Therapists encounter the dependent
pattern frequently because people suffering from it are accustomed to seeking
support and advice from others. The upper quadrants of the Self Compass are
deactivated to such a degree that counselees possess little self-esteem
(Strength Compass) or courage (Assertion compass point). An overly exaggerated
Love compass point leads them to submissively seek approval by pleasing and
placating, while an inflated Weakness compass point creates an undercurrent of
anxiety.
The Pattern’s Interior
As in all personality patterns, the
actualizing quality of a compass point is lost when taken to an extreme and
left unbalanced by the opposite compass point. Therefore, even though dependent
counselees want to give and receive love more than anything else in the world,
genuine love—which requires the integration of Strength and Assertion with Love
and Weakness—eludes them. The overblown Love compass point skews behavior
toward self-sacrifice without self-preservation, submissiveness without
assertion, and giving without receiving. Beneath their warmth and niceness lies
a desperate search for acceptance and approval.
Rejection is feared more than
aloneness, so the dependent person takes no risks toward individuality or independent
thought or action that might lead to alienation from sources of nurturance.
Unconscious forces are set in motion
by these dynamics. A dependent-patterned person can be seen as cooperative and
gracious by others, yet has actually undergone identity foreclosure, meaning
that self-development is arrested with a childlike focus on safety and
gratification, much like a fetus needs the mother to feed it and provide oxygen
through the umbilical cord. Not knowing they can cut the psychological umbilical
cord by developing the healthy expressions of Strength and Assertion, they fear
independence instead of acquiring it. Nor do they comprehend that healthy
people would find them more lovable for replacing clinging vine dependency with
authentic selfhood.
The over-exaggeration of the Love
compass point alone strands a counselee in a sea of masochism. It’s not that dependent
Pleasers like pain, because they don’t. It’s just that they don’t realize how
this subservient pattern creates the fundamental reason for this distress: the
pain of feeling constantly on edge about keeping people happy and the pain of
needing other’s approval for whatever they do.
The dependent pattern exists as a
pure prototype of fixation on the Love compass point, but can occur in
combination with the adjacent compass points of either Strength or Weakness.
When combined with the Strength compass point, counselees develop compulsive
controlling features; combined with the Weakness compass point, the dependent
develops avoidant depressive features. In all cases, however, the Assertion
compass point is decommissioned.
For more on the Dependent Pleaser pattern see:
For more on the Dependent Pleaser pattern see:
