Out of Depression: A Depressed Patient's Successful Self-Help

Chapter 36 Depression and Relationships (5)
In fact, this result was foreseeable from the beginning. After all, what she was looking for was not love, but just using the other party's graduate degree and "high quality" to make up for her damaged self-esteem.

Although there is a "complementarity theory" in love theory, there may be a shadow of maintaining self-esteem in deliberately seeking complementarity.For example, if you are not good at socializing, then find someone who is cheerful; if you have no academic qualifications, then find someone with "culture"; Then find someone who is capable; if you are not good enough, then find someone who is good...Of course it cannot be said that complementarity is a mistake, but when we regard complementarity as a reason to love or not to love, we will Need to be vigilant: When "conditions" override "love", we need to evaluate whether we love the other party, or just use the other party's "conditions" to maintain our own pathological conceit.

As the name suggests, morbid dependence is not looking for love, but a kind of "dependence": the satisfaction of neurotic needs through dependence.

When a person is controlled by ego drives, he will raise all kinds of "non-human"

requirements.For example, he does not allow himself to make mistakes, does not allow himself to be imperfect, does not tolerate being denied by others, and must win everyone's praise... When he feels that he cannot accomplish all these, he will urgently need an "assistant" to help him. Do it yourself.So he needs to rely on another person to be responsible for his own life, to make choices for himself, to make up his mind for himself, to face his fears for himself, to find a sense of security, and he also needs that person to care about himself or obey himself in every possible way.In this way, he can continue to live in the illusion of ego without facing reality, without facing failure, without facing fear.

A female patient never dared to make up her own mind. Although she already had her own choices and judgments in her heart every time, she just couldn't make her own decisions, and she would ask her husband for advice every time.If what her husband says is the same as what she thinks, she will be very happy. If what her husband says is different from what she thinks, although she is not happy, she will still follow her husband's suggestion.Not only that, but she is also a person who is afraid of being late, so she is always anxious every day, but when someone walks with her, she doesn't worry, because then someone will help him "take the blame".

From this, we can find that she only evades responsibility and failure by relying on others. When failure comes, she can always find a "scapegoat" for her own failure, and she can continue to "be alone".Therefore, others at this time are only a tool for him to maintain his ego and escape from reality.

In fact, most of the "Electra complex" and "Oedipus complex" also arise here. He needs a person to be responsible for his own life, and he can get meticulous love. He can also find qualities that he does not have in the other party, and then perfect self.Some older people can just meet his morbid needs. At this time, "love" is just a means to achieve the "end".A female patient was always attracted to people about ten years older than him because of her lack of love when she was a child.But later analysis found that the real reason why she is attracted to older people is: she tends to beautify the advantages of the other person, which happens to be what she lacks, so she can "absorb" by interacting with him Nutrients, and then self-improvement, and the affirmation and acceptance of those she "appreciates", also greatly satisfies her ego.Because older people can maintain and stabilize her ego, which became the inner driving force of her "Electra complex".

An important function of pathological dependence is to alleviate self-hatred.But the sad thing is that the more "love" is needed, the less love can be obtained in reality.The more you want to find someone to marry as soon as possible, the harder it is to find a marriage partner, and even if you do, you will be separated soon.Why can't someone who desires love so much not get it?Why do people who desire marriage so much tend to lose it more easily?The answer is: What he wants is not love, nor marriage, but to solve his inner struggle through love and marriage.But love and marriage are just themselves, and they cannot solve a person's unresolved inner conflicts, so even if he gets love or marriage, he will always be disappointed.Therefore, you must give up this effort to save yourself through "love", because that will only make you lose love, and you will not be able to get the "rescue" you expected.

Avoidance of Love When a pathologically conceited person's ego is damaged, when a pathologically low self-esteem person falls into severe self-deprecation, he will avoid love.Although in the eyes of ordinary people, his conditions are not bad, but because of his inferiority complex and self-hate, he cannot see his own value.Because he did not accept his true self, one of the words he often said was: "Let's talk about it when I get better!"

Even if he meets someone he really likes, he won't take the initiative to fight for it.So he will miss a lot of opportunities, and because of these missed opportunities, he will be more self-denial.Back then, I was always avoiding love, afraid of being rejected, and dared not fight for someone I liked.The more you avoid, the more you look down on yourself, and at the same time, the more you fantasize about what will happen when you get better one day.But then I finally understood that if you don't fight for love, you will never get love, if you don't face reality, you will always live in the fantasy of "someday".

Not only in the choice of love and marriage, but also in the process of love and marriage, the needs of neurosis will also destroy the intimate relationship between two people-the pathological inferiority person is extremely afraid of losing the love of the other party, while the pathological conceited person will be extremely afraid of the other party. Picky and dissatisfied.Sometimes, the last two can hardly be happy because the "choice" is wrong (meeting the needs of the neurosis, not the needs of the real self). Mistakes at the "source" are more likely to lead to the final separation.Of course, if his conceit comes from maintaining a seemingly perfect marriage, he will also choose to stick to it stubbornly, not because of love, but because he is afraid of destroying his perfect image.

A middle-aged woman whose husband is having an affair has reached the point of fanfare.She was very worried about meeting her husband with that girl on the street or in the mall, afraid that she would be embarrassed and overwhelmed.She had tried to win her husband back, but to no avail.Ordinarily, at this point, only divorce can be relieved, but she has been struggling to support it.Not because of love, but because she has been maintaining the image of a successful woman in front of her friends and relatives over the years: smooth work, happy family, uplifting children... So she does not allow the image of the "perfect woman" she has painstakingly cultivated to be damaged. Therefore, she would rather live in pain than face reality.

Sex is an expression of love, and sometimes sex can also be a means to gain love.When the patient equates sex with love, he becomes particularly obsessed with sex.When a person lacks self-love, it is difficult to obtain true love, so sex becomes a shortcut to obtain "love".

A female patient, she needs "love" very much, but because of self-hatred, she lacks the ability to love others.Therefore, she is very obsessed with sex, and sometimes has sex with the opposite sex easily. Although she got sex, she didn't get the "love" she hoped for.When she woke up the next morning, she felt sick when she looked at the stranger lying next to her, and felt like throwing up when she thought about her past behavior.Even so, she is still so fascinated by sex. Although sex can't make her get real love, it can let her find a short-lived feeling similar to "love" (a feeling of being loved) when the two embrace each other. feelings of acceptance by others).

After analysis, it was found that she hated herself in this reality, but she was unable to get rid of it, so she was eager to eliminate self-hatred by being accepted by others.At this time, she has lost the ability to love others, and can only exchange love through sex, but the more she exchanges love through sex, the easier it is to disappoint her.Because she has distorted the true meaning of love, she never got true love.

Sex can not only be a means of obtaining "love", it also has a wider role.Here's a quick rundown of the other common genres: Sex and Conquest, Sexual Taboos, and the Meaning of Life.

Sex and conquest Sex sometimes means conquest, so the choice of sexual objects and the number of sexual objects may inadvertently become a means for a person to maintain his self-esteem. At the same time, sex also means being accepted by others. At this time, sex will become a A way to undo his self-hatred.

After the hero Florentina Ariza in the movie "Love in the Time of Cholera" was rejected by the heroine Ferminadaza, he began to use sex to heal his wounds in order to gain "freedom".Later even his mother becomes less and less able to recognize him, and he becomes a "hunter" - a hunter who assuages ​​self-hatred by acquiring sex.Then he tried to become a rich man, which also became an effort to eliminate his self-hatred.Although he became rich in the end, he was still lonely deep in his heart; although he did not lack women, he still lacked love.He no longer lives like himself, but blindly relieves his inner self-hatred through the acquisition of wealth and sex.

The plots in movies are often staged in reality. When a man or woman is betrayed by someone he loves, he will suddenly stop believing in love and become a "sadist".He or she will begin to play with feelings or be extremely frivolous, which also hides the purpose of revenge through sex, or through sex to maintain self-esteem and get rid of self-hatred.

Sexual taboo is an instinctive need, but sometimes it can also reflect a person's "dignity" and "personality".If a person's self-esteem comes from shaping a perfect self, then he will become "over the line" in his sexual attitude.Therefore, he will avoid sex, fear sex, fear of being "tainted" by it.So he couldn't forgive himself for having masturbation, one-night stands, and other sexual thoughts and behaviors, because it violated his "pure" image.At times, he also dreaded premarital sex or a relationship with someone he wasn't 10 percent sure of the future because it would violate his saintly "moral sense."Sometimes, he will be extremely loyal, not because he loves each other, but because he cannot violate the "law" in his heart, so there is still a selfish heart hidden behind loyalty, and he is still "loyal" for the sake of loyalty. When it comes to “laws,” it’s impossible to forgive yourself.A female patient has been unable to forgive herself for having sex outside of marriage, although it has been nearly [-] years.At the beginning, she showed that she could not forgive her behavior, but later it evolved into an inner conflict of "whether to keep a secret or tell her husband".She talked about that when she was in school, she would tear up a whole page of paper because of a wrong word, but this time she made a wrong word in her life, but she didn't know how to tear up "this word". one page".An extramarital sex that troubled her so much was not because of the incident itself, but because of her demands on herself, or her behavior was just a violation of her inner "law" and her noble "law". moral principle".From this, we can find that "sex" at this time is no longer sex in the ordinary sense, but has become a means of maintaining an idealized self—maintaining self-esteem through sexual "loyalty" and maintaining self-confidence through sexual "purity". Come and find the feeling of superiority.She wondered whether to tell her husband that there was actually a hidden conflict between two neurotic needs, one was to wash away the stains through "honesty", and the other was the noble "moral sense" that could not hurt others.Although "honesty" can make up for her blemishes, this kind of "honesty" will hurt her husband again. She can't satisfy these two needs at the same time, so she keeps struggling, and eventually falls into depression and compulsion.

The meaning of life uses sex to prove one's ability and one's existence.When sex becomes the proof of a person's ability and the meaning of life, it will seriously affect a person's sexual ability.Because, at this time, sex has shouldered responsibilities that it shouldn't have to bear, and it has been overwhelmed.In the chapter "Looking for the Master of Dreams" in Owen Yalom's book "The Executioner of Love", Marvin, a patient who came for treatment because of sexual problems, was introduced.After retiring, he had problems with his sexual ability. In the follow-up analysis, it was found that:
Because his father was ostracized in childhood, Marvin, the youngest in the family, became his mother's "companion"-he had to accompany her to all social occasions.His relationship with his mother is too exclusive, too intimate, and close for too long, so the seeds of the Oedipus plot are planted for Marvin's heterosexual relationship.Later, he regarded whether he was accepted by the opposite sex as the source of his own value and the foundation of his existence, and unconsciously regarded his wife as a goddess, and sex became a means to appease her, and at the same time, sex became one with the "goddess". way.Sex had become a matter of life and death, and his existence depended on being one with this woman.No wonder sex can be so difficult. Sex is supposed to be about expressing love and pleasure, not about avoiding danger.Therefore, sex at this time is no longer sex in the ordinary sense, but a "magic weapon" to avoid fear, find self-worth, and face death. "If sex becomes that definition, anyone -- including me, of course -- will have a handicap," Yaron said.

Of course, the role of sex is not limited to the points mentioned above. For a person suffering from neurosis, the function of sex is not only the satisfaction of instinct needs, but its function is often exaggerated, not only to release sexual tension, It also releases a variety of non-sexual tensions.

From this we shall see that the difficulties of love and sex are only one expression of all the neurotic disturbances of the patient.There are as many distorted forms of love and sex as there are neurotic needs.Love and sex cease to be themselves when they become a means to the fulfillment of neurotic needs.Only by stopping the war of ego, only by giving up the pursuit of the idealized self can one return to the true self and find true love and sex.

(End of this chapter)