DEPENDENT - CODEPENDENT: SWEET COUPLE “I am you, you are me, and we don’t need anyone... Lyrics from a popular song The focus of a psychotherapist’s professional work quite often includes clients with codependent problems relationships. What is he like, a codependent client? Typical characteristics of a codependent person are involvement in the life of another, complete absorption in his problems and affairs. A codependent person is pathologically attached to another: spouse, child, parent. In addition to the above-mentioned qualities, codependent people are also characterized by the following: • low self-esteem; • the need for constant approval and support from others; • uncertainty of psychological boundaries; • a feeling of powerlessness; or change in a destructive relationship, etc. Codependent people spend their entire lives making members of their system dependent on them. At the same time, the codependent actively interferes in the life of the addict, controls him, knows how best to act and what to do, disguising his control and interference as love and care. I wrote about this in the article “Aggression of Codependents.” The other member of the couple – the dependent – ​​has, accordingly, opposite qualities: he is lacking initiative, irresponsible, and incapable of self-control. Codependent relationships from an everyday point of view The traditional view is that addicts are a kind of social evil, and on codependents as their victims. The behavior of codependents, as a rule, is socially approved and accepted, while the actions of the addict are unanimously condemned and condemned. And this is not surprising. The addict, because of his pathological attachment to the object of addiction, destroys his family, relationships, and himself, degrading more and more as a person. From an everyday point of view, everything looks like this - the addict destroys relationships in every possible way, while the codependent tries to save them. Psychological point perspective on codependent relationships However, from a psychological point of view, the contribution of the codependent to such pathological relationships is no less than the dependent one. The codependent himself no less needs the dependent and he himself maintains this kind of relationship - he is dependent on the dependent. This is a variant of the so-called “human” addiction. Codependents themselves maintain dependent relationships, and when they become difficult to bear, then they turn to a specialist to “cure” the addicted person, that is, in essence, return him to his previous dependent relationship. Any attempts by the addict to get out of the control of the codependent cause a lot of aggression in the latter. Function of the addict in a relationship The partner of the codependent – ​​the dependent – ​​is perceived by him as an object and his function in the codependent-dependent pair is comparable to the function of the dependent’s object (alcohol, drugs...). This function is to “plug the hole” in the identity of the codependent (in our case, the partner) in order to gain the opportunity to feel whole and find the meaning of life. It is not surprising that for a codependent, the dependent person, despite all his shortcomings (from the point of view of society and the codependent himself), turns out to be so important, because he provides the most important function for him - meaning-forming. Without it, the life of a codependent loses all meaning. Hence the strong attachment of the codependent to the dependent. For this, the addict has his own object of attachment - alcohol, drugs, etc. It is not surprising that in the picture of the World of the codependent, another person occupies such an important place. But despite all the need for the other for the codependent and the fixation on him, the attitude towards him is purely instrumental - as a function. In fact, for the codependent, due to his egocentric position as an Other, there is simply no separate person with his experiences, aspirations, and desires. Yes, the Other is present in the codependent’s picture of the World, even exaggerated, but only functionally. In terms of psychological development, the dependent and codependent are approximately at the same level. Of course, this is the level of borderline organization of the personality structure with characteristichim with egocentrism, impulsiveness as an inability to retain affect, low self-esteem, infantilism (see about this in the article “The World through the Eyes of a Borderline Client”). The dependent-codependent pair is formed according to the principle of complementarity. It is difficult to imagine a pair of a person with an autonomous self and a codependent. What they also have in common is a pathological attachment to the object of dependence. In the case of a codependent personality structure, such an object, as mentioned earlier, is a partner. In the case of a dependent person – a “non-human” object. The mechanism for “selecting” an object is unclear, but in both cases we are dealing with a dependent personality structure. How do people with such a personality structure get into psychotherapy? Most often, a psychotherapist deals with two types of requests: 1. The request is made by the codependent, and the dependent becomes the client of the psychotherapist (the codependent brings or sends the dependent to therapy). In this case, we encounter a standard situation for psychotherapy: the codependent is the customer, and the dependent becomes the client. This situation seems prognostically unfavorable for therapy, since here we are not really dealing with the client - one of the necessary conditions for therapy is not met - the client’s recognition of his own “contribution” to the current problem situation, as well as denial of the existence of the problem itself. As an example of the situation under consideration, we can cite cases of parents asking to “correct” the problematic behavior of a child, or one of the spouses wanting to rid their partner of a pathological habit.2. The codependent seeks therapy on his own. This is a prognostically more promising option for therapy. Here we deal with both the client and the customer in one person. For example, parents seek professional help with a desire to sort out a problematic relationship with a child, or one of the spouses wants, with the help of a psychotherapist, to understand the reason for his unsatisfactory relationship with his partner. If in the first case psychotherapy is impossible in principle, then in the second case the codependent client a chance appears. At the same time, such clients usually do not respond well to psychotherapy, since the range of their problems is due to a basic defect in their psyche. Lack of self-control, infantilism, limited sphere of interests, “glued” to the object of addiction are a serious challenge for the psychotherapist. Codependent relationships as a system Working with both dependent and codependent clients is not limited to the therapist-client relationship, but inevitably draws the psychotherapist into field relationships. A psychotherapist has to work not with one person, but with a system. He constantly finds himself drawn into these systemic relationships. It is very important for a psychotherapist to realize this. If he finds himself drawn into systemic relationships, he loses his professional position and becomes professionally ineffective, since it is impossible to change the system while being in the system itself. One of the forms of “pulling” the therapist into the system is the so-called triangles. Triangles are a necessary attribute of the life of addicts and codependents. All the variety of roles underlying the “games that people play” can be reduced to three main ones - Rescuer, Persecutor and Victim. See this in more detail in the article Once again about codependency: sister Alyonushka https://www.b17.ru/article/10037/ Features of the therapeutic relationship Relationship-dependent clients are easily recognized at the first contact. Most often, the initiator of the meeting is a codependent close relative of the addict - mother, wife... Often the therapist’s first feeling is surprise. And not by chance. Having talked with the mother who called about the problems of her boy, you naturally wonder how old he is? To your surprise, you find out that the boy is 25, 30, or even older... So you come across one of the central qualities of the addict’s personality - his infantility. The essence of mental infantility is the discrepancy between psychological age and passport age. Grown men,