Psychologists And Codependency

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

I was prompted to write this article by a discussion on one psychological forum. The woman told a terrible story. The man with whom she was in a relationship did not work - he was fired because he drank, beat her, mocked her, called her monstrous words. She wrote that she understands everything, but as soon as he looks at her with sad eyes, she melts and forgets everything, continues to love him, wants to save him, help him stop drinking, get a job. And at the same time he is afraid that he will kill her. I asked for support, help with advice.

The situation is monstrous and, at the same time, classic, as in a textbook about codependency. Open "Addiction - a family disease" - read the points - everything is the same.

Psychologists, of course, immediately recognized what the author's problem was and began to question him. At first the conversation was in a neutral tone: What do you want from the forum? What does a relationship give you?

I want, he says, help and support, I'm afraid that he will kill, but I love the mage.

Here psychologists become sharper, diagnoses begin - you do not like him, you have an addiction, drug addiction, codependency, a neglected case, PTSD, severe psychiatry, you urgently go to a psychiatrist, a psychotherapist, to groups, to the neurosis department! Of all the comments, one is neutral, the rest are saturated with sarcasm.

Everyone is terrified. They say love yourself immediately, author! Don't you understand, are you sick? He will kill you, author !!! Are you out of your mind at all? !!! Diagnoses are pouring in like a cornucopia!

Women are not psychologists more humane: “Run! Have pity on yourself! I myself was in such a situation! I understand you! "," I hug you! You will get out!”,“Hold your hand! Help!”, Scold the man.

Forum in a Frenzy: Trying on the Role of God? Do you like to suffer, dear? Without lula, as without gingerbread! Yes, you are an abuser yourself, you want to remake a man for yourself! Yes, a man may have it was self-defense when they climb into his life! How can you at all!

Then the author silently disappears, and psychologists continue to discuss the author, share their impressions, and come to complete unity in their righteous anger.

What is codependency? This is always a meeting with your own powerlessness, the inability to come to terms with the fact that a person next to him hurts himself, and you are not able to prevent him. These feelings are very difficult to bear. It is hard, painful and scary to live your life next to a person who is killing himself.

Admitting your powerlessness is putting yourself in a very, very vulnerable position. Acceptance of the fact that something very important to me does not belong to me. All my efforts, suffering, effort invested, money, time, my life, when I tried to change another, did not work. He stayed in the same place, or maybe he fell even lower. And it will fall, fall, fall until it wants to stop, or maybe it never wants to and dies. And I can't do anything about it. All my love, all my energy cannot prevent it.

This is a very difficult feeling, and in order not to meet with it, people resort to different tactics:

- believe what is obviously impossible. For example, another promise to quit drinking and behave;

- devalue a person who cannot be helped. They say that he is stupid, selfish, psychopath, a goat, so as not to feel such hellish pain from helplessness;

- they pull a white coat over their bleeding wounds, take a position from above: I am a saint - you are nothing. I am a righteous man and you are a sinner. I know how to live correctly, but you do not understand anything in life;

- banging and banging their heads against the wall, and fall into anger, because the truth is obvious, the head is broken, and there is zero sense.

Codependency is known to be akin to addiction. And when specialists encounter a codependent person and his blindness, they fall into the same feelings that codependents experience in relation to addicts - the same helplessness and despair, and they are saved in exactly the same ways - they put on a white coat, read him morality, make diagnoses, and finally fall into righteous anger.

I would draw an analogy here with the case described by Anna Yakovlevna Varga in the book "Systemic Family Psychotherapy". It describes a mother who is wildly annoyed with her little daughter when she is sick or slowly eats.

As in the case of the mother described by Anna Yakovlevna, the condemnation of a codependent woman only aggravates her situation, becausenow she receives confirmation that not everything is all right with her, that she is a helpless, sick, hopeless woman, from competent specialists. This only reinforces her self-image as a dysfunctional, worthless creature. In addition, by pouring out their righteous anger on a woman, psychologists behave towards her in the same way as her man. They seem to inform her - what you are, gives us the right to be angry with you, no matter how you explain it, you do not understand anything, so we have no other choice.

A codependent woman, like an insecure mother, needs support, confirmation that she is a good, kind, respectable person who has the right to experience any feelings, that her intentions are clear and understandable, that she wants to help but cannot.

In order to begin to get out of the impasse of codependency, a person needs to strengthen, see himself as worthy, normal, able to make choices and independently determine his life and relationships, and not stupid and defective. And the task of the therapist is to support him in this.

I don't want to scold my colleagues. I understand their feelings, and I myself have repeatedly succumbed to the temptation to put on a white coat and hoist myself on a stool with a fiery speech. I just want to say how important it is in this kind of work to keep track of your feelings and maintain humanity and vulnerability.

Take off your white coat! It gets in the way!