How A Codependent Family Is Formed

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

Parents who have not gone through their own psychological birth create a codependent structure out of their family. A codependent structure is a symbiotic type of structure: entangled, because in it each person is in a codependent relationship with other family members. The family turns into a web, in which there is a lot of confusion, chaos and, most importantly, a lot of confused responsibilities and, as a result, problems with personal boundaries.

What is a symbiotic type structure? Comes from the word symbiosis (life together). In biology, symbiotic organisms live in close contact with each other. They benefit each other, but they cannot exist without each other. They die physically.

Psychological symbiosis is characteristic of emotional codependency, when a person psychologically cannot exist separately from his addiction (another person, structure or substance).

Psychological symbiosis is the desire of one or two partners to establish life in one emotional and semantic space. This is the desire to constantly be with your partner, to merge with him bodily, merge with him emotionally; think the same and feel the same. In such a relationship, it can be quite comfortable. There is only one problem here - the inability to acquire independence, autonomy and individuality.

For young children, the symbiotic phase is normal. But over time, the child must move into the next phase - the stage of separation, autonomy and individuation. Separation is separation from a significant object, when a person begins to feel like a separate person, not only physically, but also psychologically. If this stage of separation, separation from significant figures, is not passed, then the person remains codependent for the rest of his life. And in the future, he builds his relationship according to the codependent symbiotic type. In these relationships, there is no way to show your originality, autonomy, independence and individuality.

As a result of the fact that people do not go through the separation stage, a cobweb-like structure is formed. It connects everyone to each other and confuses. The larger the family, the more confusion inside. This type of symbiotic structure encourages beliefs, values, myths, judgments that support structures in unity and exposes a façade of unity.

Rebellion or other attempts to become independent in this system are suppressed by physical or moral punishment. Moral punishment: humiliation, condemnation, accusations, threats of refusal of love, emotional withdrawal.

Psychological pressure is used to make a child or adult feel that he is doing something wrong. That his desire for independence, the desire to separate from the system, the family is something not very good, something treacherous. He can betray mom, he can betray dad, betray the whole family and it becomes very difficult for a person to separate. This requires outside support.

Family members very often describe this symbiosis as a kind of oppressive state, a state of suffocation. They experience it as a loss of their own identity. If a person in a codependent system begins to feel suffocation, then this indicates that the phase at which it was good, it has already passed. Suffocation signals that a person cannot acquire inner freedom, but urgently needs it for his further normal existence.

When they say that freedom is an internal category and it depends only on a person, the family or the system cannot influence this. I will say: it can. Especially when a person is not yet an independent person. After all, it is the parents in the family who influence why it can be difficult for a child to become independent and autonomous. The codependent system simply prevents him from growing up. Of course, to acquire freedom and individuality is a human task. But the system, the family can resist this. Therefore, physical departure from a codependent family or structure is often an important step towards independence and freedom.

An important point: in a family, separation sprouts can be so severely strangled that then, in adulthood, there is nothing to sprout. Nothing to grow up with. The person is stuck at an incomplete stage of development. Stages of autonomy versus shame and doubt. And until he completes it, all attempts to be satisfied with his life will fail. Outside help is needed here. It is necessary that someone has grown already an adult to the stage of autonomy, lead him through separation, help to form an identity and release him into life. This is exactly what psychotherapy deals with with addictive problems.