Obsessed with Control: Addressing Perfectionism and Codependence

For some, asking for help feels like a threat; the need to do so invariably makes them feel inferior.

“Why should I need to ask?” “You should already know!” In the game of emotional hot potato, we blame our partners for feeling vulnerable, more precisely, for feeling inferior. While something like asking for help or setting a boundary is common, individuals preoccupied with hierarchies view both as signs of weakness, indicators of a potential loss of power or position, or disrespect. Their worlds are like old-time movies, experienced in black and white.

In that world, the kings expect to be served, having their every need predicted and, subsequently, fulfilled. So, when something goes wrong, and the king feels ashamed of himself for being unable to complete a task, he blames his servants for failing to aid him. In this context, he finds himself in a double bind. On the one hand, he feels vulnerable and inferior if asking for help (after all, such a human request is beneath a god) and, on the other, knows he’s unable to act independently. So, when he ultimately fails, taking responsibility is akin to losing face, the threat of which, he believes, implies a fall from grace.

Ancient kings believed that the world was comprised of servants and gods on Earth (as well as their enemies, who lived in similar systems), whom the former obviously catered to. To the gods, their servants’ compliance wasn’t enough; in their partially-parental roles, they also needed to know how to protect those in their custody. Like children not knowing how to self-soothe, kings, more often than not, looked to their courts to manage and even preempt their negative feelings. Their oracles and soothsayers predicted great conquests. Their jesters cheered them up. Their councils were more often than not comprised of sycophants. And wives were merely indicators of their manhood. These individuals wanted, and received, the good parts of parenting, without being told what to do.

Fundamentally, other-oriented perfectionism, the expectation that another be perfect, is codependence. I need you to be perfect so that I can feel safe and special.

We see this dynamic repeatedly in therapy. Partners become enraged with their spouses for failing to mind-read, jumping to the conclusion that they must not love them. Codependence, the excessive need to be emotionally and physically cared for, can look like love. Some of our patients, either having grown up with that type of love or having been severely neglected, perceive codependence as their individual right. And their partners should always know how lucky they are. Perfectionists of all types deeply struggle with black and white, hierarchical thinking. They hyper-focus on slights and chronically seek and find reasons to feel superior to you.

One of the core problems here is of inflexibility. Most people become upset and feel hurt when a partner fails to consider them in relation to something they believe is significant. But, if being inconsiderate is revealed as a character flaw, the other tends to move on. Yet, for those individuals with a deep need for control, any loss feels intolerable. Each one feels personal, not revealing a trait of the other but her own inherently defective spirit. Her need to feel invulnerable is deep, yet her resilience is shallow.

In treatment, we focus on what asking for help actually means and whether doing so, in reality, necessarily reduces one’s status. People, sometimes, erroneously believe that admitting a mistake means they’re less than human, but doing so is one of the fundamental markers of being human. The more benign side of this coin is that admitting a mistake or asking for help can also contribute to feeling like a burden, again the black and white thinking of inferiority and superiority, yet, on the contrary, both gestures imply humility and the need for another, which often binds people together. Hierarchy can and should be minimized. You aren’t that special and you aren’t that much of a burden, either. Finding that spot, your exact place in the world, is one of the points of therapy.

Written by Leon Garber, LMHC. Shared with permission from Leon’s Existential Cafe.

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Leon Garber is a philosophical writer, contemplating and elucidating the deep recesses of man’s soul. He is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor/Psychotherapist — specializing in Existential Psychotherapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and Trauma Therapy — and manages a blog exploring issues of death, self-esteem, love, freedom, life-meaning, and mental health/mental illness, from both empirical and personal viewpoints.