WEBVTT

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Well, emotional dependence is very
much frowned upon in today's society.

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No one wants to be emotionally dependent,

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because when we think of
emotional dependence

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the first thing that comes to mind
is a person that's...

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I don't know... clingy, people who don't
want to be alone,

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people that don't end relationships
even if they are bad.

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And this in our society
is exactly the opposite, right?

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In the man and woman society
that were made by themselves

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that's bad news; we want
people that are autonomous

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self-sufficient, independent.

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However, we forget that we are
the most social species on the planet.

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And this is exactly the same as saying

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that we are the most dependent species
that there is on the planet.

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All of our development has been social.

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I know many of you
will be saying, well...

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it's normal for the kids
to be dependent

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but the adults we have to
be independent

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that is what psychologists have
thought up until recently.

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We thought that development
was to go

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from absolute dependency 
in infancy

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to absolute independence
in adulthood.

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But, we now know that people
ultimately don't become independent

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Actually, what we know,

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is that if there were an absolutely
independent adult,

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that would be a social and emotional
disease. It would be a problem.

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Whether because of the 
solitude of that person,

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or whether because of the lack of empathy
that this problems carry.

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Actually, we're not making any progress
from dependence to independence.

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What happens is that we change
our type of dependence.

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When we are little we have what we call
a vertical dependence.

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Ok? I don't know if you see me up there

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In which there is a person that cares
and a person that is being cared.

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A person that provides, and
another that recieves.

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That is what happens
with children and parents.

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Throughout our life
the dependency doesn't disappear

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but rather we go on changing its capacity

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up to the point of having the
ability to depend horizontally,

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on each other; where one takes care
and the other one is being cared,

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but also the one being cared
takes care and both give.

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This would be the dependency ratio 
ideal between adults: interdependence.

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Now you know that there are many adults
who don't get there. You know, right?

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Some are your partners, and
well they should have reached this point.

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There are people who have difficulties
with this transition.

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There are parents that are
very good parents with dependent babies

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but when these children
become adolescents,

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and they start to seek autonomy,
this is a conflict.

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And then there are adults who,
in their intimate relationships,

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don't look for these type of relationships
but continue to look for these.

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They keep searching for someone
to care for them or provide for them.

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Or are there others that are
looking for someone to look after

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or for someone who they can save.

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Or, sometimes, someone they
can dominate, ok?

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And these are not healthy relationships.

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The good dependency relationships between
adults are these: the horizontal ones.

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What does it take to have
horizontal relationships between adults?

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Two things.

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That's what I like, to be simple.

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Autonomy and intimacy.

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And now the next question:

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How can we have autonomy and intimacy?

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The first variable is
emotional regulation.

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Emotional regulation is all
that I have,

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to influence my state of mind
and my emotions.

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As human beings we basically have
two main types of emotional regulation:

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Self-regulation and co-regulation.

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Self-regulation is all that which
I do by myself,

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in order to influence my state of mind:
going out to play sports, meditating,

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relaxing...
all of this is self-regulation

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co-regulation is what I do
with another person or with other people

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to make me feel better.
I get bad news,

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and I call someone and talking with
this person makes me feel better.

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This is co-regulation.

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These are the two main ways.

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We see that there are people that
are very good at self-regulating

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but really bad at co-regulating.
What happens to these people?

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When they feel bad or when
they experience a dispute,

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they tend to isolate themselves,
they go because they need to self-regulate

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before again making contact with others.

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And we also see that there are people
who are the opposite.

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That they are very good at co-regulating,
but very bad at self-regulating.

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What happens? When there is
a conflict or they feel bad,

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they need to find someone else,
they look for people.

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Let us imagine that these
two become a couple

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You don't have to imagine too much.
They're very frequent.

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In which there is an "self-regulator"
and a "co" and they have a conflict,

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what's going to happen?

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The "self-regulator" will try to run
and the "co" will go behind him, right?

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What happens?
There will be no co-regulation.

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They will "co-deregulate" each other.

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This variable, the co-regulation or the 
co-deregulation, it is the central element

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that distinguishes couples that work
the good ones that malfunction.

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That's a problem because people
as long as it co-deregulates

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goes further and further, it doesn't
come closer, it's getting worse.

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And people, when they co-deregulate
don't solve the conflicts.

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So what you simply do? Leave them, right?

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And what makes a relationship grow 
is the ability to resolve conflicts.

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The conflicts aren't the problem.

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The problem is how
we solve those conflicts, ok?

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So notice that, this element 
apparently insignificant is essential.

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Along with co-regulation, another variable
very important is relational security.

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Which is how safe 
I feel when I'm alone

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and how safe I feel
when I'm with people.

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Then we already know where
autonomy is.

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If I'm able to co-regulate myself
and I'm able to be fine alone,

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I have autonomy capacity.

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If I'm able to co-regulate myself
and I'm able to be fine with others,

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I have privacy capacity.

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And this is what we need to be able
to maintain healthy adult relationships,

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horizontals we said, right?

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People able to have autonomy and privacy.

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The news I bring you is that
those people, we believe they exist.

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We don't know where they are. 
We're looking for them, don't worry.

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When we find them, we'll tell you.

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I call them "the Greens".

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They're represented with a green dot.

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If by any chance you find a "Green"

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immediately get married!

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(Laughter)

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No domestic partnerships. Get married!
"But he's so ugly." It doesn't matter!

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But he's a guy and I'm not gay.
Well, nobody's perfect! Get married!

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I don't know if he's good...

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Thanks a lot! Thank you!

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(Applause)

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And best part:
I don't know if he's good in bed.

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He actually is! That's the worse.

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Because the biggest cause 
of sexual dysfunction

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is interpersonal anxiety.

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And they don't have it!
Those guys and girls don't have it.

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I mean, they're good in bed, too.

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¡Get married! Don't think about it
and you'll have a happy marriage as

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Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy,
you know they did it very well.

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But well, since most people don't 
we have that high level of regulation

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you'll most likely find yourselves 
with people with other issues.

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For example, more people at this side,
at the co-regulation side, okay?

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They are people who are 
co-regulated, we said,

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who had more problems 
for autonomy.

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So what's their fear?

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Many times they are unconscious 
about this fear.

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But their basic fear is to be abandoned.

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In a real way or emotionally.

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Their fear is people
stopping to love them.

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They are constantly
forcing people to love them.

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How? Being liked,
working for it a lot,

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being very effective,
being very efficient.

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I guess many of you
can find themselves here.

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Forgetting about their own needs,
looking at the needs of others.

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They can hardly say no.

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They say no two times
but the third one will be a yes.

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So you always have to insist three times.

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I always say that if you're having a
work team, you must have, at least,

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one of this side, we call this side
"dependent-submissive."

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You must have at least
one "dependent-submissive",

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who is the one doing the tasks
no one else wants to do, ok?

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- We have to go to pick up a speaker.
- But it's daughter's birthday.

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"We have to go to pick". Three times.
"Ok, I'll go". And leaves the daughter.

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So these are very good for work teams.

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They're usually done after 4 or 5 years.

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Fire them and put someone else in.
No fixing there anymore. Remember that.

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Getting a bit serious

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these kind of people
are the ones that are in risk

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to begin abusive relationships.

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Because they can start them
and if they start them it's easier

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people won't let them
quit the relationships.

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You can also find...

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And what should we do with them?
With the Greens I told you to get married.

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Have you seen these ones are in yellow?

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What should we do?

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It depends... If your mate is
a bit caring, that's amazing!

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Amazing! They'll treat you really good.
You should go on with them.

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They're a bit a pain in the ass;
every month and a half approximately

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they tell you you don't love them enough,

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feel bad when they made you the super gift

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and you didn't remember their birthday...

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Those are little things
that you can easily solve.

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If they're very dependent,
too much from the obedient side, no.

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One thing is you going out
one night with your friends

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and receive one text at 1 a.m. saying:

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"Have fun with your friends, baby.
I love you", and another one at 3 a.m.

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That's ok.
Another thing is receiving 15 texts!

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If you do get 15...

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If it's your partner and you have kids,
you started loving them...

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then you stay with them! But if not
there's plenty of people in the world!

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Look around and you'll see. At TED...
A lot of people. You can search.

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(Laughter) (Applause)

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Thank you!

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You can also find a person
from the exact opposite side.

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If that's from the dependent side, this is
the contradependent or avoidant side.

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If they are afraid of autonomy,
these ones are afraid of intimacy.

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If their fear was of being abandoned,
those ones' fear is to be invaded.

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Losing their individuality, losing 
that autonomy they treasure.

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What do they do then?
They get away, drift apart.

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Tend to put apart the others,
need a lot more space than the rest.

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Not only with the others, but also 
they need space with themselves.

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They don't know it, but they don't notice
their emotions in a good way, ok?

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They think they feel less than the rest.

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Either they think the rest of the world
is crazy and we have a lot of emotions.

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But they really feel 
less emotions than normal.

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I'm sorry for the ones
that are discovering this today.

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Most of them are physically disconnected.

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They're, usually, the ones
who dance very bad.

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They work in computer science
with a certain frequency.

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(Laughter) So you get to know them...

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There are simple ways to recognize them.
You can put yourselves in front of one...

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They're so far apart. 
of their feelings,

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that you can put yourselves
in front of of one and tell him:

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"Hey! How do you feel? 
Let's talk about your feelings."

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And they usually get paralyzed.
They blink about three times and say: huh?

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Avoidant. No doubts.

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There are evident avoidance manifestos.
You've been with him for three years.

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You've never met no one from his family.

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He never met your friends.

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If you haven't noticed he's avoidant
I don't know what it needs anymore!

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These are the manifestos
but also there are emotional ones

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who are people who,
apparently, are very well related,

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but not really intimate.

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By a mystery of nature, 
that I don't know yet,

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anyone could do a doctoral thesis about it

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in every family there's
an emotional avoidant brother-in-law.

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We don't know why. It's this character
you meet at Christmas meals,

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at barbecues... You talk to him and says:
"How are you? Good".

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"Hey, how are you? Everything fine,
very, very good". But he doesn't connect.

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You may know one of those, right?

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Emotional avoidance. It seems that....
But intimacy costs you a lot, doesn't it?

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If their self-esteem 
depended on the others.

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They are less dependent 
of other people's opinions.

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At a given moment they are
more capable to say yes.

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If those who feel 
don't get what they give,

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they often feel like,
too much demand, right?

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Like other people ask a lot of them,
they ask for a lot of bonding.

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They also get tired.

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They're people... many times
when they are carers

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they're very tired carers.

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And they also feel guilty

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because they feel they
don't deserve all the love they recieve.

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Or that they don't want 
as much as anyone else.

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And the third big block, the one that
doesn't have so much to do with regulation

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but with relational security, 
is the block we call the dominant block.

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If those were submissive dependents,
these are self-dependent.

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These are dominants.

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If the dependents are afraid
of being abandoned,

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the dominant ones aren't afraid
of being abandoned,

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it's like they have, again,
unconsciously,

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deep down, the conviction

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that if people really know them
they're going to leave them.

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It's like they're worth so little,

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they're convinced
that they're going to be abandoned.

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Or, sometimes, the conviction that 
have come throughout his life,

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is that they can't trust anyone.

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That others are going for you 
to end up betraying you.

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So, when you're like this, 
how do you get into a relationship?

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From the control.

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It's the only way they have. So then
use different forms of control.

00:13:45.676 --> 00:13:49.156
How? Aggressive control. Direct domain.

00:13:49.156 --> 00:13:50.827
You know you can find a lot of it.

00:13:50.827 --> 00:13:53.547
Sometimes indirect control. 
Aggressive-passive.

00:13:53.547 --> 00:13:55.497
The one you don't seem to be controlling.

00:13:55.497 --> 00:13:57.465
"Mom, I'm going for some beers."

00:13:57.465 --> 00:14:00.525
"You go, son. Have fun.
Well, don't come home too late...

00:14:00.525 --> 00:14:03.473
you know I can't go to bed
until you don't arrive home...

00:14:04.243 --> 00:14:07.470
you know I do when I don't sleep, 
my blood pressure goes high...

00:14:07.470 --> 00:14:10.757
and when this happens, 
the doctor who can give me a heart attack.

00:14:10.757 --> 00:14:12.447
Be home by 11."

00:14:12.447 --> 00:14:16.057
It would be an aggressive passive domain. 
That you don't realize.

00:14:16.237 --> 00:14:19.688
There are even more subtle ones, 
and there are some that we call

00:14:19.688 --> 00:14:21.168
the inverse dependence.

00:14:21.168 --> 00:14:23.677
What they do is taking care,
but taking care so much

00:14:23.677 --> 00:14:26.865
that they make you
become dependent of that care.

00:14:26.865 --> 00:14:29.045
They're castration-caregivers.

00:14:29.045 --> 00:14:33.155
People who are totally engulfing you.
There's a book by Stephen King, "Misery".

00:14:33.280 --> 00:14:37.320
There's a film too that portrays a bit
exaggerated about this kind of pattern.

00:14:37.320 --> 00:14:41.253
Well, there you see, there we have
those three big sides, right?

00:14:41.253 --> 00:14:43.162
What happens with any
of these blocks?

00:14:43.162 --> 00:14:46.452
You can see that none of them keep
horizontal relationships, right?

00:14:46.452 --> 00:14:49.318
What happens with these people 
when they meet the greens?

00:14:49.318 --> 00:14:53.381
They are very few, but we find some.
They hardly ever go into a relationship.

00:14:53.742 --> 00:14:57.772
The greens become racist and
they don't understand the others.

00:14:57.932 --> 00:15:00.712
But the others don't understand either
to the greens, okay?

00:15:00.892 --> 00:15:02.651
What other groups would fit together?

00:15:02.651 --> 00:15:07.121
For example, if we have
two caregivers, will they be a couple?

00:15:07.557 --> 00:15:11.197
They both try to please.
They both try to take care of each other.

00:15:11.450 --> 00:15:16.030
None being able to receive care.
That's not good. That ends it.

00:15:16.131 --> 00:15:20.099
Two avoidants? They may say hello
to each other on the street

00:15:20.619 --> 00:15:23.764
but I'm not so sure about it.
How are they going to be a couple?

00:15:23.764 --> 00:15:25.929
But imagine the exact opposite:

00:15:25.929 --> 00:15:31.248
A pleasant-caregiver with an avoidant.
The pleasant-caregiver can't help it

00:15:31.248 --> 00:15:33.908
he wants to save the avoidant
from his sadness.

00:15:34.538 --> 00:15:37.638
He can't, that helpless being, 
who speaks little and ducks his eyes.

00:15:37.710 --> 00:15:41.040
Look how well they fit together: 
The Coyote and Road Runner, right?

00:15:41.170 --> 00:15:45.695
The same goes for the dominant 
and the most submissive, right?

00:15:45.695 --> 00:15:48.814
It's very difficult fot the dominant
to fit with another dominant.

00:15:48.814 --> 00:15:51.628
But dominant with submissive
they fit perfectly well too.

00:15:51.628 --> 00:15:54.038
That's why we see
so many couples of that side.

00:15:54.114 --> 00:15:56.927
That's where they go into,
not into a conflictive balance

00:15:56.927 --> 00:15:58.887
but into a conflictive escalation.

00:15:58.887 --> 00:16:02.648
That's why you've seen
the dominant have the red lights

00:16:02.648 --> 00:16:04.038
I mean the red light bulbs.

00:16:04.038 --> 00:16:06.608
Those are the ones you
mustn't be a couple with.

00:16:06.969 --> 00:16:10.290
Well, those will be a bit...
It could work for a while, but...

00:16:10.290 --> 00:16:12.980
The ideas was creating a cartoon

00:16:13.450 --> 00:16:17.106
an animated cartoon
of the different kind of relationships.

00:16:17.106 --> 00:16:19.256
How they're formed
how they're structured.

00:16:19.256 --> 00:16:23.886
And how they're holding up.
I'd like to finish with two quotes:

00:16:24.031 --> 00:16:28.201
From the English poet, Auden
that says the following:

00:16:28.201 --> 00:16:32.291
"We must attach or die."
He's English but seems Mediterranean.

00:16:32.473 --> 00:16:36.993
And the one from Sartre:
"Hell is other people."

00:16:36.993 --> 00:16:40.620
These two quotes represent the two sides.
And the idea of quoting is that,

00:16:40.620 --> 00:16:44.873
between these two poles, between that 
kind of suffocating relationships

00:16:44.873 --> 00:16:47.373
and living the others like hell,

00:16:47.373 --> 00:16:52.303
there's a wide range
of possible healthy relationships.

00:16:52.303 --> 00:16:56.723
And these healthy relationships are
very interesting for two reasons:

00:16:56.723 --> 00:17:02.487
First of all, because we really
know each other in relation to the rest.

00:17:03.057 --> 00:17:07.319
When I'm with the others, 
when I have conflicts with others,

00:17:07.319 --> 00:17:12.806
In those conflicts, those parts of me
that I don't like to see usually come out.

00:17:12.806 --> 00:17:16.813
The second reason why relationships
are interesting, I think, is because

00:17:16.813 --> 00:17:22.973
if conflicts are resolved they help
for us to learn how to love people.

00:17:22.973 --> 00:17:26.230
They are fallible, they make 
mistakes, they are wrong...

00:17:26.230 --> 00:17:27.950
Kind of like the rest of us, right?

00:17:27.950 --> 00:17:32.791
So you know, now when I'm done,
on the break, when you meet out there,

00:17:32.791 --> 00:17:39.793
get involved, as it says,
get involved or whatever you want.

00:17:39.793 --> 00:17:43.943
Depend on each other, but, 
please, depend in a healthy way.

00:17:43.943 --> 00:17:45.163
Thank you very much!

00:17:45.163 --> 00:17:47.244
(Applause)

00:17:47.244 --> 00:17:48.403
Thank you.

00:17:48.403 --> 00:17:51.243
(Applause)