Are the thoughts familiar? How do you feel when you think this way? Longing, disappointment? Did you need help, but you didn’t believe in it? Have you ever thought that no one needs you and you need to cope on your own? Our perceptions can greatly limit us in life. When the world seems like a scary and unsafe place in which anything can happen, life is accompanied by a feeling of one’s own helplessness in the face of unbearable circumstances and loneliness. In fact, there are many, even very many, empathetic people in our world. Nowadays they are talked about a lot in terms of rescue, before altruism. But the fact remains that many empathize with others and try to help, another thing is that they do not always know how to do this. Where does this attitude towards a hostile world come from? When did this world attack you and you couldn’t cope with it? These are the echoes of our childhood, when we were faced with the fact that we were left alone with our experiences and there was no one around who could protect or stay with us. In childhood, a child, from time to time, feels helpless in the face of the challenges of life and believes into the omnipotence of their adults. He believes that they can even stop the rain outside the window. His adults are his only protection from the big and incomprehensible world. When an adult is not around: an unfamiliar place, a kindergarten, left alone at home, lost in a shopping center... the child experiences strong feelings of anxiety, horror, grief..., which are difficult for him to cope with, he needs accompaniment. However, it happens that there is no such connection with adults or the connection is so fragile that the child does not even seek protection. The child adapts and learns not to ask anyone for help, using primitive mental defenses due to his age, or rather the basic mechanisms with the help of which the child manages to somehow cope with stress. In such cases, the need for protection remains unsatisfied, and in most cases is not even realized. In adulthood, this is expressed by a violation of attachment in relationships - dependent or counter-dependent behavior. Dependent behavior in a relationship is the behavior of a person who behaves in such a way as not to let go of the one whom he has chosen as his protection from a terrible world as much as possible, fixating on the feelings of his partner for this purpose. Anything that allows you to tie another to yourself is used. Counterdependent is the opposite position, where intimacy threatens to confront pain, the experience of which was once unbearable; such a person not only does not recognize his need for intimacy and help, he considers this need to be a weakness, but also denies the need for a partner’s intimacy. The main task of the chosen strategies is not to encounter what was never differentiated in childhood. Because at that moment it was unbearable, and awareness and transformation never happened. What to do about it? How to solve the problems that life puts before us without falling into the despair of helplessness? First you need to understand that what arose in a relationship is also resolved in a relationship. No matter how much you would like to avoid this collision, there will be no movement without a collision. Learn to trust yourself. Trust that you feel that this is exactly what is happening to you, and not what is wrong with you. The process of filling a need is not quick; it happens in stages. You need to differentiate, realize the need, what you felt then, what you feel now, and this is already a significant half of the way. Then (or in parallel) the path of its closure and transformation of experience begins. It is impossible to do this alone simply because reality testing will not occur. Who it will be, a psychologist or another close person, would not be so important if not for the level of vulnerability that will require constant care and control from the partner. Still, the partner next to us lives his life, and does not live ours. Sincerely, psychologist Margarita Alekseeva Sign up for a consultation on)