Dependent personality disorder
Author: adminI got to talk to one of my buddies back in grade school. He told me that he was having problems with his cousin who was acting pretty messed up. He said that after the divorce, he started acting as if he could not do anything on his own. He would even want others to cook rice for him because he said that he might screw it up.
The moment he said that thing about the divorce, I immediately thought that it has got to be a mental disorder. I talked to my therapist and indeed it was. My therapist said that his cousin may be experiencing Dependent Personality Disorder. He said that a patient that is having this problem allows other to assume the responsibility for his life because of the lack of self confidence or the lack of ability to function independently. This makes their own needs secondary to the needs of others. They often view themselves poorly and only as extensions of others.
Here are the characteristics of those who are suffering from Dependent personality disorder:
1. encouraging or allowing others to make most of one’s important life decisions;
2. subordination of one’s own needs to those of others on whom one is dependent, and undue compliance with their wishes;
3. unwillingness to make even reasonable demands on the people one depends on;
4. feeling uncomfortable or helpless when alone, because of exaggerated fears of inability to care for oneself;
5. preoccupation with fears of being abandoned by a person with whom one has a close relationship, and of being left to care for oneself;
6. limited capacity to make everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others.
July 4th, 2008 at 1:47 am
This sounds like me. I know my mom is in a co-dependent marriage. I wonder if this mental disorder is in the genes. Is this mental disorder nature or nurture? Or maybe a little of both? It would be interesting to research. I am guessing that it would be more of a learned behavior. I guess, maybe i learned some of this from my mom. But I want to get rid of this. I know if I do have this disorder, it would be mild because I can be independent when I need to be. So maybe the simple fact that I can be inependent when I want to, this would mean that I do not have this disorder even mildly. I like trying to diognose myself. I am sure I have a lot wrong with me but I wish I knew what they were. When I major in psychology,then maybe I will find out. Or I can ask my therapist but my sister said that therapist don’t like to give diognosis because they don’t want to have the client believe they have labels on them. I wonder if my sister since, she is doing her practicum, trys to figure out if I have a disorder. I tryed to ask my sister to show me how to do the look that my therapist does. FOr example, my therapist has peaceful, healing eyes and I want to learn how to do that. My therapist can listen to me and not show judgement or emotions. My sister said that she can’t show me how to do that with the eyes because she is my sister. She said that what my therapist is doing is looking at every emotion and all my body language and trying to figure out how to help me and analyzying what I said and how I feel. She said she is also doing a psychology term, I forgot but it is when the therapist is trying to feel the same emotion that the client is feeling.I get to learn all this when I become therapist. Very exciting.