Relational difficulties are among the most frequently reported in psychotherapy studies. During a session we often speak – even if not wanting – of romantic, friendly, family emotional relationshipsin the workplace or the therapeutic relationship itself.
Affective dependence is one of the major problems encountered at an interpersonal level.
Even if, when we refer to this construct, it is immediately thought of love relationships, this method of living a relationship does not appear only in the latter, but also in the areas mentioned above.
Definition of affective addictions
As we know, to date, there is not one Univocal definition of emotional dependence. However, we can summarize the indications that literature provides us and synthesize the most accredited definition:
“A dysfunctional relational mode in a diade (romantic or non -romantic) or in a group, characterized by desire and excessive investment, which leads to serious consequences both for the satisfaction of one’s needs and for the functioning and well -being of the individual”.
Some of the criteria most shared by scholars of the topic that are used to make the diagnosis are (Lebruto, Calamai, Caccico & Cioerciari, 2022):
- Modification of mood according to the availability of the other.
- Tolerance understood as a need for ever greater time to spend with the other.
- Persistent thoughts and images in memory about the other significant.
- Symptoms of abstinence: negative mood, irritability, anxiety, depression, suffering, sensations of emptiness, sleep disorders when the other is not available (Reynaud et al., 2010).
- Fantasies and obsessive thoughts on the other and cognitive distortions (SUBMANMA, 2010).
- Cving and loss of control.
- Persistent and repetitive pursuit of behavior despite its negative consequences.
- Impairment of working, social and recreational life due to the relationships on which you are dependent.
Affective dependence in friendly relationships
Friendship shares with romantic relationships different aspects: it is a relationship made of trust, sympathy, affection, mutual choice, spontaneity and cooperation (Antonelli, 2022).
It differs from love relationships as there is no satisfaction of the sexual need and we do not go from the phase of falling in love. It provides that there is a parity relationship, aspect that distinguishes it from the other bonds involving affections.
Who institates one affective dependence in friendship It can cure the qualities just described, fundamental for a healthy relationship, due to rigid behaviors aimed at finding in the relationship the confirmation of one’s value and loveability. All this at the expense of one’s needs.
Dysfunctional behavior
To maintain confirmation of their value, the person with friendly affection dependence assumes dysfunctional behaviors that move away from relationships characterized by autonomy and independence. Jealousy and exclusivity are two relational modalities that emerge following a sense of threat perceived towards all external relationships. These lead to making efforts to spend as much time as possible with the other significant. Consequentially All friendships outside of that primary one lose interest.
Furthermore, as for dependence in romantic relationships, mood and anxiety and anguish states vary according to the presence or absence of the person subject to desire and the quality of the relationship at that moment.
Personal evolution is blocked as the subject cannot express itself for what it is, but must please others, to earn their esteem and acceptance. To maintain this state, the autosacrific and submission are on the agenda.
The affective employee in friendship He does what others want to do, underlying their rules, pays accounts and gifts, as well as immolating up for causes that does not feel their own.
So what emerges is a friendship characterized by an entry with the other, deep disappointments if something in the relationship does not go, attribution of true sins of self and desire to possess the other.
Intra -family affective dependence
As we know Bowlby (1983) claims that humans, like animals, have developed a behavioral and motivational system aimed at creating closeness and maintaining a stable and lasting bond. An indispensable basis for promoting autonomy and independence from the nucleus of origin and develop healthy attachment bonds with other reference figures.
There dynamics of emotional dependence It can be established in family relationships vertically (between one of the two parents and children or involve the entire Father-Madre-Father Triad son/A), or in a horizontal sense (between brothers/sisters).
Once again the structure of a bond of dependence between parents and children It is aimed at filling painful states of the different family members (such as the fear of abandonment, one’s personal value etc ..). For example, parents lead, through their behaviors, to extremely maladative role inversions. They become the children to look after and the children the adults who have to take care of it, according to what is defined Inverted care.
The reversed attachment
In the latter case, the consequences are the mass by their needs by children, the loss of the possibility of a functional development and the ability to know where to go to one’s life.
In serious cases, children no longer know what their active desires and their purposes are (they don’t know what they like to study or what they want to eat for dinner). All this happens because The parent makes his son feel guilty for the possible removal O non -care, not worthy of love or value if it becomes autonomous.
More indirectly, the caregiver can keep the child to him by showing himself fragile, in need of care and attention (for example as in the case of those who suffer from some physical or mental illness).
When parents are dependent on their children, the family atmosphere is often characterized by fear towards the outside world, the message that is sent is of danger if you leave the family unit.
The caregiver can be worried about what could happen if you move away and spend all its energies in the care of the close members of the family, demanding this behavior from them too. Children can react to these pressures or by becoming actually cared for in turn (according to the methods of the implementation) or react with the removal and breakage of the bond.
Psychotherapeutic interventions
As with love affective dependence, the treatment cannot be separated from a good conceptualization of the case, that is, the understanding of why and according to which mechanisms this type of problem was established in that type of person.
This allows the patient to have a clear vision of why he behaves like this, and knowing through which cognitive, emotional and behavioral mechanisms is maintained. All this explained to the light of the life history, which acts from fertile terrain on which these problems can sprout.
Goals
Having clear this is possible to proceed according to shared objectives and in order of priority. Starting from psychoeducation on how these dependence mechanisms work, how they maintain themselves and why they stiffen in purple circles, it is then possible to work on:
- the motivation to change;
- the stimuli (trigger) that act as a trigger for the experimentation of painful emotional states (for example, passing in front of the friend’s house);
- Cving (the intense desire for the subject is dependent on, which leads to implementing dysfunctional behaviors);
- emotional regulation;
- the basic emotional needs (feel loved or value);
- assertiveness;
- the social network of reference;
- exposure to feared or activating situations;
- the interventions on the brooding and rumination;
- The work on historical vulnerabilities (give new meanings to life experiences lived in the past in order to be able to move differently in the future).
These are just some of the interventions that can be implemented and that may vary according to the patient. All this must be permeated on the basis of a good therapeutic alliance (characterized by cooperation, objectives and shared tasks), keeping well in mind that even the patient-therapist relationship can be at risk of a dynamic of emotional dependence.
Bibliography
- Antonelli, P. (2022). Affective addictions. When to love it hurts. Giunti Editore.
- Reynaud, M., Karila, L., Blecha, L., & Benyamina, A. (2010). Is Love Passion An ADDICTIVE SPERM? The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse“, 36 (5), 261-267.
- SUMMAND, S. (2010). Love Addiction: Definition, Etiology, Treatment. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivey: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention, 17(1), 31–45.
- Lebruto, A., Calamai, G., Caccico, L., Cioerciari, V., (2022). Affective dependence. Diagnosis, assessment and cognitive-behavioral treatment. Erickson editions.
