An article by Connie Miller defines the concept of co-dependency beautifully, as “an absence of relationship with the self”. By looking outside to others for confirmation of who we are, and that we are OK, we lose contact with ourselves.
How actively useful are boundaries in the therapeutic relationship? They are obviously a part of the ‘real world’ in which both client and therapists live, organising and managing their money and time. But in some humanistic, relationship-based schools of therapy, they seem to bring out a certain contradiction…
The lesson that it is facilitative not to press others to disclose, and to communicate that lack of pressure explicitly, is a useful one in all kinds of relationships; mothers persistently asking their children to tell them what happened at school springs to mind, as does the situation in which the stereotypical wife ‘asks the husband to talk about his feelings’.
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