Reinventing your Life: 10. "I can't make it on my own", the dependence life trap

Dependence questionnaire:

1. I feel more like a child than an adult when it comes to handling the responsibilities of daily life.
2. I am not capable of getting by on my own.
3. I cannot cope well by myself.
4. Other people can take care of me better than I can take care of myself.
5. I have trouble tackling new tasks unless I have someone to guide me.
6. I can't do anything right.
7. I am inept.
8. I lack common sense.
9. I cannot trust my own judgment.
10. I find everyday life overwhelming.

When you have a decision to make, you solicit the opinions of others. You probably rush from person to person seeking advice. You change your mind a hundred times. The whole process just leaves you confused and exhausted. If you manage to make a decision, you have to keep asking for reassurance that your decision was right.

Alternately, you might seek the advice of one person in whom you have great confidence, and rely solely on that. That person is often a therapist. Dependent people do not like change. They like everything to stay the same.

You are either surrendering to your life trap or you escape to reinforce your life trap. You avoid the tasks you believe are too difficult. Dependence exacts a high price in terms of freedom and self-expression. But some dependent people feel entitled to have their dependence needs met. 

Counter-dependence

This is hidden dependence. Overly compensates by fighting against core feelings of incompetence. Your fears pressure you to ever higher levels of competence, and you drive yourself to master every task. But you never give yourself credit and believes you are fooling people. You always discount your accomplishments and magnifies your errors or deficiencies. You overcompensate your feeling of dependence by behaving as though you do not need help from anybody. you are too independent. You force yourself to face things alone. This tendency to go the other extreme - to act as though you do 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. You 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. 

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 steps toward independence

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

If either these two steps is missing, the person may develop a dependence lifetrap. If you never had a safe base, if you never 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. "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.

Origins of Dependence in over protectiveness

1. The 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. You parents do your schoolwork 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 danger.

Origins of Dependence in under protectiveness

1. You do not get enough practical guidance or direction from your parents.
2. You have to make decisions alone beyond your years.
3. You have to be like an adult in your family, even when underneath you still feel like a child.
4. You are expected to do things and know things that are over your head.

You may be a "parentified child". But underneath you did not feel secure and wished for the normal dependence of a child. Your normal is not everyone else's normal. Wrong gauge.

Danger signals in potential partners

1. Your partner is like a father/mother figure, who seems strong and protective.
2. He/She seems to enjoy taking care of you and treats you like a child.
3. You trust his/her judgment much more than your own. He/She maskes most of the decisions.
4. You find that you lose your sense of self around him/her - and that your life goes on hold when he/she is not around.
5. He/She criticizes your opinions, taste, and competence in everyday tasks.
6. When you have a new task to undertake, you almsot always ask his/her advice, even if he/she has no special expertise in that realm.
7. He/She does almost everything for you - you have almost no responsibility.
8. He/She almost never seems frightened, insecure, or vulnerable about him/herself.

Dependence lifetraps

1. You turn to wiser or stronger people all the time for advice and guidance.
2. You minimize your successses and magnify your shortcomings.
3. You avoid new challenges on your own.
4. You do not make your own decisions.
5. You do not take care of your own financial records or decisions.
6. You live through your parents/partner.
7. You are much more dependent on your parents than most people your age.
8. You avoid being alone or traveling alone.
9. You have fears and phobias taht you do not confront.
10. You are quite ignorant when it comes to many areas of paractical functioning and daily survival skills.
11. You have not lived on your own for any significant period of time.

The signs of counterdependence

1. You never seem to be able to turn to anyone for guidance or advice. You have to do everythnig on your own.
2. You are always taking on new challenges and confronting your fears, but you feel under constant pressure while doing it.
3. Your partner is very dependent on you, and you end up doing everything and making all the decisions.

You avoid the part of you that wants a little healthy dependence, that just wants to stop coping for a while and rest. 

Changing your dependence life trap

1. Understand your childhood dependence. Feel the incompetent/dependent child inside of you.
2. List everyday situations, tasks, responsibilities, and decision for which you depend on other people.
3. List challenges, changes, or phobias that you have avoided because you are afraid of them.
4. Systematically force yourself to tackle everyday tasks and decisions without asking for help. Take on challenges or make changes you have been avoiding. Start with the easy tasks first.
5. When you succeed at a task on your own, take credit for it. Do not minimize it. When you fail, do not give up. Keep trying until you master the task.
6. Review past relationships and clarify the patterns of dependence that recur. List the lifetraps to avoid.
7. Avoid strong, overprotective partners who generate high chemistry.
8. When you find a partner who will treat you as an equal, give the relationship a chance to work. Take on your share of responsibilities and decision-making.
9. Do not complain when your partner/boss refuses to help you enough. Do not turn to him/her for constant advice and reassurance.
10. Take on new challenges and responsibilities at work, but do it gradually.
11. If you are counterdependent, acknowledge your need for guidance. Ask others for help. Do not take on more challenges than you can handle. Use your anxiety level as a gauge of how much you are comfortable taking on.

There is a saying in psychotherapy "It is the relationship that heals." Find people to accept help from. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Trust and take risks. If there is someone in your life that you would like to trust, make sure it is a person who is worthy of your trust. Do not pick your partners foolishly. Do not pick people unless you are confident they will be there for you when you need them.

The journey out of the dependence lifetrap is a movement from childhood to adulthood. It is a trading of fear and avoidance for a sense of mastery - for the sense you can function independently in the world. Give up the exhausting struggle to get people to take care of you. Learn to take care of yourself. Learn to believe in your own ability to cope by mastering the tasks of life.