Reboot Your Relationship Radio Show
May 2013
Joe Whitcomb & Savannah Ellis
“Personality Disorders & Relationships”
We have been talking about personality disorders. That has been our focus for the last several weeks. We’ve covered six, actually today is number six of ten different personality types. And we have covered the Antisocial Personality, that’s what we covered last week, we’ve talked about Histrionic Personality Disorder, Borderline, Narcissistic, we’ve talked about Obsessive-Compulsive, and today our focus is on the Dependent Personality Disorder. I’ve chosen six, today is going to be our last program on Personality Disorders, we are going to move in to a different topic next week but I have chosen the ones that I see the most in my office. Again I work in private practice, I’m a licensed Psychologist and I work with people that have various types of personality disorders, personality problems. As I’ve said before on previous shows, everyone has a personality, everyone has characteristics and traits and as I go through this, you as well as myself can probably identify with several of these different personality types. When it becomes a disorder is when it impacts the person’s day-to-day functioning or causes them overwhelming distress, and turmoil, that’s when it becomes a disorder when it interferes with their social functioning, their occupational functioning, their relational functioning, that’s when it becomes a full-blown disorder.
And as I’ve done in the past, I’m going to talk about the definition of Dependent Personality Type and then, go over the specific criteria associated with this disorder. What a person needs to meet in order to be diagnosed with a Dependent Personality Disorder and then I will discuss the causes and the factors that are tied in with the Dependent Personality Type. I will give you a clinical example and also, we’ll spend some time talking about treatment strategies. So that’s what we’ll cover today.
Let me move in to this Dependent Personality Type. A lot of people fit this particular personality type. There are a lot of individuals that I work with everyday that tend to be Dependent. Now, the Dependent Personality Type is often considered part of the anxious personality disorders and actually this particular personality disorder is one of the most frequently diagnosed personality disorders. As I said, in order to be considered a disorder it has to interfere with your day-to-day functioning and cause significant distress. People with this particular disorder spend a great deal of time and effort trying to please others. They tend to be the people-pleasers. They’re passive in their style of communicating, they often lack self-confidence, and these individuals may tolerate mistreatment and/or abuse from others. These individuals often find themselves in the position of victim. They are over-sensitive to criticism and they may tend to be naïve and gullible. It’s common for people who have suffered a chronic illness in childhood to actually develop some of these Dependent Personality Types or maybe they went through a death or a divorce when they were growing up and that stressful life event might have pushed them into this area of Dependent Personality Type. These individuals are often self-sacrificing, they feel helpless and powerless at times and they are easily taken advantage of by others. They lack self-confidence, they have tremendous amounts of self-doubt, and they tend to denigrate themselves and feel inferior to others and are usually extremely cooperative and accommodating. They put others first, they put themselves last. They are not inclined to speak up when they have a problem. They are the type of person that will tend to ‘suck it up’ or ‘grin and bear it’. And they often tolerate a lot of crap from people. Unfortunately, this particular personality type can get themselves in extremely dysfunctional and unhealthy relationships. When we move further into it, I will talk with you about the relationship impact because I see so many individuals that are Dependent, that are in relationships with individuals that are controlling, that are extremely volatile, aggressive, maybe arrogant, pushy and they just consumed that person. So these individuals tend to be victimized, taken advantage of and manipulated by others. So that’s a brief definition of this particular personality type.
Let me move in to telling you some about the criteria. Remember in order to be diagnosed with a personality disorder, the pattern of relating, the pattern of behaviors is typically pervasive. It’s been around for years and years and for this particular individuals, the Dependent Type, there’s this excessive need to be taken care of. And that excessive need to be taken care of leads to submissive and clingy behaviors. They have a tremendous fear of separation, and a lot of these characteristics develop by early adulthood. They may develop in childhood; they may develop in adolescence, but typically, by early adulthood. In childhood, it maybe separation anxiety that they are experiencing, and that separation anxiety may develop into a Dependent Personality Disorder and as we get into the causes, I’ll expand on that. So in order to meet the criteria, the individual has to fit at least five of the following that I will go through now. So as you think about this either for yourself or for someone else, think about whether you can identify with five of the following criteria:
- These individuals have difficulties making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others. They are constantly looking for others to guide them, to direct them, to tell them what to do because they don’t feel comfortable making the decision themselves.
- They need others to assume responsibility for most major areas of their life. Whether one of those major areas might be working, or generating income to live on. Maybe they assume that others are going to take care of them in that regard, maybe emotionally, they assume others will be taking care of them, or physically, others will be taking care of them.
- These individuals have a difficult time expressing disagreement with others. They are not good with conflict. They don’t like conflict. In fact, they hate conflict because they fear a loss of support or approval from that individual. They fear being rejected. They fear being abandoned. So they would just assume not share the conflict. They would just assume have the conflict just remain inside of them rather than create a conflict by having a conversation with someone about something that you don’t like.
- These individuals have difficulty initiating projects or doing things on their own because again, they lack self-confidence in their judgment or their abilities. They don’t believe that they’re capable of doing a lot of positive things or good things. They tend to put themselves down. And they don’t give themselves enough credit. So they have a hard time initiating projects and doing things because they really don’t think they are capable of doing a good job or completing a project or a task.
- They go to great lengths, to excessive lengths, to obtain nurturance and support from others to the point of volunteering to do things that are unpleasant. So they have a hard time saying no. They will agree to things that they really don’t want to be doing. But because they want that support, they want that pat on the back or that praise, they have a hard time saying no. These are individuals that don’t set good boundaries. They don’t draw the line on the sand and say “No, I’m not comfortable in doing that.” “I don’t want to do that.” “That’s not something I really have a passion for.” They will agree to do it but then they will harbor resentment or bad feelings. Maybe not towards that person, but maybe towards themselves.
- These individuals feel uncomfortable or helpless when alone. Because they have tremendous amount of fear. And the fear again is being unable to take care of themselves. So they will stay in a dysfunctional relationship because they don’t feel capable of taking care of themselves and in spite of the fact that being alone maybe healthier for them emotionally, the uncomfortableness of being alone far surpasses the uncomfortable relationship that they might be in. So they’d rather be in a dysfunctional relationship than being no relationship.
- They urgently seek another relationship as a source of care and support when a close relationship ends. So these individuals have a hard time when either a friendship ends because the person moves or maybe because there was a conflict or maybe a marriage ends, or a close relationship (girlfriend/boyfriend) the relationship ends. They are in the mood of replacing that person almost immediately. They are seeking a relationship to fill that void. It’s so difficult for them to be alone and I know you probably know a lot of people and I certainly see this every day. A lot of people that have really never been alone. That have always been, they go from one relationship to the next relationship and for some people they have this safety net where they start to look for another relationship before this other one ends, because they anticipated ending and they can’t imagine being alone for any period of time. So they jump from one relationship to the next relationship because it’s so painful and fearful for them to just imagine being by themselves.
And this individual, this Dependent Personality Type is unrealistically preoccupied with fears of being left to take care of themselves. They have a fear of being left, to take care of themselves. So fear, insecurity, certainly plays a huge part in these individuals. They look for constant reassurance and constant sense of someone else. They need to be needed and they need to be loved because a lot of these individuals have a hard time loving themselves. A lot of these individuals are looking for that external praise, that external recognition and approval and acceptance. Because they never learned how to generate it from the inside-out so they are focused on receiving it from others. Other people’s opinions are extremely important. They want that approval. They want that acceptance from others. And they devalue their own perception of themselves. They would much believe other people’s perception over their own, because they don’t feel like they are a good judge of themselves but other people are much better judge of themselves. These individuals put themselves at the bottom of the totem pole. So they will take care of others way, way before they think about taking care of themselves. And remember one of the lines I use in therapy is ‘You teach others how to treat you by the way you treat yourself’. So if you treat yourself poorly, or you put yourself at the bottom of the totem pole, that’s where other people will place you. You teach others how to love you by the way you love yourself as well. So if I don’t love myself very much, then other people will have a hard time loving me. You need to be aware of how you treat yourself because it directly impacts the way others will treat you.
Let me move in to the area of causes and factors. Dependent Personality Type is one that struggles in relationships. Now, with all of the personality disorders, there is an unknown cause, they have hypothesized and they have researched it, but they are not really sure and certainly there may be a portion of what might cause this that might be biologically-related or genetically-related but then there’s certainly another portion and in many cases a larger portion that is developmentally-based. So it’s based on their experiences growing up. Maybe that is with Mom and Dad, maybe it’s with their siblings, maybe it’s with their peers or their teachers, mentors. There are a lot of people that influence a person’s life. So looking at just their relationship with their parents, excludes the other people that also have an impact on their development and also their learning experiences.
Now some researchers believe that an authoritarian parent, (authoritarian – being extremely demanding, extremely controlling, parent who is domineering) who micromanages their child each and every step of the way. These researchers feel that this particular parenting style may cause someone to develop into a Dependent Personality Type because they are used to someone else telling them what to do. They are used to someone else directing their lives and micromanaging their lives. And the underlying message from that is that the child may receive is ‘You don’t think I’m capable of making decisions for myself. That’s why you’re controlling me like you do. That’s why you micromanage my life. Cause you don’t believe that I will make good decisions.’ And after a while, the child believes that message. They believe that they don’t make good decisions, that they don’t have good judgment and they don’t trust their instincts because maybe their mom or their dad didn’t trust their instincts. And their mom and their dad tended to be a micromanager.
Now the other type of parenting style that may contribute to Dependent Personality Type is an over-protective parent. And it’s not uncommon cause I’m seeing this all the time. It’s not uncommon to have an authoritarian father and an over-protective mother. And that is extremely confusing for the child. To have a father who wants to micromanage and a mother who is over-protective. And the over-protectiveness, even though it’s in their “best interest” or “out of love”, it also comes across as ‘I don’t think you’re capable of taking care of yourself.’ And maybe as the father is more strict or more harsh, critical, the mother becomes even more overprotective of the child and over-protective again might mean they cuddle them, when they are going through a difficult time – a stressful time, they don’t allow the child to work through those difficult times on their own. They don’t allow the child to fail because it’s too painful for them to see their child fail so they are the safety net. They catch them before they fall. The over-protective parent will shelter them from bad things and then the child does not learn how to deal with adversity, how to deal with conflict or difficult situations or negative emotions because the parent is always stepping-in and taking the brunt of it or fixing it before the child has to deal them themselves.
Now, this personality type, this Dependent Personality Type, most of the research has indicated that there are more women than men. There was one study that I came across, it says there’s an equal number of males and females but most of the research would indicate that there’s more women with Dependent Personality Type than men. Families of Dependent Personality Disorder tend to not express emotion and are extremely controlling. So there’s not a whole lot of emotion expressed, they’re not given a whole lot of permission to experience emotion and they grow up in an environment where one or both parents are controlling their lives. They also, in some cases, this family type, this parental unit foster dependence to meet their own needs. So maybe a mother or a father wants their child to be dependent upon them. And they create that. Maybe it served a purpose for them, maybe they need to be needed. And they just instill this dependency upon them because maybe they have their own set of insecurities and they want their children to rely on them exclusively. And sometimes it’s through financial means, that’s their way of creating this dependency. Sometimes it’s through emotional means but that dynamic is very common for individuals that developed this Dependent Personality Disorder. Many of these individuals growing up are seen as gentle but sad and fearful children which may evoke this over-protectiveness from mom or from dad. Also these individuals tend to avoid adult activities as they’re growing up. They tend to be self-deprecating and they also tend to be clingy, they tend to be needy. So those are some of the factors that tie in with Dependent Personality Disorder. It is interesting to see when I’m working with a couple to see that the personality type that tends to be in a relationship with someone who is Dependent. You often have the expression that I’ve used before opposites attract, they certainly do but sometimes, they have a hard time sustaining. So the things that drew you to the individual in the beginning of the relationship, in the beginning of the marriage may actually be annoying and may have a negative effect as the marriage progresses. Five years, ten years into the marriage. So Dependent Personality Disorder, it’s a very interesting one that affects so many people.
We are talking about Dependent Personality today. And we’re talking about the definition of it, the criteria, and the causes, the factors that play a part in the development of this particular personality type. I wanted to share with you an example, this comes from the book that I’ve used, some as I’ve gone through this Personality Disorder series. It’s called Disorders of Personality:DSM4 and Beyond. And this is more of a textbook type, this is certainly not a self-help book but it’s by Theodore Millon “Ted Millon” with Roger Davis. And Ted Millon as I’ve probably mentioned in previous shows, he developed a personality inventory that is standardized that I use with patients when I’m trying to determine with particular personality disorder they might have. It’s called the MCMI and I use it pretty regularly, it’s very helpful and it does determine what type of personality type and that is helpful when working with individuals that have a personality disorder. Again like I’ve said before, personality disorders are not often responsive to medication, they’re responsive more to psychotherapy. The medication may be helpful for someone who has anxiety or depression as a result of some of the personality types or problems but it’s not, if the person just has the personality disorder, and they don’t have major depression or an anxiety disorder or panic attacks, they don’t have Bipolar Disorder, then medication would not be the first treatment approach. Psychotherapy would be the first treatment approach. So let me read you this is from the Ted Millon’s book and let’s just say, we’ll call it Mr. X. and let me describe some of the characteristics of Mr. X. Rather a short, thinned and nicely featured but somewhat haggard man who displayed a hesitant and tense manner when first seen by his physician. His place of employment for the past 22 years, had recently closed, and he had been without work several weeks. He appeared less dejected about the loss of job than about his wife’s increasing displeasure with his decision to stay at home until something came up. She thought he must be sick and insisted that he see a doctor. The following picture emerge the course of several interviews. Mr. X was born in Europe, the oldest child and only son of a family of six children. His mother kept the careful watch over him, prevented him from engaging in undo exertions, and limited his responsibilities. In effect, she precluded his developing many of the ordinary physical skills and competencies that most youngsters learn in the course of growth. He was treated as if he were a treasured family heirloom, a fragile statue to be placed on the mantelpiece and never be touched for fear he might break. Being small and unassertive by nature, he accepted the comforts of his role in a quiet and unassuming manner. A marriage was arranged by his parents, his wife was a sturdy woman who worked as a seamstress took care of his home, and bore him four children. Mr. X performed a variety of odds and end-jobs in his father’s tailoring shop. His mother saw to it however that he did know hard or dirty work just helping about and over-looking other employees. As a consequence Mr. X learned none of the skills of the tailoring trade. During the ensuing years he obtained employment at a garment factory owned by his brothers-in-law. Again he served as a helper, not as a skilled work man. Although he bore the brunt of essentially good-humor teasing by his co-workers throughout these years, he maintained the friendly and helpful attitude pleasing them by getting sandwiches, coffee and cigarettes at their beckon call. In the process of serving the needs of others, Mr. X gradually develop the habit of sharing occasional drinks before the day’s work was done. The habit persisted and grew into a major issue concerning alcoholism that has wax and wane over the years. Mr. X was never troubled by his failure to mature and seemed content to have others take care of him even though this man occasional ridicule and humiliation. His present difficulty arose when the factory closed, lacking the wherewithal of a skilled-trade and the initiative to obtain a new position, he decided to stay at home, quite content to remain dependent on others.’
And that is a common theme in the work that I do in my practice. It’s a common thread where the person, the dependent person is content to remain dependent on someone else. And choose not to be reliant on themselves. They’d rather just rely on someone else even though it might cause them a lot of distress, anger, resentment. That is more comfortable for the Dependent Type, to rely on others. And I see these a lot in marriages and I also see a lot in parenting. I see a lot of parents that have children that rely excessively on them. And my job as a therapist is to try to teach the parents healthy ways so that the child can disengage from them and that the child can learn to stand on their own two feet, as they become adolescents and young adults through that process of change, the hope is that not only will they be self-sufficient and independent financially, but also, emotionally where they can handle their emotions themselves and don’t fall back or rely on their mom or their dad or someone of that nature, even a girlfriend for that matter. But someone else to help them through their emotional struggles.
Everyone has emotional struggles, everyone goes through periods of anxiety or fear or sadness maybe anger or frustration but we need to as adults be able to handle those emotions independently of others. It doesn’t mean that other people can’t be there to support us and to love us and to encourage us but we need to be able to handle our emotions on our own. To have the ability to cope and to manage our emotions independent of others. And sometimes I see parents that enable their children and in the process disable them. They are enabling them and in the process disabling them, because as a result of them assuming certain responsibilities for their child, the child is not learning to deal with those emotions independently and they don’t develop that self-confidence that they need in order to handle their emotions on their own.
So it’s an important component in raising children and it’s also an important component in a marriage. Working together in a marriage as a team is healthy and normal but imagine, visualize that you are on a bicycle built for two. And that’s part of the marriage and both parties need to be pedaling while you’re moving forward in life. So if one person is pedaling as hard as they can and the other person has their feet up and not even on the pedals, that’s not a healthy marriage. Now, there might be faces in the marriage where one person is pedaling more than the other. There might be occasions where there’s a physical or medical problem where the other person has the inability to pedal. That’s a different story, that’s not by choice. I’m talking about a person choosing not to pedal. I’m talking about a person choosing to be dependent and reliant on the other person to carry the marriage. That’s what I see a lot in my practice. Where one person is carrying the marriage or carrying the individual and the other person really is not making much of an effort. And my job is to not only get the one person engage to help them in stepping up to the plate, taking the initiative and being more active in the process of working the marriage but the other job that I have is to get the person that is pedaling so hard to slow down and to not pedal so hard. Because the harder they try, the less the other person tries. The less efforts the other person makes, if one person is making a tremendous effort to keep the marriage together. So one person has to slow down as the other person speeds up so that they can work in concert with each other, in sync with each other. A lot of the couples that I see are not sync-up and sometimes one person’s pedaling while the other person’s breaking. And it creates a big problem. One person is turning right, the other person is turning left. So part of the therapy process is getting people in sync.
Back to Dependent Personality Type. The Dependent Personality Type would just assume, sit on the bike and go for the ride without engaging and pedaling and exerting any effort or energy but just be there for the ride.
So what are some treatment strategies? What do you do for someone like this? Well, the first thing is individuals that fit this personality type tend to be passive in nature. They tend to hold everything inside and they tend to be submissive and subservient in dealing with people. So the first strategy is to teach them some assertive communication skills. These individuals need to learn strategies to be able to speak up, to voice their opinion, a lot of these individuals have not have a voice or have chosen not to speak up. Maybe as a kid, someone spoke for them, whether it was mom, dad, sibling but a lot of these individuals don’t have a voice and they need a voice, they need to be able to speak up and tell people what they think and how they feel and do it in a way that is not aggressive, that is not going to alienate people but do it in a healthy and constructive way. So assertive communication is one of the first things that I would want to work on with this individual.
Secondly, these individuals have very low self-esteem, so teaching them ways to feel more self-assured, self-confident, giving them strategies to experience that self-esteem from the inside-out instead of relying exclusively on other people to praise them, to acknowledge them, to approve of them. One of the things that these individuals need to start doing is praising themselves. It’s so common when I talk with someone like this and I asked them, “Tell me good things about yourself, can you name ten good, positive things about yourself?” and they struggle coming out with ten. But if I ask them just name ten things they don’t like about themselves, they have an easy time with that. They can rattle those ten things off in a heartbeat. So maybe they need to first identify what they do like about themselves. What are some of their positive characteristics and traits and sometimes I have them actually write out ten index cards. And on each index card, they write one positive trait. It may be that I am athletic, that maybe a positive trait of theirs. It may be that I am compassionate or caring, maybe that I’m a good cook or a good gardener. But to identify things that are positive about themselves and then read those index cards. Some people put them in different places in their house, or you put it on a pile next to your bed or on a nightstand, and every day you read through the list. It’s focusing on the positive aspects of your being. A lot of these individuals are focused on the negative aspects or they’re relying exclusively on other people’s opinions. They value other people’s opinions over their own.
The next item on the list for treatment strategies is giving them ways to increase their independence, whether it be through activity or through relationships. But ways to feel more independent. It may be as simple as an assignment of go to the movies by yourself or go out to dinner by yourself, become more independent and more self-sufficient. Maybe it’s a project or a task that they can complete on their own. They don’t need someone else. Maybe it’s a phone call to a friend to ask them to lunch but they need to take the initiative and be more independent and not rely on other people to either ask them to lunch or to pull them out of the house or to get them going to the gym, maybe they can take that responsibility to go to the gym by themselves or maybe they can call their friend and say “Hey, I’m going to the gym. Do want to come along?” So they’re not relying on other people to do the right thing or to make good decisions. I mentioned earlier boundary setting. A lot of these individuals are not good at setting boundaries. Teaching them ways to be able to say ‘no’ without guilt. Say ‘no’ without guilt. To be able to tell people “No, that’s not something I can do for you.” Or “That’s not something I want to do.” To be able to set that limit without feeling guilty. A lot of these individuals have a hard time setting the limit and saying no.
Another important strategy is to teach them ways to work through problems, to be able to make good decisions. So learning problem solving skills. Even if it’s, you know, picking a problem that they might have and actually taking them through it step-by-step. Looking at the pro’s and cons and then helping them come to a good decision. A lot of these individuals don’t have a lot of practice or exposure to problem solving because they’ve relied on other people to solve the problems for them. So they might feel completely helpless or powerless or clueless as to what would be the best way to solve a particular problem. Many of these individuals struggle with anxiety, with stress, so teaching them some stress management and some relaxation may also be helpful. Their anxiety and their stress may prevent them from making a decision. For some of these individuals, they are paralyzed, they are incapacitated by fear and anxiety. They are so afraid of making the wrong decision that they don’t make any decision. They experience paralysis through analysis. They over-analyze things to death to the point where it just totally incapacitates them and they can’t move forward. They’re stuck. They’re sitting on the fence and unable to decide which side to jump to. Many of these individuals also have distorted perceptions, their thinking is distorted and negative and dysfunctional, so using some cognitive and behavioral techniques and strategies to modify their thought process and their belief system may also be an important part of helping these individuals move off the mark, get going and get functioning in life again. Individuals that have the Dependent Personality Type also don’t have good social skills or interpersonal skills. They may feel inadequate in relating to others, in engaging in conversation, so helping them in ways to have some better communication skills and better ways of interacting with others. Doing a role-play maybe part of that. So that these individuals do feel more self-confident and self-assured when they’re interacting and engaging with others. It could be something as small as making them aware of how they come across. Maybe they don’t look at the individual when they talk to them, they are looking down. Maybe they don’t have good eye contact or their body posture is very passive or disengaged so maybe making them aware of their tone of voice, their facial expression, their eye-contact, their posture, all of that can be part of giving them some sense of confidence. Giving them some sense of empowerment so that they can do a better job of relating to others and communicating with others.
Again, like I was saying earlier in the show they need to have self-reliant behaviors and reduce some of their clinging behaviors, so make decisions. Maybe small decisions, maybe it’s just deciding what movie you’re going to go to or what restaurant you’re going to go to for dinner. Maybe you always rely on other people. “Well, wherever you want to go. Wherever you want to go.” And maybe just as a small step, it’s making those decisions and not relying on other people to always decide for you. Maybe you need to start deciding, you know, what you wear without asking ten people or one person whether they think this is the right outfit or tonight’s outfit or make those decisions on your own, independent of others. It’s time for you to start driving your life and your car literally. It may be that you’re always the passenger. The Dependent Personality Type is always the passenger, they are always either in the back seat, the passenger seat but they are not in t driver’s seat and they rely too much on others. They’re not participating in life like they need to be. They’re more absorbing life as it passes them by. In many cases, these individuals are living to die, instead of dying to live. They just kind of going through emotions of life instead of being passionate and engaged in life in a more powerful way. The other thing is that these individuals need to separate and differentiate themselves from others. So they need their own identity, they need to establish an identity for themselves and not latch on to other people to establish an identity. Not feel like their identity is consumed or absorbed in other people’s lives. These individuals also tend to personalize things, they tend to respond negatively to criticism, and the example I use is you need to move from Velcro to Teflon. So Velcro is where everything that people say, you absorb, it sticks to you, and you personalize it. And you need to move to Teflon where it slides off, it doesn’t stick where you are able to say, “It’s not about me. It’s not about me. It’s not about me.” Because people with Dependent Personality feel like if there’s something said negatively, that it’s directed at them. They assume that it’s directed at them and they assume this negative reaction or response.
Another strategy is to avoid the Charlie Brown Syndrome. The Charlie Brown Syndrome is – ‘avoid setting yourself up for failure or for disappointment’. Charlie Brown going to kick the football that Lucy’s holding and she tells him, “I’ll hold it for you Charlie Brown. I promise. This time I’ll keep it, I’ll hold it.” and he goes to kick it. And she pulls the football away and he falls on his back. So many people that fit with this personality type tend to repeat some of the same behaviors over and over again and are often rejected or hurt or disappointed in others. Because they are naïve or they are gullible and they think that it is going to be different this time. And it’s not different. They need to rely less on others and rely more on themselves.
I wanted to just wrap up by saying everyone has a personality and it’s so helpful to know what type of personality you have so that you can, if there are dysfunctional or unhealthy or negative aspects to it you can take charge. And you can take, you know, the energy and effort that it needs to change. Change is always helpful but it is also, it’s never too late to change. So use some of these materials, apply it to your life and I guarantee you that things will be better. Things will be better.
Thoughts*
- A person with a Dependent Personality Disorder tend to become too reliant on other people. They are afraid to be abandoned by the important people in their lives. They tend to become “clingy” because of their perception that they cannot live without the help, care or guidance of others.
- They don’t want to be blamed for doing something that they think is not good enough for other people’s standards.
- They are too afraid to commit mistakes – mistakes that can become the reason for another person to dislike or to abandon them.
- They do not want to take responsibility because of the possible consequences of it.
- They usually think of what other people will say about them. Because of their desire to please others, they usually take into consideration the opinion of other people with higher regard than of what they actually think about a situation or of themselves.
- Some of them may have been in their comfort zone almost all of the time. They are most likely to depend on other people because of the comfortability they are getting or experiencing from it. They often want an easy-way out of a situation. They as much as possible do not want to engage in any disagreement that is why they will just endure and keep to themselves their feelings and opinions.
- Parents or guardians of people with Dependent Personality Disorder play a huge part in the development of the Dependent Personality’s characteristics. People with this personality type may have been well-supplied, well-pampered or over-protected when they were still young. The tendency is they depend on their parents too much even if they are of legal age and have their own families. They might not have experienced deciding on their own that is why they need the approval of someone who they think is higher, has authority or more powerful than them. This unhealthy process will eventually result into an individual who when faced with a great task will not know what to do. They may not become competent in the outside world. They might just rely on other people in school, at work or even in the neighborhood. And they may ask someone to do even the smallest things for them.
- Too much of anything is bad. Sometimes, because parents are too afraid that their children will draw away from them when they get older, they tend to become over-protective of them, giving all their needs, not teaching them ‘how to catch their own fish’, without knowing that these actions might rob their children’s future. These deeds might affect the way their children will interact with other people not in the range of their sight and beyond their control.
- A couple who has one Dependent Personality should also meet half-way, they need to compromise. Not just because one party is so submissive, the other one will take advantage of it, just to get what he/she wants or just to win an argument. They must practice the give-and-take relationship. The other-half may encourage the person with Dependent Personality Type to start making decisions little by little and assure him/her that everything is going to be fine. The support system is truly essential in this process.
On the other side, the Dependent Personality must try to start to trust that he will not be abandoned by the people around him and must also refrain from thinking that all the negative comments and feedbacks that he/she hears are referring to him/her. He must also give importance to his self-worth because aside from trusting others, he must trust and love himself first.