Rimma Efimkina - Not pregnant yet? You bet!

– So subconsciously you decided to become a boy to win the love of your mother? But boys cannot get pregnant either, only woman can.

Yana cried bitterly at those words out of self-pity:

– I wanted to be a girl and alive. I wanted my mother to love me…

– Imagine talking to your mother, tell her these words.

– Mother, I want you to love me, I want to live!

– What would you answer if you were her?

– “I love, but I’m angry at you at the same time!”

– Why are you angry?

– “You move so much, you bother me all the time, you are so restless!”

– Do you mean – alive?

– Yes! Alive! Dead daughter would have been more convenient.

This being said, Yana realized that her mother’s pattern of behavior towards her as a child did not let her to grow into an adult self-sufficient woman who would have her own children. Instead she encouraged her to “stop dead” to be convenient. And this is how she lived acting in her relationships with her husband as a convenient “dead” woman. And when she tried to get pregnant she did the same towards her future children.

You would think that after realizing this, the right and logical thing to do is to change your life strategy. However, our psyche has its own unfathomable logic. Clients do change their lives instantly, but only if they are ready for these changes or they have or acquired resources to do so. In Yana’s case her resource was her way of staying alive – stop dead and stand still, not to show her own feelings by any face movements. It was not until she had a different experience that resource would be the only one.

Despite the fact that Yana attended the women’s group for a year, and she understood the nature of her infertility there, she went through with IVF. Just before the procedure she called and asked if it was safe for her to go to the group, because it was not good to get nervous before IVF, otherwise it wouldn’t work. The director told her that it was up to her to decide. She did come. When she was talking about her purpose for this meeting she laughed a lot and told repeatedly that everything was fine. It looked more like hysteria, than like joy and happiness, so the director asked to sober her up:

– Yana, if everything is fine, why have you come, to ruin it?

Yana was still defensive and repeated that everything was fine. More than fine, “awfully wonderful”.

– What are you in awe of?

Confusing conversation, where the role of the director was to find out what feelings the client had and the client tried to put on a brave face, revealed that Yana had read the fine font at the bottom of the medical agreement. There was information about possible complications of IVF and it was said that in case of her death she wouldn’t be able to make any claims. And this happened, mind you, after many a discussion during the group about the harm of IVF.

– Well, yes, I told you several times that I had read about that on the internet, – the director reminded.

But Yana did not read any of this “for some reason”. She had to admit that the real reason for her “inattentiveness” was fear of IVF that was to happen in a week. And her goal was to work with the fear.

– But your fear is fairly logical, you can in fact die.

When said out loud, these words caused an outburst of Yana’s suppressed feelings. She once again remembered her mother’s words at her brother’s funeral, again she cried out of self-pity, and about the fact that she couldn’t say openly about her feelings. To whom? This time to her husband about the fact that she was scared to undergo a life-threatening procedure, and that she was afraid not to go, and felt guilty, because if her husband had spent a load of money for this, it was necessary to finish the deal.

– Who is it necessary for?

– For my husband.

– And what is necessary for you?

Yana did not give an answer. Then she disappeared after telling to the group beforehand that she probably won’t come to the meetings, because her husband was concerned about her getting nervous during psychotherapy sessions. This was an excuse that allowed her to pass the responsibility for her choice to the another person and not to get in touch with anxiety from deciding what to do and making her own choices.

Yana’s life has not changed. IVF has not brought the expected results, her plans have not not come to life, her story is not over.

Yana’s story is a story of a codependent woman. To cure her of infertility is to cure her of codependence. There are many definitions of a codependent person. I like Marilyn Murrey’s, because it’s both short and simple. She says that a codependent person is a person who gives up his or her dignity, abiding to another person and taking responsibility for another person, thus encouraging his or her destructive behavior. A codependent person, as rule, is a product of the culture of restrictions and prohibitions, which preaches that to have one’s personal boundaries is egoistic and evil 16 16 Marilyn Murrey, Prisoner if Another War: A Remarkable Journey of Healing From Childhood Trauma . .

Any woman who grew up in our fallocratic culture is damaged in a way, as she constantly suppresses her own needs. When growing up, each of us was told time and again that a woman should be obedient, sacrifice herself and care about others. For many it is as natural as breathing.

Fortunately, now there are books on codependency and love addiction which openly state that this is a disease and teach how to deal with them. The book by Robin Norwood Women Who Love Too Much is one of them. It’s not just a book, I don’t get tired of saying that it should be a guide for every Russian woman, despite the fact that it was written by an American. What is it about this book that makes me “prescribe” it to practically each of my clients? It’s about each one of us. In order not to make any allegations, here is a short fragment of the text 17 17 Robin Norwood, Women Who Love Too Much . :

– We love too much if to love means to suffer.

– We love too much, if we justify his bad temper, insensitivity and rudeness by the fact that he had difficult childhood and try to take on a role of his therapist.

– We love too much if we don’t like a lot about his character, his values and deeds, but we make our peace with them and think: I should be more attractive and loving and he will change for me.

– We love too much, if love threatens our wellbeing and, possibly, even our health and security.

The feelings that many women fascinated by men mistake for love and passion are, if fact, fear. If love boarders on obsession, this means fear of either being alone, or being unloved, or being unworthy, or losing support (emotional, financial, etc.).

The “love too much” phenomenon (psychologists call it love addiction) is a peculiar combination of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that unconsciously recreate the atmosphere of the parents’ family. I insist on the word “unconsciously”, because many people tend to answer the question about how their childhood was by “happy”. People say this, because this is where their psychological defense mechanisms step in, their task being to guard us from traumatic memories, they are displacement, suppression, denial, etc. But if one goes emotionally to this child sate in the course of a psychotherapy sessions, one will discover logical recurrent dynamics which is called in psychology “Karpman-Burn’s drama triangle”: