Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (26 page)

Dependent people do not like change. They like everything to stay the same.

MARGARET: When I first met Anthony at school I used to tell him that I wished we could stay in school forever, that it never had to end. He couldn’t wait to get out, for school to end, but I wanted it to go on and on.

THERAPIST: What was it that you were going to lose?

MARGARET: I guess it was that I felt so safe there. I knew what to expect.

It is your lack of faith in your judgment that makes you so afraid of change. Your confidence is low in new situations, because you have to rely on your own judgment. In situations that are familiar to you, you have already gotten the judgments of other people and you have already established some knowledge of the best approach to take. But when you confront a new situation, unless you have someone to advise you, you have to rely on your own opinions, and you do not trust those.

We would like to say that your sense of incompetence is more imagined than real, but unfortunately this is often not the case. Often dependent people lack competence exactly because they have so successfully avoided the tasks of adulthood. They have gotten other people to do these tasks for them. This avoidance leads to some realistic deficits in skills and judgment. However, most dependent patients exaggerate their incompetence. They doubt themselves more than the situation warrants.

When you consistently act in ways designed to keep people doing things for you, you are
surrendering
to your lifetrap. Having people do things for you reinforces the idea that you are not capable of doing these things on your own and keeps you from developing a sense of competence. However, it is almost certainly true that, if you were living on your own, you would eventually be able to learn the things that are required for competence in daily living. Your dependence is one large untested hypothesis. You have never found out that you actually can function alone.

Escape
is another way of reinforcing your lifetrap. You avoid the tasks you believe are too difficult for you. There are certain tasks dependent people commonly avoid. These include driving, attending to financial matters, making decisions, taking on new responsibilities, and learning new areas of expertise. You avoid breaking apart from a parent or partner. You rarely live alone or travel alone. You rarely go to a movie alone or out to eat alone. By continually running away from these tasks, you confirm your sense that you cannot accomplish them on your own. Margaret says, „Anthony takes care of all the money. I could never keep our checkbook balanced.“ William says, „I could never get a job with another firm. What if I was a miserable failure? Other bosses wouldn’t be as lenient with me as my dad.“

Although you find change frightening and resist it, you often feel trapped even as you feel secure. This is the negative side of the Dependence lifetrap. This is the price you pay. Dependent people often allow themselves to be abused, subjugated, or deprived in order to maintain the dependence. They will do almost anything to keep the person with them.

You probably accept a subordinate role in your relationships with family members, lovers, and friends. Undoubtedly this gives rise to anger (although you may not be aware of it). You like the security of these relationships, but you feel angry toward the people who provide it. And usually you do not dare express your anger openly. That might drive people away, and you need them too much. The dark side of this lifetrap is that you feel trapped in your dependent role.

THERAPIST: Close your eyes and give me an image of your marriage.

MARGARET: I’m in a dark place that I can’t get out of, and there is no air, and I can’t breathe. It’s claustrophobic. Anthony is yelling at me about something. I hear him going on and on, and I hate him so much that I feel like I’m going to explode.

THERAPIST: What do you do?

MARGARET: I apologize to him, and I promise I’ll never do it again.

Many of Margaret’s panic attacks occur when she is angry at Anthony and trying to keep it inside. Dependence exacts a high price in terms of freedom and self-expression.

Some dependent people do express their anger more openly. These are people who have what we call „dependent entitlement.“ Some dependent people feel
entitled
to have their dependence needs met. Carol expressed this about William in one of our sessions (at William’s request, Carol attended some of our sessions).

CAROL: Yesterday, William was really nasty and critical. He gets that attitude. I was cooking dinner, and he starts hovering over me and correcting me. It’s like I can’t do anything right.

THERAPIST (to William): What was happening with you?

WILLIAM: It really started after I got home from the doctor. I was really mad that she didn’t want to go to the doctor with me for my allergy shots. She made me go by myself.

CAROL: I had an economics test!

WILLIAM: You could have made it up later.

It may be that you have a combination of the Dependence and Entitlement lifetraps. In this case you get angry when people do not meet your needs. You
punish
them by sulking, acting irritated, or getting overtly angry.

Panic attacks and agoraphobia are common. In many ways agoraphobia is a drama of dependence. The core feature of autonomy is the ability to venture into the world and have the resources to function independently. Agoraphobia is the exact opposite. Margaret feels
helpless.
When she ventures into the world, she has no confidence that she can handle what happens. She would rather avoid the world altogether. She wants to stay home where she feels safe.

Margaret feels like a child in the world—as if she can no more survive alone than a child. Her only hope is to latch onto someone who will take care of her. Ultimately what she fears is death, insanity, poverty, homelessness—the extremes of helplessness. Each time she has a panic attack, she becomes convinced that she is having a heart attack or losing her mind. Like most agoraphobics, she also has Vulnerability, the other lifetrap in the Autonomy realm.

Even if you do not have panic attacks, you undoubtedly have tremendous anxiety. All the natural changes of life seem overwhelming, even the positive changes. A promotion at work, the birth of a child, graduation, marriage—any new responsibility can trigger anxiety. Occasions most people regard as causes for celebration throw you into a state of dread.

You may also feel a chronic sense of depression along with the anxiety. At heart you may despise yourself for your dependence on others. As William says, „I feel like an inadequate person.“ Low self-esteem is an integral and painful part of the Dependence lifetrap.

Christine, the social worker who broke her leg, is an example of a counterattacker. She copes with her Dependence lifetrap by putting all her energy into achieving at a high level and being
completely
independent. She overcompensates by constantly fighting against her core feelings of incompetence. She must
continually
prove to herself and to others that she can get by on her own. She suffers from hidden dependence.

Christine
is
competent. Her competence is one of her most salient features. But underneath she feels a tremendous amount of anxiety. She is constantly afraid that she will not perform adequately. Each time she gets a promotion, which is often, she fears she will be unable to handle the job. When her friends put her into leadership positions, which they often do, she fills the role competently but with great trepidation. Christine’s fears pressure her to ever higher levels of competence, as she drives herself to master every task. But she never gives herself credit. She believes she is fooling people. She always discounts her accomplishments and magnifies her errors or deficiencies.

Christine overcompensates for her feelings of dependence by behaving as though she does not need help from anybody. Christine is
too
independent. No matter how anxious she feels, she forces herself to face things alone. This tendency to go to the other extreme—to act as though she does not need anybody for anything—is called counterdependence, and is a strong indication of the presence of the Dependence lifetrap. Counterdependent people refuse to turn to others for help, even when it is reasonable to do so. They refuse to ask for advice, assistance, or guidance. They cannot allow themselves to get a normal amount of help from other people, because it makes them feel too vulnerable.

CHRISTINE: It is like if I turn to anyone at all I might become totally dependent. Right after the accident, when I was at home, it really scared me to become dependent on my parents again.

If you are counterdependent, even though you do not acknowledge your feelings of dependence, at your
core
you feel the same as other dependent people. You may appear to be functioning well, but you do so at a high level of anxiety. It is the feeling underneath that gives you away.

The Dependence lifetrap can originate either in parents who are overprotective or parents who are underprotective.

Overprotective parents keep their children dependent. They reinforce dependent behaviors and discourage independent behaviors,
smother
their children, and do not give their children the freedom or support to learn to be self-sufficient.

Underprotective parents fail to take care of their children. From a very young age, their children are on their own in the world and have to function at a level beyond their years. Such children can give the illusion of being autonomous, but in fact have strong dependence needs.

We are born totally dependent upon our parents. When our parents meet our physical needs—when they feed us, clothe us, and keep us warm—they establish a safe base from which we can venture into the world. There is a clear developmental process with two steps.

THE STEPS TOWARD INDEPENDENCE

1. Establishing a safe base.
   
2. Moving away from this base to become autonomous.
   

If either of these two steps is missing, the person may develop a Dependence lifetrap.

If you never had a safe base, if you never were allowed to rest securely in that dependent state, then it is hard for you to move toward independence. You always long for that dependent state. As Christine says, „I feel like a child who is acting as
if
I am an adult.“ Your competence and independence do not feel real to you—you are waiting for the base to collapse.

Aside from providing a safe base, our parents must gradually allow us to move away from them toward independence. They must provide us with just enough help. It is a delicate balance; there cannot be too little or too much. Fortunately, most parents fall somewhere in the middle, and most children develop a normal degree of autonomy. But parents on either extreme often produce children who develop Dependence lifetraps.

In the best of all possible worlds, our parents give us the freedom to explore the world, communicate that they are there if we need them, provide help when we truly need it, and convey trust in our ability to succeed on our own. They give us the safety and protection to feel secure, and the freedom and encouragement to go out on our own.

The Dependence lifetrap is formed early. Parents who fail to meet the child’s dependence needs or who suppress the child’s independence will probably start doing so early in the child’s life—usually by the time the child begins to walk. By the time a child starts school, the lifetrap is probably firmly in place. What we see later, for example in adolescence, is simply the continuation of a process that started long before.

The most common origin of Dependence is parents who are overprotective. This was the origin for both Margaret and William.

THE ORIGINS OF DEPENDENCE IN OVERPROTECTIVENESS

1. Your parents are overprotective and treat you as if you are younger than you are.
   
2. Your parents make your decisions for you.
   
3. Your parents take care of all the details of your life so you never learn how to take care of them yourself.
   
4. Your parents do your school work for you.
   
5. You are given little or no responsibility.
   
6. You are rarely apart from your parents and have little sense of yourself as a separate person.
   
7. Your parents criticize your opinions and competence in everyday tasks.
   
8. When you undertake new tasks, your parents interfere by giving excessive advice and instructions.
   
9. Your parents make you feel so safe that you never have a serious rejection or failure until you leave home.
   
10. Your parents have many fears and always warn you of dangers.
    

Overprotectiveness usually involves two dimensions. The first is
intrusiveness.
The parent jumps in and does things for the child before the child has a chance to try alone. The parent might well have good intentions; he or she may want to make life easier for the child or spare the child the pain of making mistakes. But when the parent does everything, the child never has the chance to learn to function competently. When we try and fail and try again, we learn to master aspects of our world. This is learning, and, without firsthand experience, little learning occurs. All we learn is that we
must
have our parent there.

William’s childhood provides a typical example. His father was overinvolved.

WILLIAM: It was very important to my father that I do well in school. Whenever I had trouble with a problem or assignment he would do it for me. He wrote my papers and did my science projects.

You know, I can’t remember a single aspect of my schoolwork that I handled alone. Over and over again, my father did the bulk of my work.