There's a good chance
you've heard of the concept of being dependent on someone.
In fact, dependence is a normal part of development
but failure to become autonomous
is one of the lesser known personality disorders.
That's what I'm gonna talk about today.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks a Psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
Dependent personality disorder falls
under the cluster C personality disorders,
which are the personalities
where people appear a fearful or anxious.
The other two in this cluster
are avoidant and obsessive compulsive.
I've talked about both of them
and put them in my personality disorders playlist.
I'm going to talk about this disorder as defined
by The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition.
It's a pervasive and excessive need to be taken care of
that leads to submissive and clinging behavior
and fears of separation beginning by early adulthood
and present in a variety of contexts as indicated
by five or more of the following eight characteristics.
A handy pneumonic for the eight characteristics is RELIANCE.
R stands for reassurance.
You have difficulty making everyday decisions
without an excessive amount of advice
and reassurance from others.
This can be basic decisions like
whether you should wear a red or a blue shirt
or whether or not you should leave early
to get to your destination.
And this is more than simply being interested
in other people's opinions.
The reassurance you need is excessive.
So you may ask someone's opinion and then keep saying,
"Are you sure?"
You need to hear it more than once
because of your self doubt.
E stands for expressing disagreement.
You have trouble expressing disagreement with others
because you fear losing their support.
And just to be clear this reliance or dependence
is not related to financial support or security.
This is total emotional reliance.
You need others to keep you put together.
L is for life responsibility.
You need others to assume responsibility
for most major areas of your life.
This can look different between adults and teens.
Adults may rely on their parents
or spouse to tell them what kind of job they should have
or who they should have as friends.
Personality disorders don't fully develop
until young adulthood, but these traits can still
start to show up in the teen years.
So the adolescent way that this characteristic can look
is relying on parents to tell you what to wear
or what to do with your free time or what college to go to.
And this reliance would be beyond what you would expect
for that stage of maturity.
I is for initiating projects,
you have difficulty initiating projects
or doing things on your own.
With this, you have sufficient motivation
but you lack self-confidence and question your abilities.
You believe other people do things better than you do
and project this image of being inept.
If someone starts something for you
you can continue on your own
as long as there's someone else around more competent
to make sure that you're going to be okay.
You are not motivated to learn new skills
because you don't believe that you can keep it up.
So there's this fear that if you become good at something,
you'll be abandoned and then not have the support you need
when you lose those temporary skills that you acquired.
So being inept
and unable to do something is more comfortable.
It's a better place for you to be than out there
where you may not have someone when you need them.
A is for alone.
You feel helpless when you're alone, because of these fears
of being unable to care for you yourself.
Because of this, you may go along for the ride with people,
to places or get involved with things
for which you have no interest
but you'd rather be bored out of your mind than be alone.
N is for nurturance.
You go too excessive lengths to be nurtured by others
to the point of volunteering
to do things that are unpleasant.
You will submit to other people's demands
even if the demands are unreasonable.
And because of this, you can and end up
in a very imbalanced relationship,
making a lot of personal sacrifices
just to stay connected to the person.
C is for companionship.
You urgently seek another relationship
as a source of care and support
when a close relationship ends.
With this, being without a relationship
becomes any emergency.
E is for exaggerated fears.
You are unrealistically preoccupied with fears
of being left to take care of yourself.
You tend to ruminate
over the scary prospect of being isolated.
And this is opposite of the person
with schizoid personality.
I talk about that personality in detail in this video.
The schizoid person is perfectly comfortable alone
and prefers it. And not just living alone
but being untethered from relationships.
The dependent person sees emotional connections
as a lifeline.
The schizoid person sees it as suffocating.
The prevalence of dependent personality disorder
is pretty low like less than 1%
which is probably why you may have never heard
of this personality disorder before.
Having separation anxiety as a child
or a chronic medical problem can be a set up
to develop this personality disorder.
People with the disorder and be very pessimistic
and tend to put themselves down.
They may become very anxious
when faced with making a decision
and they can have co-occurring depression and anxiety.
So one focus of the treatment can be
addressing the depression or anxiety symptoms.
Assertiveness training can help
with some of the thinking patterns,
but it's hard to break past the conditioned behavior
because it's self-protective. Relying on someone
who's willing to step up and dominate you is reinforcing.
It keeps you stuck, but stuck feels better than scary.
And for the person with dependent personality disorder,
independence and autonomy are frightening to the bone.
For more on personality disorders,
check out my personality disorder playlist.
See you next time.