2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
You can recall / study what codependency, Karpman's triangle and sources of codependency are in this article (click to go). In the previous 2 articles, I talked about the first 8 paradoxes, which I highlighted: kindness, gratuitousness, affection [with * knitting], the opinion of others; as well as addiction, control, pain, complaints. Today I will talk about 2 more paradoxes I have identified, as well as a little about the "treatment" of codependents.
CHANGES
The scourge of codependents is the changes in others, their influence on others. They are confident that they can change the other, make his / her life better.
But the paradox is that when the long-awaited changes take place, then … joy? It is logical, it seems, but there is a "but" … They, of course, can experience it (usually to a small extent) or only demonstrate it at all, but, as a rule, first of all there is … confusion! It is not clear what to do now. So he beat and beat and achieved, but now what? So anger sneaks up …
So, the most famous example is the families of alcoholics, where the addict suddenly decides on his own to stop drinking. Wives may even be sincerely happy for a couple of days, but the old models remain and codependent wives without psychotherapy and work on themselves will recreate the scenario - nag the husband, pin up, provoke, they themselves can start drinking too much (the topic of Alcohol should be present in the family, otherwise it is not clear how to interact !) … In general, everything is done unconsciously so that the PROBLEM TOPIC REMAINS.
So, in one family, a woman desperately fought for years with her husband's drunkenness. Let's go to therapy. I don’t remember exactly how it was opened, but it turned out that they had a BAR WITH HIS FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINKS at home in an open space. Do you think this helps the alcoholic recover? At the same time, the woman was sincerely perplexed about what was wrong with that.
In addition, wives accumulate a lot, a lot of pain and resentment. And now the husband stops drinking, he can really start to become a correct, grateful, respectful and respected person, but women can’t let go of old grievances just like that. They, too, can encourage women to behave inappropriately to the situation, for example, to be furious with a good attitude. Such a reaction can be caused, on the one hand, by resentment about the past relationship, and on the other, they may, in principle, not know what a warm and kind attitude towards them is (therefore, they could survive for years in an abusive (violent) relationship), and how to treat them kindly is unknown to them.
Given all this, a logical question arises: is the task of the codependent to heal, or is the task to heal? The task (unconscious, of course) is to struggle with something (it arises instead of the determination to get acquainted with your pain and your locked needs), and the subject of the struggle can change. Therefore, no matter how many good changes there are in the dependent, if the codependent does not work on himself, then there will always be more and more new topics to fight.
HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP
Codependents believe they want a healthy relationship. The paradox, however, is that they are not looking for them, but are trying to "make healthy" the current ones. Which is impossible, because we can only influence ourselves. No, we can influence the other, this is the basis of the principle of psychotherapy, in general. But first, the other must be interested in change. Secondly, a relationship aimed at changing one of the participants is a special kind of relationship that can be compared with the positions of Mentor-Apprentice. This is a deliberately vertical (unequal) relationship. Should we devote ourselves to Mentoring in close relationships that presuppose equality (after all, we live with this person, eat, know when he goes to the toilet, and so on - we rarely know about our mentors, it is often unnecessary for "teaching")?
Moreover, codependents fail to communicate when they meet with an emotionally mature person. Rather, this is due to the position where the more mature tries to build Equal relations, and the codependent rushes from “learning from him / her” to “patronizing him / her”. And the reactions range from indifference and boredom to anger (“Why is he (a) not rushing to save me when I feel bad?”). I love this story of a woman who deliberately said that she was bored with normal men, with alcoholics - everything is clear there and the script is spelled out, she knows how she will “save” him, how conflicts will develop, and so on. And she likes that it is alive, but with the more emotionally healthy - somehow boring.
And as in the joke: “Girls! It turned out that you need not only an emotionally healthy
a man who has treated his psychotraumas, one must also be like that!
This is a setup, can you imagine!"
But absolutely consistently among codependents, what does not cause dissonance in me, which means that it is not a paradox, is SENSING BORDERS. They don't know their boundaries (emotional, territorial, physical, sexual, financial), and of course, I don’t feel the boundaries of other people, which is why they “intermeddle” where they are not invited.
Codependency is "treatable". But as you can understand, there are many faces of codependency. And also cultural, patriarchal, and often family support for codependent behaviors complicates the course of a person's growth. Therefore, codependency is treated only with long-term psychotherapy. In special cases, even a group of codependents (like Alcoholics Anonymous) may be needed.
Codependency psychotherapy makes it possible to build valuable relationships within clear boundaries, not to mention the opportunity to live through the pain of loss (loss of your needs in the first place), find your values, understand about your strength (change YOUR life) and powerlessness (you can change yourself - there is no other). Eventually, a codependent behavior pattern can become an interdependent pattern. The reverse side of dependence is counterdependence (when relations are not built in any way and with anyone, attachment is avoided), after all, it is also dictated by fears of falling into codependency. And these fears are well founded.
Interdependence the same - the ability to rely both on oneself and on the other in the agreed conditions (framework, boundaries) of relations. This makes it possible not to load the contact with pain and fears, feelings of guilt and shame, not to reproduce codependent psychological games, not to make a battlefield out of relationships, but to have fun together, to share some of the hardships together, but also to do all this separately in order to preserve balance in a pair.
I think there are many more codependency paradoxes in the details, but all others in my mind fit into the points described. What other paradoxes do you know?
PS: if you have a desire to talk about your codependency, about the impossibility of changing either your partner or yourself and the pain in this place, my psychotherapeutic doors are open.
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