It may seem that a person who avoids commitment may have nothing in common with someone that continuously clings to others. Or, yet another person that finds themselves committing in a relationship, starting a family, only to end up feeling unfulfilled, trapped, and bored.
Whilst these life stories may be very different, they originate from the same place - dependency.
Dependency is normally characterised by over-reliance on others, the need for guidance, fears of rejection or abandonment, avoidance of conflict, or a tendency to please others. But this is merely on the surface.
Dependency has other, more subtle, often unseen, but devastating consequences. A person struggling with dependency may find themselves engaging in unfulfilling relationships or over-committing at their own detriment. Or the opposite, they may shy away from any type of commitment. A person may feel unable to sustain any meaningful relationship, which often leads to a life of solitude and an experience of aloneness even when surrounded by people.
Experiencing a pattern of abusive relationships or relationships where one is in some way used or abused is also often indicator of dependency.
Dependency from a Narrow Perspective
Dependency is normally associated with interpersonal dependency - so, dependency in relationships. This is often expressed as one’s need for guidance, attention, or approval from others. It can manifest as neediness, clinginess, and often comes with aversion to conflict, rejection, and separation.
Dependent individuals tend to have difficulties making life or even everyday decisions. They are often indecisive and tend to adopt opinions of others.
Dependency, however, is not merely an issue of relationships. It is a feature of personality and runs deep within the psyche. Whilst it may impact relationships, it primarily affects one’s sense of self, self-esteem, and identity (Birtchnell, 1984, 1988).
Someone struggling with dependency may have an experience of inadequacy and inability to tackle adult life as though they never had the chance to fully grow up. Helplessness, hopelessness, and the experience of being alone are a part of their experience (Zivkovic, 2023).
Symptoms Associated with Dependency
In terms of symptoms, dependency is often associated with social and performance anxiety, depression and eating disorders (Bornstein, 1994, 2001).
It also manifests itself as physical illness (Bornstein, 2012), somatisation (i.e., experiencing feelings and internal conflicts through bodily sensations, pain, or illness) (McWilliams & Shedler, 2017), or hypochondriac fears (i.e., paranoid fears of being or becoming ill).
Alcohol and drug abuse are also common underlying features of dependency.
In relationships, when both partners struggle with dependency, it may cause codependency and increases the risk of abusive relationships. It may be present as a personality feature both with the victims of abuse as well as with the perpetrators (Bornstein, 2012).
Relationships characterised by dependency are often experienced as unfulfilling or as something one is destined to endure.
When a dependent person loses someone important to them - for instance, a romantic partner or a parent—prolonged grief may occur.
Excessive Independence and Self-Sufficiency
Paradoxically, dependency is often masked by excessive independence (Zivkovic, 2023), also known as pseudo-self-sufficiency (Gabbard & Crisp-Han, 2016) or inflexible independence (Bornstein, 1998).
Excessive independence stems from an individual’s unconscious disavowal of any dependency and reliance on others. And, because it is unconscious, the individual is often completely oblivious of their underlying dependency, living with an illusion that they are independent, self-sufficient, and not needing anyone.
Even more, an excessively independent person may experience others as clingy, needy, or needing to take care of others. They may feel trapped in the relationship and needing to put their own needs aside. This may further fuel their feelings of resenting others for being needy and needing care (Zivkovic, 2023).
We can see that dependency can take many forms. It influences a person's sense of self and their relationships, and may be the cause of many symptoms.
The Unconscious Manifestations of Dependency
The Carer
The psychological roots of dependency are outside of immediate awareness and may manifest themselves in less overt and unconscious ways.
For instance, a person that engages in relationships where they find themselves continuously meeting other people’s needs, taking care of others, and selflessly giving themselves to others, may present with such traits because of their own underlying dependency.
Pleasing others is merely a tool to avoid rejection and the experience of abandonment or aloneness. This kind of attendance to others’ needs can be observed in familial, social, or romantic relationships.
Infantility
Infantility and experiencing the world from an infantile child-like place is a common indicator of dependency. With the individuals that are more overtly ‘needy’ and ‘clingy’, this may be closer to their awareness and the awareness of those around them. Those that tend to disavow their dependency and adopt a role of a self-sufficient carer, on the other hand, are less in touch with their infantile parts.
Through psychotherapy, however, the underlying dependency and infantility may surface into awareness and the person may see how their role of a carer was in fact performed from a child-like place rather than from a place of an autonomous adult.
Infantility may also present itself through conflicts related to psychological separation from one's primary family or caregivers. As an adult, an individual may be overly preoccupied with their relationship with one or both parents, or the entire family, struggling to allocate emotional investment, attention and love between the primary family and their romantic relationships or secondary family. This may, in turn, cause further problems in the person's romantic relationships as the partner perceives this as a lack of commitment.
Fear of Commitment
Fear of commitment is one of the most prevalent characteristics of dependency and, whilst some may be aware of this fear, for many, it is deeply unconscious.
A person may find themselves re-enacting a particular pattern of engaging in and ending relationships, continuously feeling disappointed, rejected, unseen, or used. Whilst at the initial stages of the relationship, hope or even a sense of infatuation may be present, hopelessness and disappointment usually follow. Feeling unseen or a sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment often prevail as the relationship progresses. After the relationship has ended, feelings of purposelessness, meaninglessness, emptiness, hopelessness, or loneliness may emerge until eventually the same cycle restarts.
Often, the fear of commitment may be completely unconscious. For instance, one might experience themselves as longing for and being open to commitment, yet find themselves unable to meet someone they can connect with. Alternatively, they may feel continuously disappointed in romantic relationships. In search of the perfect partner, a person might repeatedly end relationships or remain in one whilst refusing to let it mature until they feel safe to do so—a moment that never arrives. This may be accompanied by a fear of rejection or abandonment arising from the increased vulnerability stimulated by commitment.
The fear of commitment often arises from an internal conflict. On one hand, there's a desire for closeness with others and a longing for relationships—mainly to avoid feeling alone, confused, disoriented, or lost. On the other hand, there's a fear of losing freedom and life's potential, along with feeling trapped.
The conflict between freedom and its loss is one of the most characteristic features of dependency. When one constantly strives for freedom, they must avoid commitment to keep this drive alive. On the other hand, committing often evokes uncomfortable feelings of settling, being trapped, submitting to lifelessness, experiencing mediocrity, boredom, pointlessness and meaninglessness, whilst simultaneously becoming vulnerable to control and rejection. Thus, for the prospect of freedom to remain alive indefinitely, a person needs to destroy the relationships they build.
Endless Search for Fulfilment
As these internal patterns are explored in psychotherapy, they often reveal unconscious motivations and beliefs in the form of unconscious fantasies.
Someone may, completely outside their awareness, continuously search for a particular feeling, experience or characteristic in other people. It is a way of keeping alive the fantasy of reaching an ideal—be it an ideal life, relationship or identity.
However, such search is inevitably unsuccessful. It often ends in disappointment and reinitiating of the same cycle. The time spent in this cycle is then experienced as lost time, the realisation of which often evokes a sense of grief.
Unfulfilling Relationships
As dependency is analysed in psychotherapy, it often reveals itself as the main cause of one's engagement in unfulfilling or even abusive relationships. This involves feeling stuck in or held hostage by a romantic relationship where the individual's needs are continuously unmet. The person may desperately wish to escape but feels unable to do so.
It is not uncommon to see that someone that may have had a history of short relationships which may have ended due to their unwillingness to commit, may through the years of failed commitments, wish to settle down. They may even jump into a relationship and start a family only to find themselves unfulfilled, empty, and hopeless over the outlook of their future.
Dependency runs deep and forms an integrative part of a person’s personality functioning. Whist behavioural changes, such as changes to the relationships or a decision to start meeting one’s needs, may have some interpersonal effect, the results are usually limited to behaviour and short-lived unless the internal conflicts that underpin dependency are also resolved.
Ales Zivkovic, MSc (TA Psych), CTA(P), PTSTA(P), Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Supervisor
Ales Zivkovic is a psychotherapist, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. He holds an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University in London. He is also a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (PTSTA-P) and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (CTA-P). Ales gained extensive experience during his work with individuals and groups in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and his private psychotherapy, counselling, and clinical supervision practice in central London, UK. He was also a member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Ales works with individuals, couples, and groups. In clinical setting, he especially focuses on the treatment of issues of childhood trauma, personality disorders, and relationship issues. A large proportion of his practice involves online psychotherapy as he works with clients from all over the world. Ales developed a distinct psychotherapeutic approach called interpretive dynamic transactional analysis psychotherapy (IDTAP). More about Ales, as well as how to reach him, can be found here.
References:
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