AN OBSESSION WITH LOVE: emotional dependence
Dr. Barbara Court
Love, is the need and the ability to transcend ourselves and, together with another, creating a reality new. Sometimes, when you alter the 'balance between giving and receiving, including their shared border and space, love can be transformed, rather than an opportunity for growth and enrichment, in a cage with no prospect of escape, with walls made of pain. This is what happens when you slide into the emotional dependency. Emotional dependence is a pathological form of love characterized by chronic lack of reciprocity in emotional life, in which the individual, "the donor of love" one way, see in connection with another person, often problematic and elusive, the sole purpose of their lives and fill their emotional void.
not always the difference between love and emotional dependency is clear. It may even happen that the two phenomena are confused.
The key distinction lies in the degree of autonomy and its ability to find meaning in itself. Contrary to popular belief, love was born from the two units, not two halves. Just to be perceived in its entirety you can cancel without giving oneself without getting lost in the other. People with emotional dependency, not being independent, can not experience love in its depth and intimacy. The fear of abandonment, separation, loneliness generate a constant state of tension. The presence of the other is no longer a free choice but is experienced as a matter of life or death without the other does not have the perception to exist. I own needs and wishes are denied and canceled in a symbiotic relationship.
The emotional dependency, contrary to what sometimes appears to evidence, not a phenomenon that affects one person, but is a dynamic two. Sometimes the partners "Emotional dependency" is a difficult subject, which mask their emotional dependence with a drug addiction, alcohol or gambling. In this case the problems of the company becomes the justification to devote himself entirely to another in need, not taking the risk to live a life for himself.
Sometimes the loved one is rejecting, elusive or unattainable, for example, married or not interested in the report. In both cases the struggle is what seduces: the dependence feeds the desire to be loved by those who do not reciprocates in a satisfactory manner, and grows in proportion to the rejection, even if there were the latter, not the supposed love would last.
The person who has an emotional dependency usually stifles any desire and our own interests to look after the other but is inevitably disappointed and his love takes the form of resentment. At the same time fails to terminate the relationship, by virtue of what he calls "loving too much, not realizing that this behavior destroys the love which calls autonomy and reciprocity. In
emotional dependency, which is experienced as love becomes a drug. Symptoms of addiction are the same: inebriation
: the subject feels a sense of pleasure when she is with her partner, who can not get in other ways and that is essential for good health.
tolerance: the individual seeks increasing amounts of time to devote to the partner, reducing their time more and more autonomous and contacts with the outside
abstinence: the subject feels to exist only when there is the other, the His absence throws in a state of alarm. Think your life is unimaginable without the other. The other is seen as the only source of gratification, daily activities are neglected, the only important thing is the time spent with each other.
inability to control their behavior: a reduction of lucidity and critical thinking that creates shame and remorse and in some moments is replaced by a temporary lucidity, followed by a sense of defeat and prostrante a relapse into addiction, which makes you feel more imminent than before their needs related to another. These processes are tinged with anger and guilt
Also, unlike drugs, which are more readily available, you can create an obsessive fear of losing a loved one, expressed jealousy and possessiveness, which feeds immeasurably to every small signal negatively perceived.
The paradoxical position that characterizes the emotional dependency is: "I can not stay with you" (for pain due to humiliation, abuse, betrayal) "it without you" (to the anguish at the thought loss).
The emotional dependency is rooted in the relationship with parents during childhood. People dependent children have received the message that were not worthy to be loved or that their needs were not important. These people usually come from families where emotional needs were neglected by virtue of material needs. The increase covers the wound but leave the insane. Through identification with the partner dependent people are trying to save themselves and overcome their lack of affection. In married life is reallocated more or less unconsciously, a role similar to that lived with his parents in an attempt to change the ending. The absence of the opportunity to experience a feeling of security in childhood raises the need to control the other, hidden behind an apparent tendency for aid.
The main problem in the resolution of emotional dependency is admitting you have a problem. There are indeed very thin boundaries between what is normal in a couple and what becomes addictive.
The difficulty in isolating the problem also lies in the distorted models of love that might suggest some abuse and sacrifice of himself as "normal."
Often, paradoxically, is the "hope" that does survive the problem which tends to be chronic: hope in a change impossible, especially in a relational context in which they have consolidated the scripts from which it is difficult to escape. Thus, paradoxically, the beginning of the change comes when you reach the bottom and they are experiencing the despair, which represents the possibility of burying the illusions that have long fed the pathological report.
E 'this is the time when you are more willing to seek help, and may be an opportunity to begin a process of psychological change, aimed at building emotional ties more fulfilling.
0 comments:
Post a Comment