Early relational trauma sets up dysfunctional adult relational issues.There are two inter-relating issues:
- Relationship with self
- Relationship with others.
The relationship with self presents five primary problems that lead to adult intimacy issues.
- First the client has trouble having a sense of self, spending much of his or her life living in reaction to the object of their affection rather than in action for the self. This is the reality issue; it causes the client to feel empty inside and causes the client to endlessly blame others for how he/she feels emotionally or for what he/she has done.
- Second, the client does not experience inherent worth. He or she gauges his/her sense of value through a process of endless comparison to others, and is too dependent on others to establish either a sense of value or self. This interferes with his/her ability to maturely love others. She generally can hold another person in warm regard only when the other is "behaving properly," or when he/she has created a comfortable fantasy about the other person and uses denial to avoid looking at the other's disturbing behavior.
- Third, the client has no personal boundary system with which to protect and contain himself/herself during intimate exchange. This leads to abusive behavior on her part and involves control and manipulation, raging, ridiculing, lying and/or high tolerance for this type of behavior in a partner.
- The fourth problem involves poor self-care, leading to dependency and interdependency problems in a relationship.
- The fifth problem deals with living in the extreme. This is usually exhibited by a lack of moderation in attitude and behavior, which leads to a sense of deadness and/or chaos in a relationship.
Childhood Trauma
It is evident that problems with the "self" lead to intimacy issues. The next question concerns where these problems developed. It appears that childhood trauma sets up several core issues. For example:
- If a child is not maturely loved by his parents, he will develop self-esteem issues.
- If he is not protected and taught containment, he will develop boundary problems.
- If he is forced to do so much adapting, he will lose his sense of self and have trouble being real.
- If he is not taught to take care of his basic needs and wants, he will have difficulty doing this as an adult.
- If he is severly shamed into containing himself and not taught containment, he will have trouble establishing moderation in his adult life.
Both trauma and core issues drive addictions---be it addiction to substances, processes, or to other people. Trauma, core issues, and addictions create severe relational problems where sex, love and relational matters all seem to become entwined. Knowing where to start is th efirst step in treatment.
The Starting Point---Love Addiction
Alcohol or drug addictions should be addressed first and foremost. The client must have the ability to think and feel without a mood altering substance.
Subsequently, the primary behavioral addiction to be considered is love addiction. A Love addict has been traumatized in childhood by being neglected or abandoned by either parents.
The child who suffers from neglect or abandonment learns three toxic ideas from this trauma:
- In a relationship he is worth less than his partner. This kind of trauma is extremely shaming and relationally he will assume a victim posture allowing his partner to be abusive. He will see the partner as a higher power and will literally worship them--giving him a feeling of helplessness---resulting in a lack of self-esteem. The Love Addict does not esteem himself in the relationship, therefore the partner will often assume a position of disrespect and relate out of duty, not love.
- He needs a partner to take care of him. he believes that he cannot take care of himself and demonstrates poor self-care skills, therefore the partner will feel the Love Addict is a burden.
- If he does not get close enough to the partner he will not survive. This client believes that he cannot leave a partner because if he did---he would die. Therefore, the client will exercise no personal boundaries resulting in the partner feeling suffocated and victimized.
This toxicity drives the obsessive/compulsive relational cycle of love addiction. The cycle starts with the Love Addict constructing a fantasy that the partner is a god or goddess, although denial is used to protect the fantasy. Eventually, an event occurs that destroys the fantasy and the love addict goes into withdrawal from the fantasy. The withdrawal is experienced as severe depression, rage, panic, and toxic shame. The Love Addict will then try to relieve the emotional withdrawal by self-medicating with food, drugs, sexual encounters, smoking, alcohol, or locating another person to become the object of addiction. If the partner returns expressing seductive qualities, the Love Addict will pass out of withdrawal and return to fantasy. As a result, the love addict cycle will begin all over again.
Love Avoidance
At the other end of the continuum is love avoidance, an obsessive/compulsive relational cycle that begins with the child's enmeshment with parents (meaning one or both of the parents has no boundaries with the child).
The child becomes the support network and provides care for the parents. This concept is best understood by examining the roles a child plays in a dysfunctional family system, such as the family counselor, mediator, mascot, scapegoat, or hero:
- Oftentimes, the child may be a surrogate parent to younger siblings.
- In other situations, "Daddy's little girl" is a situation where the female child is more important to her father than her mother. The child feels superior to her mother and will later serve as her father's surrogate spouse.
- At the other end of the spectrum, "Mom's little man" is when the son is more important than the father. As, a result, the son often feels superior to the father and becomes a surrogate spouse.
In these described roles, the child feels very close to the parent, but is actually too close. He has to adapt too much to the needs of the parent and in the adaptation loses a sense of self and spontaneity. As an adult he will feel easily bored and empty inside, which drives his need to use risk taking to create intensity.
Being enmeshed by a parent creates three toxic ideas in the Love Avoidant:
- When in a relationship with a needy person the Love Avoidant is superior. He will assume a parental position, have all the power, and look down on his partner. This is a core self-issue of poor self-esteem and in a relationship it will cause him to be controlling and disdainful of the partner.
- It is the Love Avoidant's job to take care of needy people. This is how he knows to be relational. It becomes part of his value system and if he is not taking care of someone in need, he feels guilty. As a core self-issue it is a dependency or self-care issue. It causes resentment of the partner, as the love avoidant feels oppressed by his perceived responsibility. He too enters relationships out of duty, not love.
- If the Love Avoidant does not maintain enough distance in a relationship, he will be suffocated. As a result, he uses "walls" to create the distance he needs. As a core issue, this is a boundary problem.
These three toxic thoughts drive a compulsive relational cycle called "the cycle of love avoidance."
The cycle starts with the Love Avoidant entering a relationship because the other person needs assistance. The prospective partner seems needy and the avoidant appears to enter the relationship to avoid guilt and because it makes him feel good about himself.
However, the Love Avoidant doesn't actually enter a true relationship. He is hiding behind a "wall of seduction" that causes the prospective partner to feel special, but in reality the Avoidant is simply role-playing. The Avoidant is contemplating the relationship out of duty, not love.
The result is resentment at having to work so hard to be in a relationship in which he really doesn't want to participate. He then uses the anger to justify his escape from the duty-bound relationship.
As self-medication, he seeks high intensity to relieve his boredom and make him feel wonderful. He starts risk-taking behavior such as sexually acting out, gambling with money or his life, drinking, drugging, or work addiction.
However, following such behavior, he starts to feel guilty because he is not properly caring for his partner, so he returns out of guilt and restarts the entire avoidant cycle.Humans tend to be relationally attracted to what is familiar.
The Love Addict is attracted to people who are distant and relationally irresponsible, similar to his neglrctful parent/s.
The Love Avoidant is compelled to be relational with needy people who put him in a god-like position.
It is not unusual to see these two types of people enter into relationships with one another, whereby they often stimulate each other's cycle.
Nothing To Do With Love........
The Love Addict enters the relationship masked in fantasy that is stimulated by the avoidant's "wall of seduction," He uses the fantasy to mask the Love Avoidant's distancing.
The Love Avoidant uses the "wall of seduction" to make the Love Addict feel good and to keep himself safe from soffocation. Then as the Love Avoidant develops resentments, leaves and acts out to create intensity, the Love Addict uses denial to maintain his fantasy.
The resentment and distancing eventually break the Love Addict's denial and they enter emotional withdrawal from the fantasy. Because he is so unhappy, the Love Avoidant starts to feel guilty and returns to the relationship with a wall of seduction that usually starts the two cycling again.
This is not about love for either partner. It is a combination of addiction, toxic sexual behavior, and deep relational problems.
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The above information I ran across here (that's the klepto part) and tuned up with formatting, etc.
-The Traveler
12 comments:
Any particular reason these issues are on YOUR mind today?
On the one hand, I appreciate, conceptually, your desire not to have us see you through our "filters."
On the other hand, the lack of specificity, the mystery, the voice of objective observation of other humans with very little specificity about how such things apply to you {GENDER, LOCATION, PERSONAL HISTORY] creates its own filter. The message I hear is DON'T GET TOO CLOSE. TO KNOW ME IS TO HURT ME.
So have you been a love avoidant? A love addict? Is it too hard to write about withput divulging particulars which might actually allow us to know you beyond a hyper intellectual construct who adores his German Shepherd? What about the human beings you adore? Or have broken your heart?
I'm not attacking you, but I am challenging you to let the walls down a bit. This post is packed with info, but tells us nothing about you.
I don't feel attacked.
The model I've chosen for my blogging is reflections. I have deliberately not chosen the usual model of journaling / self revelation for valid reasons. I'm not codie enough to feel the need to share those reasons, though. I know they are valid, and where they come from.
I can understand the curiosity, the compulsion to know these details, but I use the blog as a sort of filing box for my recovery thoughts.
In the case of today's entry, it was put here for the benefit of some people in an intimacy discussion group to which I belong, some of whom fit this pattern. It is in this group venue that I reveal myself and am vulnerable, face to face with people I know. They often ask me to digest a topic, before or after we have discussed it, and I will put it in a blog entry, then send it to them.
This is the type of group where, by the hour's end (LOL, I say that loosely as we often go over, we get so deep into issues), we each have revealed enough pain to sob - intense work and very cathartic. I guess with that in f2f life, I don't feel the need to get overly detailed on myself out to the web.
You are of course not obligated to read if it's too frustrating for you, without these personal details. I do put a good bit about me into the entries, but you may have to work to root it out. That's just my style.
I can't control the codie in you that wants inside my head, and wants to "help" my recovery path and have it suit your timeline and concept. You can choose to focus on what's NOT here, or, conversely, focus on what IS. I try to put value in what IS.
I have given myself permission to use the blog as I feel I need, for my meandering learning and recovery path, and to give back when possible to others in recovery. I have given myself permission not to have to worry about pleasing others, in my recovery path. It's the only authentic recovery, for me, to do it this way.
I hope you understand.
Respectfully, and affectionately,
-TT
If you were posting this to facilitate discussion in a intimacy group, that would have been helpful to know so that it would not be read as an effort to communicate with the blog readers not in your discussion group.
I guess that's why I figure we have blogs with commenting, so that there can be a back AND forth, especially when the other person has a blog. What personally interests me--and perhaps that's just me--is authenticity, a sense that I'm getting to know a person and I suppose I appreciate the sense of intimacy that comes when I feel illuminated or we share perceptions. While I certainly cannot argue with a thing in this post, and you fully admit to have repasted it from another source, it doesn't feel like it advances the cause of getting to know you. As for the desire to get to know you, I think terming that "codie" is simplistic and flip, and doesn't match any understanding of co-dependent that I have.
Believe me, I've mined plenty of nuggets about you reading between the lines, but why should anyone have to do that kind of work? If you don't ask it from the "real" people in your life, why ask it from us virtual people, who are no less real? Why should you get to know me, and enjoy that process, but I have to work at it in the opposite direction?
Like you said, I don't have to, and I certainly won't force myself to comment if i don't feel so inspired. I certainly never find you boring, even if sometimes the density of your dissertation-making is a little daunting.
Hm. Well, this IS a back and forth, is it not, Marcus?
And, I'm enjoying it, although it does seem to be frustrating and annoying you.
I would apologize, except I do not own your reactions. I have not intentionally evoked them.
And, I was posting TO REFLECT ON MY OWN THOUGHTS, WHICH IS WHAT I ALWAYS DO. If you read the sidebar of my blog, it says, "There's no theme here, or rules. Fresh, raw, and don't expect me to impress you - I'm trying my damnedest not to think about anyone out there, when I write." And, "It's my hope that my writing forces me, and encourages you, to think on a higher plane."
So, my intentions have been clearly stated, up front, and I have followed them. That you have the tendency to project YOUR blogging intentions onto mine is a codie trait (no disrespect intended, just descriptive). Which I might add, when I do not fulfill your intentions, you get frustrated and resentful, it would seem.
And that you read "codie" as simplistic and flip is also your read; in recovery circles it is not generally a demeaning term but rather an affectionate, understanding term of a trait that most people share at least in part. Again, the taint smells of resentment due to expectations. But I never promised those expectations.
I don't say these things to further aggravate you, Marcus. I say them to illustrate, and to cause thought. THAT is my intention, always, when I write.
If I have caused you to think (even if you're mad or frustrated), or changed your daily anything, by who I am or how I am, then I have succeeded in MY intentions. (My intentions, however, are not to frustrate you or anger you.)
But, I WILL challenge you, to see from different perspectives. You have unwittingly sucked yourself into a great discussion here on the difficulty of us seeing our own codependency traits, and I am pointing it out.
This reminds me of the Biblical parable of the working men, where one was hired in the morning to work for 10 coins, and another at midday for the same 10 coins. At the end of the day, the first complained, at what the second was paid, saying it wasn't fair. But the fact was that he had agreed to that pay, just as you agreed to the terms of my blogging when I first set up the page. Nothing has changed, except your expectations that you projected have not been met. You see? Am I causing you to think?
That's the higher plane part. Yes, I DO hope to make you work. To me, it's not an attempt to be unfair. It's just what my objective is, in writing. To cause you to think, and hopefully on a higher plane.
There are umpteen soap-of-the-day, here's-my-heart-on-a-sleeve blogs out there to choose from, but that is not my model. You must accept my model when you enter my blog, and not try to change it to fit yours. That is codependent behavior.
I don't know if I succeed in my intentions, but I just do what comes naturally to me, and try to stay true to myself.
And here it is.
-The Traveler
Oh, and, I wasn't implying that your model is the soap-of-the-day, here's-my-heart-on-my-sleeve model. Just that there are many of THOSE out there, but I'm not one of them.
And, if you want to extract about me, pay attention to what I choose to discuss, and how, and when. You see, it's that second level of thinking that you must do, to get to know me. You are not accustomed to having to extract from a second level, to get your answers, and it's causing you discomfort and frustration. But, it's causing you to think, too. The data is there, to get to know me, it's just in a form that you're not used to. It's one step removed, instead of direct.
-TT
Well biys, this is quite an interesting exchange. I don't know why, but I feel as if I've been eavesdropping. My first impulse is to offer advice and opinion. However, I really don't think that there is any rational basis for me to do so. I think that you are more than capable of having this discussion without my input. Strange, because I usually can't keep my nose out of things. I will say that I find the discussion on toxic relationships quite interesting although a tad pedantic.--Sheria
PS I'm a really lousy typist.--Sheria
Thanks for the comments, Sheria.
Well, as far as I'm concerned, this is a fun discourse, between thinking people, not a cat fight.
I put it in the public domain instead of private emails because it's the very type of thing that gets people thinking.
I do get pedantic at times, in my musings, but that's part of the work of really understanding life, and the world, and people. True understanding takes work, and reflection; it isn't handed to us in pre-digested sound bites through the media.
You get out of life what you put into it. So I like to work through thoughts, try to get somewhere with them, and that's how I use my blog. I write what I'm thinking about, and go back later and revisit those thoughts.
It's a plus if others put in their opinions, and I do appreciate them.
-TT
Actually, my original intent had been around the mistaken assumption that your discretion about matters personal was a reflection of the desire not to be known, because (I thought perhaps) for you, to be known was to be vulnerable to being hurt. I also thought that a tendency to be at times (to my eyes) almost impenetrable with your prose was also part of an elaborate protective mechanism to maintain distance with the reader.
It seems that is not the case, therefore you need no reassurance from me that it is "safe" to let down your guard.(a grandiose idea on my part in any case) Engaging in that process via the blog does not interest you, getting the reader to think does. We certainly do do that.
Of course the downside (in my view) to that is that the result feels uni-dimensional, to me, at times sterile. It's like reading Umberto Eco, or even worse, Foucault himself.
But you're quite right in that you promised nothing beyond what you delivered, and if I want more that's entirely my issue. I like my readers to get as close a sense of me via the blog as they would have of me in person. That doesn't seem to be your intent, and as long as its not born from any fear, then I certainly don't challenge it. My only objection is that I am spending far too much time on this, I have to get to work. But there is not real disagreement, and certainly no ill feeling.
I agree that true understanding takes work and reflection. I think that the trick is striking a balance between the words and the thoughts that they convey. Minimalist writing such as pre-digested sound bites offer no substance at all and therefore no catalyst for meaningful thought or reflection. However, writing that becomes so dominated by the intricacies of the words and the turn of the phrase often becomes so obscure in focus that meaning is sacrificed. The reader is left overwhelmed and bewildered, and no meaningful communication is established. Isn't communication what it all comes down to? We write to communicate. At least, we publish what we write because of a desire to communicate. Otherwise, why not maintain a private diary? I think that each of us who ventures to create these windows, also known as blogs, hopes to communicate with our readers.
By the way, I'm not certain that I would go as far as Marc and say that the effect that the aura that you create here is sterile. For me it is more of the bell jar effect, look through the glass but do not touch.--Sheria
This is so interesting, and highly ironic, that, perhaps the only entry I have made to date that is not at all of my own writing or thoughts generated so much commenting on MY BLOGGING.
I put this information in here this blog entry because I thought it was illuminating, and good quality information, and I wanted to reference it later, when I want to think more about this information or when people ask me about this topic.
It seems the blog is being rejected on the basis that I have selected a different paradigm for blogging which is not the usual.
My format is to choose a topic or an issue and develop my thoughts on it, not to give a running discourse about me or my life.
It seems that readers want to reject this paradigm, regardless of the content, which is their prerogative.
I personally don't use the blogging format for my primary social interactions, but rather as a tool for my own recovery path, a place where I put my thoughts in a file box, as it were, but offer what they are to others if they are interested.
I know this format will not attract most readers, who read primarily for entertainment and socializing. I accept this, and invite them to find blogs which fit their needs, to read. This blog would be heavy and tedious for those readers.
But to those who are undergoing personal growth, who want to explore topics and digest information and perspectives, who are willing to read slowly and ponder what the lines may hold, I think there is content here. This ain't prime time TV; it's more like a seminar discussion. It's all in your approach - why you are reading it in the first place.
It's a fair enough gestalt that my readers get the glass jar effect Sheria described. I want to keep the focus on the topics, and not on me. I want to keep MY focus on the topics, and not on ME.
I just find it baffling, the high level of resistance to switching paradigms and acceptance of a different one. Or maybe my writing's just boring, and dry. But it's what I'm pondering.
Regardless, any who are interested in the content are welcome to partake and comment, and those who find it not to their liking I have no hold on and no animosity against.
-The Traveler
My comments weren't intended as a rejection of your blog or its content. To the contrary, I'm fascinated by your blog. Marc directed me here, identifying your blog as one of interest and worth reading. It's a compliment to your style that you've generated so much commentary. Personally, I don't post comments on blogs that bore me and I never revisit them.
I look forward to more of your writing. I think that it is natural to be curious about the person behind the words. That's not a commentary on you, but on me as a reader. This particular entry was filled with complexities and to be fair, I think that much of what I found a bit over written wasn't your words but the added information.
I used the image of the bell jar because I do feel that pieces of the man behind the writing are revealed in each entry, but there is a distance between writer and reader. This is not a criticism, merely an observation.
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