Family Invasion

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

People always destroy what

what they love the most …

Unknown author

The specific feature of love

in a codependent relationship is

that it is not given to children in its pure form

From the text of the article

The topic of the article and its title are inspired by a dream told by my client. This dream is from the category of "horror films". Let's take a look at its contents together.

The client dreams of a living room. Adults are sitting at the table and having lunch. There is a feeling that his parents are among these people. What impresses the customer is the way people eat. There is a lot of complacency in this action, confidence in the necessity, inevitability and correctness of what is happening.

However, something in what he sees disturbs the client, causes anxiety and tension. One feels some kind of incompleteness, lack of clarity, understatement … The client is trying to understand what is so annoying in what is happening. He goes to the next room and sees there many crippled, bandaged children: someone is missing a handle, someone has legs …

Everything becomes clear overnight - the picture becomes clear. The client is seized by a piercing chilling horror. The people at the table are cannibals - they eat their children, they eat gradually, cutting off some parts from their bodies. In addition to horror, the client has surprise at some kind of correctness, even righteousness of what is happening, demonstrated by all kinds of adults dining.

The astute reader has already guessed that sleep symbolizes the phenomenon of codependent relationships in the child-parent system. The phenomenon, which in this dream is manifested in such a terrible symbolism, is in fact so widespread in our society that it can be considered as a variant of the socio-cultural norm.

So much has already been written about this, and I myself have raised this topic more than once in my articles, nevertheless, I cannot remain indifferent at the next meeting with the fact of parental violence disguised as parental love.

In the psychological literature, this phenomenon is called differently: symbiotic relationships, codependent relationships, parental "predation" … Despite the fact that different names are used, this kind of relationship is inevitably characterized by the following:

• Breaking psychological boundaries
• Psychological abuse

An important point here is the manipulative nature of such relationships: psychological abuse is presented as a gesture of parental love. In such a relationship, parents use the child, guided by good intentions, using him under the guise of love for him. The reader, of course, met with examples of such parental love both in literature and in real life. And, of course, there are plenty of such cases in psychological practice.

There are different types of "parental invasion" (the term of Françoise Couchard, described in her book "Mothers and Daughters"): maternal, paternal, family. Examples of "maternal and paternal predation" were described by me and Natalya Olifirovich using the example of the fairy tales "Rapunzel" and "The Frog Princess" in our book "Fairy Tale Stories through the Eyes of a Therapist."

In this article, I want to focus on the phenomenon of “family invasion”, which is not described as often as other types of codependent relationships. An important point that distinguishes families, which are characterized by the above-mentioned phenomenon, is their high cohesion with a pronounced experience of "WE". Children raised in such families are in similar conditions, with the following family introject messages broadcast:

• WE (our family) are the most correct, good, normal. Correctness, goodness, normality, We are opposed to Others. Others are worse than us. Therefore, contact with Others should be avoided as much as possible.
• You are Ours if you adhere to family rules. Ours, therefore, is loved. If you do not support family rules, then you automatically become not OUR and lose parental love.

In those families where there is no cohesion, there may be other options for invasion - with the parent with whom the emotional connection is stronger. In this case, one of the parents forms a symbiotic union with the child, while the other parent is excluded from this union.

In the formation of the feeling of WE as loyalty to the family system, in addition to the above-described introject messages, the following mechanisms are involved:

Guilt

Guilt feelings are intensely formed in children in codependent families. Most often, guilt is broadcast in the following message: "We (parents) give ourselves completely to you, and you (children) are ungrateful …" Guilt is a strong glue that does not allow children to break codependent relationships and start their own lives. Each of their attempts to break free is accompanied by a growing sense of dependence and guilt, in which they become more and more entangled.

Fear

The feeling of fear is instilled in children in codependent families from the very first years of life. “The world is imperfect and dangerous. Only here, in the family, with us, are you safe. Undoubtedly, such a view of the world, transmitted to children, is a component of their parents' picture of the world. These are parental fears, their failure to face life.

Shame

Feelings of shame can arise as a result of the child's inadequacy to the "correct" family standards. “Follow family rules, be what we want. Otherwise, you are not OUR, and, therefore, flawed. " In order not to face the feeling of shame, the members of such a family system actively cultivate family pride. In addition, pride enhances the sense of belonging to the WE system.

Love

Love is the leading mechanism for maintaining codependent relationships. A specific feature of love in codependent relationships is that it is not given to children in its pure form, but is associated with restriction, violence with the use of manipulations. However, the child's need for parental love is so great that children are ready for any sacrifice just to get it. In Soviet times, in the era of scarcity, there was such a practice - another product that was not in demand was imposed on a product in demand. And the buyer who wants to buy a scarce product was forced to take what he did not need.

We see something similar in codependent relationships. Such an experience of consumption of love by a child in an "unclean form" becomes habitual and already an adult, habitually continues to love himself only under the condition of self-violence. You can love yourself only when you thoroughly "rape" yourself with some kind of work, you force yourself to do something. Idleness is unbearable for such people, they are unable to rest, relax.

All considered mechanisms contribute to the creation of a high degree of loyalty to the family system and its opposition to the outside world.

I will try to sketch out the main features of a client who has become a victim of "family invasion":

• Difficulty in establishing close contacts with people from the "outside world";
• Wary attitude towards the world;
• Inability to relax
• The conviction that rest must be earned by hard work;
• An obsessive desire to constantly do something;
• The desire to do everything according to the rules;
• A large number of obligations, introjects;
• High level of self-discipline:

Therapy

The relationships in question, as already mentioned, are inherently codependent. Therefore, the goal of therapy is to increase the freedom and autonomy of the client's self.

It is futile to expect that the family system will voluntarily "let go" of its member. Parents' motives are psychologically understandable. Parents in such a system raise a child for themselves. The child performs a meaning-forming function for them, plugging a hole in their identity. So clipping the wings and keeping the child in this situation is quite natural.

The difficulty of working with such clients is due to the fact that in order to grow up, he needs to symbolically "kill" the parent system. Due to the high degree of loyalty to the family system, any movement towards autonomy is interpreted by it as a betrayal, and the client is immersed in feelings of guilt and intensifies the tendency towards dependence on the family system.

The client's movement towards autonomy is inevitably associated with the construction of personal boundaries, and, consequently, with an increase in sensitivity to the needs of his I. Access to his desires and needs is blocked. The emergence and allocation of an autonomous self requires resources to protect its borders and the need for aggression. And here the client faces great difficulties. It is much more difficult for ideal, demonstrating love parents to respond from their Self. The child is entangled in parental love, like a fly in a spider's web. Aggression is possible only against the outside world and in no case against the family system. The most difficult is the manifestation of aggression in a situation where the parent or both have died.

The therapeutic fallacy here is to try to support criticism of the client's parents. Even if initially the client follows the therapist in this, then later he will still "return" to the parental system, resisting therapy, or even interrupting it altogether. Unconscious loyalty to the system is stronger than any awareness. The therapeutic "attack" of addictive objects generates in the client a lot of guilt and fear of losing support. Awareness and elaboration of those mechanisms and feelings that keep the client in a situation of codependency will be much more promising.

Therapeutic work with clients trapped in the family system is not easy. The client in therapy needs to be born and grow up psychologically. And this is a long and difficult process and not everyone has enough motivation and patience.