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Dependent Personality

Dependent personality disorder is characterized by an overreliance on others to meet emotional and physical needs. It involves clingy behavior towards people one fears being separated from. To be diagnosed, a person must exhibit at least five traits like indecision, fear of responsibility, lack of self-confidence, and preoccupation with being alone. The disorder causes significant impairment if traits interfere with social or occupational functioning. Treatment focuses on building assertiveness through family therapy to establish safe relationships and regain independence.

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96 views1 page

Dependent Personality

Dependent personality disorder is characterized by an overreliance on others to meet emotional and physical needs. It involves clingy behavior towards people one fears being separated from. To be diagnosed, a person must exhibit at least five traits like indecision, fear of responsibility, lack of self-confidence, and preoccupation with being alone. The disorder causes significant impairment if traits interfere with social or occupational functioning. Treatment focuses on building assertiveness through family therapy to establish safe relationships and regain independence.

Uploaded by

muqadas bano
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Dependent personality disorder

As social beings, humans depend on each other to get by but there is an extreme end of this trait
called “Dependent personality disorder”
A dependent personality disorder is a psychiatric condition that is marked by an overreliance on
others for emotional and physical needs and displaying clingy behavior towards people from
whom they fear being separated.
The formal diagnosis requires at least five of the following in a variety of contexts
1. Crippling indecision about everyday things requiring excessive advice or reassurance
from others.
2. Intense fear of the weight of responsibility for their own lives that will place it on others.
3. A struggle to disagree with people because of the fear of disapproval.
4. Lack of self-confidence leading to a lack of independent action.
5. Performing actions that are potentially unpleasant for the purpose of getting support from
others.
6. The struggle of being alone due to fear of being unable to self-care.
7. Urgent requirement for close relationships. If one ends another is immediately sought.
8. A preoccupation to an excessive degree with fears of being left alone.
Many of us have experienced aspects of these. It is only a disorder if it causes enough distress to
significantly impair function socially, occupationally, or otherwise. A person with severe
functional impairment resulting from these traits truly believes that they are unable to manage
their lives independently. To that end assertiveness will seem to them as destructive, fearing that
it may alienate the people they depend on.
Assertiveness is of course just the thing that needs to be built to get this person moving
comfortably through the world again. For those who haven’t experienced it, it is a scary thought
to believe so little in oneself and so entirely on others.
How would a person get to be in that position is thought to be contribution from genetics and
contribution from childhood experiences. That’s another way of saying some parts nature and
some parts nurture. More specifically parents who are overprotective or on the other hand
dominating or authoritarian put their children at risk of becoming dependent. Given the
importance of a person’s close relations to the path of their disorder, it’s crucial that these loved
ones play a part in the recovery process. Family and couples therapy can help to build safe and
healthy relationship dynamics and with that assertiveness can be earned and independence can be
regained.

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