2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
One of the most frequently used methods of manipulating people and creating myths is to impart meanings to words that do not belong to them. “Help the child to do homework”, - orders mom and dad to quickly solve problems and return to their business. Before starting a conversation about upbringing and relationships in the family in general, I would like to separate three concepts: help, cooperation and doing instead of …
The main phenomenon is help. It is this word that serves as the lever for most manipulations. What's the difference between helping and cooperating? It is easy to determine the difference here: cooperation takes place when achieving a common goal, assistance - when achieving the goal of only one of the participants. To separate help and “doing for” it is necessary to at least approximately define the existential boundaries of the concept of “help”. In my opinion, when a person, in pursuit of his goal, has exhausted all resources, replenishment of what he lacks is help. Anything beyond that is “doing for”.
For clarity, I will try to translate the situation into the area of monetary calculations. If I need to invest 120 rubles to achieve my goal, and I have only a hundred, then the remaining 20 will be help. If we invest 60 rubles with the "assistant", then his 40 rubles will turn out to be "doing for". This situation (60 + 60) is quite adequate in cooperation, but what happens if we are talking about help?
I am referring to an analogy. Opiate receptors. As soon as these receptors get used to the fact that the work is done for them, they stop working on their own and physical dependence develops. From alcohol. In this case, alcohol "helps" the opiate receptors by doing their job for them - the production of endogenous alcohol. Alcohol dependence develops.
By the same mechanism, in the presence of a predisposition (and no one ever knows whether there is a predisposition or not, therefore common sense always suggests for prevention to assume that there is a predisposition), dependence on help develops. Which is actually a dependence on "doing for". And it develops regardless of age, like alcoholic. Therefore, this should be remembered not only by parents and teachers, but also by spouses, bosses, psychotherapists, employees, etc., etc.
The phenomenon, roughly but precisely defined in Russian by the word "freebie" and is a dependence on doing for …
The clinical manifestations of this addiction are numerous. This is helplessness and stupidity, irresponsibility and importunity. If you look closely, the underlying urge for each of these “symptoms” to have someone else do it for me becomes apparent. Sometimes, with the help of such behavior, it is possible to tie a partner to himself more tightly, then he becomes codependent. More often, this behavior in a partner causes irritation - and then he, too, risks becoming codependent.
I would like to emphasize that the dependence of doing for is a "pair dance", and any of the participants can be the leader in this dance.
I understand what makes you allow someone to do for yourself - laziness, irresponsibility, any other fear. But what pushes me to do for someone? Why do I do homework for the child, provide services that are not asked for, do for someone else a work that he should and can do himself? In search of an answer, I felt many situations in my own life and realized another unpleasant thing - by doing for someone, I thereby try to inexpensively buy his kind attitude. Always in these situations, in an amicable way, I who do for myself should have done something much more important and responsible for myself.
So in a situation with lessons, it is much more difficult to arouse a child's interest in the subject and independent work; in building relationships with loved ones, it is much more difficult to be empathic and do what they need, than to be helpful and do what I am good at and what does not constitute for me a lot of work. Those. I choose codependency for fear of wasting effort in building deep and sincere relationships. I slip doing instead of understanding, service instead of love. It's easier for me to “take by quantity” than to improve the quality of my own attitude. I get off instead of doing. And as a result, I get in response either the same dependent attitude, if the partner is satisfied with the state of codependency - I raise dependent children, live with dependent relatives; or the relationship breaks down, leaving a feeling of guilt in the soul, turning into anger or self-deprecation.
“We are responsible for those we have tamed” - formulated by the cunning addict Fox, this motto was picked up by addicts all over the world and embroidered with gold on the banner of their sacred struggle for the right to be addicted. It is the addicts who, in a heartfelt tone, with tears and anguish, recite this motto to those on whom they want to depend. A kind of claim, consecrated by decades of "culture and intelligentsia". I've heard this motto many times in my life, and in all these real, non-literary situations, it sounded like a demand.
I hear this meaning in it: "Since you allowed me to be tamed, I have a right to you!" It turns out that the only way not to turn into an object to which someone has the right is, I have to be very careful not to tame someone, how not to let anyone be tamed. After all, if I am dependent, I suffer from a feeling of my own inferiority; if they depend on me, I suffer from a feeling of guilt. What if I don't want to suffer at all?..
What to do? How to stop doing for yourself, how to stop allowing doing for yourself? I know one thing - I cannot solve this problem in a session. Habits have their own laws of development and disappearance. And I understand something else - no one will solve my problem of doing for me. Only a sincere desire for liberation and everyday painstaking work on myself will help me get rid of addiction. And only sincerity and fearless giving will allow me to build genuine relationships with loved ones and raise independent, mentally healthy children, and then in our vocabulary the word “help” will cease to be a tool of manipulation.
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