependents and counterdependent individuals have other addictions besides emotional (for example, alcohol, drugs, pills, diet, sports, work, adrenaline addiction). If a person goes in for sports more than three times a week, this is already an addiction (the exception is professional sports), and there is a strong violation in the psyche zone (relatively speaking, without physical exertion, a person does not feel well, and depression constantly prevails in the mood). Any addiction presupposes the fact that a person has no boundaries, no sensitivity to himself (when there is enough and when not), in other words, a person does not know how to experience aversion to excessiveness (this is like a “buffet” when at one moment everything offered is eaten, and then bad and sick). Accordingly, he merges into a relationship, "eats" everything that is offered to him (time, emotions, experiences, events, walks, love-carrots), gets poisoned and leaves, not understanding why he suddenly felt bad. Another important point in the context of this problem is the fear of being swallowed up by a partner. Experiencing a panic state of anxiety, a person turns off other feelings, and aversion to excessiveness arises only when "everything eaten begins to fall out of the mouth." As a rule, this leads to the fact that people are a little lost, then calm down, the disgust gradually disappears, and they can return to the relationship again.

So, a person cannot limit and stop himself, and this is directly related to the early relationship with the mother. At the age of 1-3 years, the child begins to set restrictions (for example, you have 5 candies, but you can eat only 1, etc.), and the baby gets upset, frustrated, cries and screams, takes offense at parents and manipulates, but the parent must put a clear border in this place. Another situation - the baby is playing with his toys, his mother (dad, grandmother, grandfather) comes into the room and demands to remove the toys, motivating it to be late (“We put away the toys, it's time to sleep, it's already 9 pm! In this case, the child's boundaries are violated, he feels that a relationship is a connection that frustrates, violates his freedom, will, blocks desire and the emotional sphere. A deep connection remains in the child's mind, a belief is formed that relationships are bad, and everyone needs to be saved, to be a container. Such a firm opinion can only be changed by gaining a new experience in a relationship, when no one stands over you, does not command, does not tell you where to go and what to do - this is the experience of psychotherapy.

Perhaps you will be lucky with your partner, and he will not violate your boundaries, but the opposite situation may be - you will provoke him to violate his boundaries, so that he swallows you, and then, accordingly, blame him for everything (“You you consume me! "). In fact, your child's psyche reproduces the childhood experience of relationships with parents due to the fact that you could not tell your mother: "It's your fault, you hurt me, you did this …". Maybe the thoughts were expressed aloud, but it did not lead to anything, and your command has not changed.

Other factors may also lie at the heart of the problem - a specific situation, certain actions of the parents, to which your corresponding behavior was included. Trauma is usually caused by multiple recurring events, relationships, etc. The difficulty lies in the fact that the period from one to three years is quite difficult to remember, and many people do not remember this age. Depending on the behavior of the person, only bundles can be found.