"To see ones predicament clearly is the first step toward going beyond it."

Eckhart Tolle

Enlightened Teacher

 

 

 

 

The Flight from Intimacy by Barry and Janae Weinhold

Counter-dependent behaviors can control and severely restrict the amount of love, intimacy, and closeness people give and receive in their lives. Counter-dependency often creates feelings of loneliness, alienation, and a sense of quiet desperation that reveal people's need for intimacy.   So, what causes counter-dependent behaviors? A failure to fully complete the two most important developmental processes of early childhood: secure bonding and emotional separation. When not completed at the appropriate age, they drive adults to addictions, recurring conflicts, problems with closeness and intimacy, victimization by others, and unfulfilling and unsuccessful relationships. From birth to about three years of age, all children need help in completing the processes of bonding and separation.

 

Secure bonding with parents and others, which usually starts at birth, allows children to develop a sense of basic trust and safety. It involves a deep attunement between parents and children that includes lots of physical contact, holding and nurturing touch, and giving the child pleasant reassuring messages. Children need to know they are loved for who they are and to feel wanted by their parents.

 

Secure bonding also provides a solid foundation for children as they to begin to separate physically and emotionally and allows them to gradually move away from mother and father, exploring their world safely and securely and learning to become emotionally autonomous human beings. Children also need guidance and support in order to become emotionally separate from their parents. More secure the parent-child bond, the easier it is for children to become emotionally separate. Ideally, children should be emotionally separated from their parents by about age three.

 

What happens during early childhood that interferes with emotional separation? Our clinical research, which we write about in our book, The Flight From Intimacy, indicates that the most common cause of co-dependent and counter-dependent behaviors is developmental trauma caused by subtle disconnects between parent and child that prevent or disrupt emotional attunement during the first three years of life. If these early disconnects are not recognized and addressed, they eventually create patterns of isolation and disengagement that cause people to fear intimacy as adults.

 

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