Codependency: What Is It, The Karpman Triangle, Complicating Factors

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

I want to talk in a series of articles about the codependency paradoxes that I have highlighted. But first, it is important to understand the phenomenon.

Let me remind you or let you know what codependency is. In a narrow sense, these are partners of addicts (from alcohol, drugs, games, etc.) who stay with them and try to "cure" them. In a broad sense, it is, in principle, all relationships centered on the other, and in which their own needs are ignored.

In a healthy relationship, there is me, the other and our relationship - everyone can be happy both individually and together. Codependency together is bad, but separately it is bad. Those. in principle, there is no option where it can be good, unfortunately (not counting the periodic merger after quarrels, but then everything goes in a circle).

CARPMAN'S TRIANGLE

Codependency always develops along the Karpman triangle, there are always 3 roles. People in these roles are unhappy, but our psyche is so arranged that if healthy relationships are unattainable, then it begins to find secondary (implicit, hidden) bonuses (benefits) in each of the roles. So, the roles and benefits:

TYRANT - the one who offends, the one who dominates, the one who causes harm. "Bonus" is the feeling of power over other people's lives, self-affirmation against the background of the Victim and other "fools ignorant of the life." In the end, it can lose significant people nearby - it is unpleasant for anyone to be constantly wrong.

VICTIM - the one who suffers, the one who is offended, the one who suffers humiliation and abuse (violence). The “benefit” of the victim is to relieve himself of responsibility for his life, as well as, as a rule, to receive sympathy and regret from others, which is perceived by the Victim as a manifestation of love for her. In the end, the Victim will closely look for opportunities not to take responsibility for his life, and the circle of suffering will not open.

RESCUER - the one who intervenes, the one who indulges the Victim and protects it from the Tyrant, takes responsibility for the Victim's life and fights the Tyrant. The secondary "benefit" is a sense of self-worth (in the life of the Victim) and, like the Tyrant, power over other people's relationships. In the end, either the personal life of the Rescuer will suffer from a constant emphasis on the lives of others, or he will "save" and be quickly forgotten, his significance will not be in an equal relationship.

ALL ROLES CHANGE alternately. It's just that everyone can have their own "favorite" roles. So, the most common scheme is: husband-alcoholic-Tyrant, wife-Victim, girlfriend / mother / friend-soner-Rescuer. But the same husband becomes the Victim next to his friends, the Rescuer, when the wife is in a bad state; friend - a Victim when her advice does not work, and a Tyrant if the Victim simply does not follow her advice; the wife becomes a Tyrant when she scolds her husband for alcohol, and a Rescuer when she removes the consequences of his revelry after him. Etc.

THE THIRD in this psychological game (fight) it can be IMPRESSED. If the third person does not “turn up” in real life, then the internal images of people enter into the struggle: “That mother was right,” “And they told me about you,” and so on.

Codependency, in my opinion, is a big problem in our society. I do not know exactly about other cultures, but here it can be traced notably.

I see several BASIC SOURCES

which formed the basis for the formation of codependent behavior, and now feed it:

A. Institute of marriage, which earlier it was impossible to tear apart - so like it or not, you have to live with the one with whom you are already betrothed (I almost wrote "doomed").

B. Patriarchal paradigm (culture). I think, thanks to her, women are more often codependent. Previously, a man was almost the only indicator of a woman's status. So I had to look for status, and what's inside - how lucky. And it was often socially better to be in a bad marriage than to be alone.

B. Wars: they force us to operate in a survival scenario - teaming up with others to survive. Unfortunately, in peacetime, after the psychological trauma that war is, the exact same pattern of behavior is often fixed.

G. USSR: the idea of everything in common (absence of boundaries, lack of private, both material and psychological space). But the absence of boundaries is always an indicator of codependency.

In addition to the fact that these factors have become, in my opinion, a weighty basis for the formation of a codependent pattern of behavior, now they leave what I call mental (and cultural) heritage - scenario / idea of life as a couple. And even modern free tendencies hardly knock out this hundreds-year-old, albeit inconvenient, already completely inoperative, but the usual scheme of building relationships and, thus, support in the picture of the world.

Of course, an additional factor that is closest to a person is the family factor, but it stems from all previous sources and continues their development within the family. Due to the massiveness of the pressing factors, codependency is "treated" with great difficulty. Because the first person in the family who says: "I don't want that!" - usually becomes the only warrior in the field and needs support, but receives criticism. But about this a little more in the latest publication about the paradoxes of codependency.

That's all for today, but in the next article I will speak directly about paradoxes and describe them.

Now, if you have a desire to talk about codependency in your family, my psychotherapeutic doors are open.