In psychology there is such a concept - secondary benefit. This is a hidden bonus that is obtained as a result of seemingly useless behavior. An example of secondary benefit is often given to a person who gets sick intentionally (sometimes in secret from himself) in order to get the desired attention and care of others that comes with the disease.
Even more often, “profitable” helplessness is deliberately practiced in order to shift heavy responsibilities onto the shoulders of others. Trying to extract secondary benefits, they pretend to be incapable and weak so that the demanding people around them will lag behind, taking full responsibility upon themselves.
In early childhood, the child intuitively senses what role to play in order to obtain the desired benefit. But over the years, he gets used to this role - he accepts his pretense as nature. For example, not wanting to strain his mind, he feigns an inability to understand, and over time he himself begins to believe that this is his real insurmountable weakness. Subsequently, an adult person continues again and again, out of a long-standing habit, to close himself off from the need to turn on his thinking. As a result, he really becomes stupid and inhibited both in the eyes of others and in his own.
Often, the fear of disturbing one’s high self-esteem in real life, the reluctance to overcome difficulties and bear responsibility for one’s own passivity, is “profitably” covered up by an external impossibility - they say, our country is inconvenient for initiatives, the society is unfair, or the tyrant spouse does not give rest.
I recently gave another clear example in an article about laziness - this is a person who is constantly “distracted” from supposedly desired sports activities, as if forced to sit in a soft place against his will.
You already understand what really distracts him, right?
The real, but unrecognized desire that drives behavior is the secondary benefit. Laziness, its clear manifestation, is a refusal to recognize your prevailing desire to do exactly what you are doing when you shirk the things approved by your conscience.
And the top of the “hit parade” of popular aspirations, which the mind disavows, is headed by a sense of self-importance. They cover it up depending on the situation, with anything - noble intentions, defense of truth and justice, health benefits - any pretext that will not choke the conscience. A banal example is a luxurious item, bought in words for “business”, but in reality – for show-off. He spoke about this in more detail on progressman.ru in the article “ChSV-2”.
Secondary benefit - escape into illness
Secondary benefit is the benefit that a person receives at the stage when painful symptoms have already formed the disease .
This is a kind of “additional profit” that a person does not always count on when consciously or unconsciously deciding to get sick. Without provoking new symptoms of the disease, secondary benefit stimulates the consolidation of the disease and psychological resistance to cure. For example, if quarrels in the family or at work occur regularly, the secondary benefit may be increased blood pressure with ongoing headaches. Like primary, secondary benefit manifests itself externally and internally. At the external level, these are the advantages that a person can receive in interpersonal relationships and current life situations. On the internal side – the opportunity to satisfy your narcissistic needs. Since Freud, psychiatrists have called this phenomenon “flight into illness,” where the symptoms of the disease become “pleasant and desirable.”
A classic example: the first attack of bronchial asthma in a child, which occurred at the time of a fierce parental quarrel. Seeing the child’s condition, the parents immediately forget about the quarrel and join forces in helping. This is how the child receives the primary benefit from the unconsciously arising symptom. Further, his unconscious establishes a logical connection between peace in the family and the illness he is experiencing, but at the level of secondary benefit.
In any illness there are two components: meaning and a set of satisfied needs. As long as there is meaning and an unsatisfied need, a person is sick.
What to do with the benefits?
I offer two options.
1. Consciously refuse benefits. Next to each benefit, write at least three alternatives that will help you get what you want when achieving the goal.
For example, personal free time is important to you. It seems to you that there will not be enough of him in the relationship. As alternatives you can:
- Improve your communication and negotiation skills. This will allow you to explain to your partner what is important to you without quarrels or scandals.
- Look for a partner with the same values as you. Do not hesitate to ask what is important to him (her) in a relationship, and also tell him what you are waiting for.
- Think about how to set priorities without infringing on your freedom. For example, switch to remote work if your partner works in the office, plan not only joint weekends.
2. Give up the goal for a while. Sometimes it happens that the list of benefits turns out to be very “juicy and tasty”; you understand that there are more advantages in the current situation. Then for a while, six months to a year, you can abandon the goal. Perhaps you will use this period to work on your values and beliefs and be able to return to your goal at a more appropriate moment.
Five secondary benefits from Carl and Stephanie Simonton
Psychologists Carl and Stephanie Simonton mentioned the main benefits that a person’s illness brings to them:
- Temporarily leaving a situation that causes discomfort and complex inconvenient problems that require solutions. The subconscious, “keeping its hand on our pulse,” will always signal us when the body or psyche needs a break. An example of such a reaction is heaviness or pain in the head. This makes ORZ a great way to spend the last week before a planned vacation at home. Moreover, work is like a bone in the throat.
- An opportunity to receive the missing portion of love, care and attention from those around you. Most often, loved ones become donors of positive emotions.
- Comfortable conditions for the redistribution of mental energy, which allows you to concentrate on solving the problem. This factor greatly helps psychotherapists when working with couples.
- An incentive to re-evaluate oneself as a person and correct the stereotypes and behavior patterns used. The disease, in this case, is a warning from the body and subconscious, giving a person time to reassess his way of life and search for alternative areas of activity.
- Complete leveling, or a significant reduction in the level of demands placed on a person by others, or by oneself. This secondary benefit, oddly enough, is often sought out by members of “workaholic” groups – people suffering from addictions or eating disorders.
WHAT'S THE POINT?
Psychologist and physician Stephanie and Carl Simonton name five main “meanings” of illness:
1. Allows you to “get away” from an uncomfortable situation and solve a complex problem.
2. Provides an opportunity to receive care, love, and attention from others.
3. Creates conditions for the reorientation of mental energy necessary to resolve the problem.
4. Provides an incentive to re-evaluate oneself as an individual and change habitual patterns of behavior.
5. Reduces or completely eliminates the need to meet the requirements set by yourself and the people around you.
Secondary gain, like “honest” blackmail
A lonely old woman, in a fit of revelation, confessed to a psychotherapist that she was ready to die from the disease that she had been diagnosed with. In return, she would like one thing - to see her son more often. Because he, having started a family and become a respectable father of the family, completely forgot the way to home. Such secondary gain, in the language of psychotherapists, is called “honest blackmail.”
Sometimes illness becomes a way for a person to protect himself from something that, in his opinion, poses a more serious danger. This could be the threat of dismissal, divorce or other large-scale life troubles. This is exactly how a man explains why he can leave his wife and go to his young mistress when his wife is “seriously ill.”
You have the “right” to complain.
The desire to feel right is one of the deepest drivers of human behavior. It can be worked on, but with great difficulty. Even if you free yourself from a bunch of your complexes, the subconscious desire to feel right will continue to control you on the sly (ask me how I know this).
But if a “worked” person still has a chance to notice in himself the machinations of the desire to be right, the victim has almost no such chances. The victim mentality is precisely based on the fact that the victim is not just playing his own games, he is also justifying
their. Her sense of rightness is systematically reinforced and rooted in the complaints that the victim expresses against people or circumstances that are supposedly to blame for the fact that life is not sugar.
When you shift responsibility for your life from yourself to circumstances, you feel as if you have the “right” to complain about these circumstances.
If you take responsibility for your life, you will eventually see that you yourself are to blame for everything, and there will be nothing to complain about except about your own idiocy. But there will be no one to complain to, so you won’t be able to complain about anything at all.
Fear of big goals and change
There is an opinion that each disease can be associated with a certain psychological problem, that “all diseases are caused by nerves.” A mystery for medicine is presented by apparently completely healthy patients who demonstrate all the symptoms of a certain disease, without “apparent” reasons. This is exactly the situation when the reason is the search for secondary benefits, for which no cure has yet been invented.
Example: one patient, for several years, diligently collected several phobias at once, including claustrophobia, cardiophobia - fear of dying from heart disease, fear of unfamiliar food due to fear of an allergic reaction. Considering that at her age the woman had an unusually healthy young heart, and never suffered from allergies a single day in her life. At the moment of “insight,” she revealed to the psychotherapist that “... She is mortally afraid of another, better life!”
In our example, the person was ready to acquire many medical problems and artificial restrictions in order to forever push away the problem of personal unfulfillment. And in fact, why strive for something and achieve something if, firstly, “I have chronic depression and am not interested in anything at all.” And secondly - “if something interested me, it would probably only be until the moment of dramatic changes”?
Having puzzled the psychotherapist, she soon gave up on treatment and found an outlet - “the love of her life”, who created all the conditions for maintaining her phobias.
People pay attention to you.
If it is not you, but circumstances, who are to blame for your misfortunes, then you are a good person. Everyone loves you and pays attention to you.
We can take an example from childhood. When we were sick, Mommy and Daddy bought us medicine, brought us food in bed, talked to us kindly, comforted us, told us to lie in bed and not go to school... this is almost the diametric opposite of how many parents behave with the child when he is healthy.
Very quickly the child learns that if he wants to receive increased attention from his parents, he only needs to get sick. Then, in adulthood, he stops using diseases, but the tactics remain the same.
When you're a victim, all you have to do to get people's attention is demonstrate your helplessness by making yourself look like a victim. Your friends and girlfriends will immediately begin to agree with you, and you will receive your “dose” of attention and approval.
Another thing is that if you discard MF, you will lose this “easy attention”. If you are now fat, poor and without a boyfriend, because your metabolism is bad, the economy is in the ass, and men are assholes, and then suddenly you stop changing the arrows, find reasons in yourself and begin to change rapidly, it’s oh so good for your friends and girlfriends I won't like it.
I would bet that if you lose weight in the next six months, find yourself a great job and a boyfriend, most of your friends will turn their backs on you. As they say, it's lonely at the top. If you stop playing the victim, you will lose the old simple ways to attract the attention of loved ones.
Hide and seek
Suffering is the most fertile ground for escape from oneself and self-justification. A suffering person always finds meaning in living. Life acquires a special dimension, value, meaning and clarity. Pain and fears help create an additional wall from reality and oneself. This is why people so carefully protect the true causes of their problems from outsiders. Pain, fears and unimportant routine are all ways to avoid being face-to-face with yourself and your life. Time crammed full of things to do, constant overload, poor sleep and unhealthy diet guarantee nervous breakdowns or exhaustion.
The philosophy of secondary gain is simple - everything and everyone is more important than myself. I am not yet ready to solve the piles of my own problems.
You get what you need.
If you systematically behave like a victim, then other people will treat you like a victim.
Those who have taken responsibility for their lives will be in a different orbit. The energy emanating from you will repel them, and such people will not stay in your life.
But those people who are regularly present in your life are most likely playing your games and indulging your complaints. You receive not only attention, not only pity, not only favorable behavior, but also quite “concrete” benefits.
Let’s say if you like to complain about the men you date, then you will attract “white knights” into your life who will try to “save” you. Such characters will follow your sacrifice in the most real and material way.
Being a victim is just awesome
Secondary benefit of the victim and “codependent” rescuers
Secondary benefits from “social” diseases deserve special attention. Let's think: who will be the first to suffer if an alcoholic or drug addict with experience is cured? Of course, the entire burden of such changes will fall on the immediate family. First of all, those who fought for many years to save a drowning man and saw in this the highest meaning of their whole life. It’s a paradox, but it is they who often unconsciously oppose the physical and psychological recovery of the victim. In case of recovery of an addicted person, the usual meaning of life disappears - they are left alone with themselves.
In turn, the “victim,” dependent on his addiction, has a socially disadvantaged status that promises secondary benefits. And in fact, they have no reason to bother themselves with thoughts about the future, since there is no goal in life. They have no reason to put effort into self-development, waste time on studying, and energy on earning money. “Are you having a bad time?” - You ask. “Not a fact,” comes the balanced answer.
Professional psychologists working with street children will say that six months of a teenager’s stay in the realities of the “street” will require one to two years of rehabilitation under normal conditions in order to return their psyche to its starting point. If he lives on the street for more than two years, all known measures of pedagogical influence no longer work. In this case, social secondary benefits are: the absence of any coercion; the opportunity to live not as society dictates, but “as you want”; specific conditions of survival.
Despite the obvious disadvantages and significant risks, such an existence turns out to be attractive in its own way. That is why Mark Twain’s hero, Huckleberry Finn, even in the most favorable conditions, repeated to himself: “... and I’ll probably run away again.” And he ran away.
You don't get criticized as much.
If, by playing the victim, you have abdicated responsibility for your decisions that ultimately led to your current situation, then others will not criticize you as much.
Almost everyone plays the sacrifice, at least a little bit. So they won't criticize you too much. They play the same game. They will blame “their” circumstances, and you will blame “yours”. And no one will criticize anyone that much.
It's another matter if you take responsibility for yourself.
It’s another matter if you are to blame for being in this relationship.
It’s another matter if it’s your fault that you always have a problem with money.
It's another matter if it's your fault that you can't lose weight.
Since you are to blame, then you can be blamed, you can be criticized. In addition, you yourself will begin to blame and criticize yourself until you work through the feelings of guilt and self-hatred...
Stop playing the victim and be prepared for more criticism in your life. This is the price for freedom.
Delayed secondary benefit
Sometimes a secondary benefit, which a person did not even think about, catches up with him after a certain time. Imagine a girl who breaks her leg out of the blue and at the most inopportune time. A crucial moment and the threat of layoffs at a promising job, an upcoming trip abroad in a month, etc. According to the usual logic, she should have been present at work, flashed before her boss and completed work with the project.
The girl accidentally found out that the fracture that left her bedridden had brought quite tangible benefits a few days later, after taking a pregnancy test. Thanks to the fracture, she was able to spend the first critical three months at home. Today, years later, she remembers this turning point with gratitude. Without him, taking into account her medical record, everything could have ended completely differently.
People defend nothing as fiercely as their own pain and helplessness, which has become a habit. And most often, the underlying reason is the lack of purpose and desire to meet oneself.
Patients who are “accustomed” to being sick and “to the fullest” use of secondary benefits become a real challenge for the psychotherapist. They really don’t want to admit that the basis of a bunch of diseases is not harmful viruses and infections, but manifestations of laziness, fears and fear of responsibility, elevated to the level of a clinic. Most of us, yearning for warmth and attention, have at least once succumbed to the temptation to be the center of attention, even in such an unconventional way. The main thing is the other side of the coin, which we often forget about, or don’t even know about.
People feel sorry for you.
A related point to the previous one. Sometimes you just want people to feel sorry for you and comfort you. I would like your beliefs that you are good, and that circumstances or other people are bad, to be confirmed, assuring you that you are right.
After all, subconsciously, somewhere deep inside, you feel that you are engaged in self-deception, and that your offense is your fault, and that you are generally to blame for everything. And in order to muffle this deep-seated itching feeling, we need validation from loved ones, manifested in pity.
Now, if you get rid of MF, then you will no longer find any self-pity. True, you won't need it. Responsibility for your life and the desire to be pitied are incompatible. But at first, when you work on the MF, it will be a little tight.
Result
Secondary gain is a common cause of many problems and failures. Why is it still secondary? Because the primary thing is loss. In particular, such a loss may be illness. And only then the patient receives his “bonus” for losing - excessive attention from loved ones; the opportunity to completely legally take time off from work you don’t like, meeting with colleagues whose presence causes a nervous shock; or the opportunity to hold a loved one by your bed. And then along the long list of unfulfilled desires. In any case, the primary loss is from which the person himself suffers, and which is obvious to an external observer. The gain received unconsciously, in the form of secondary benefit, is very clearly felt, although it is not realized.
The very sequence of events determines the outcome. A person wants to get rid of a loss, but cannot and does not want to decide on this, since with a loss the benefit itself will melt away. In reality, a person either hangs around in illness, delaying his recovery, or hangs between two poles, periodically recovering and falling ill again. Alternatively, recovery from one illness and illness from another may occur.
If we describe the secondary cause in a few words, we can compare it to resistance. Moreover, we are not talking about resistance to something external, but resistance to the very possibility of change. In truth, a person is not at all inclined to get rid of the situation that worries him, although he himself is not aware of this fact.
What other benefits of loneliness are there?
- Sympathy and pity for others. Alone, it is easier to receive pity and support. You will always be a welcome guest among married friends with many children. A married friend who is tired of routine, looking at you, will most likely think that everything is fine and excellent in her life.
- Availability of free time. You can do whatever you want without taking into account the interests of others.
- The opportunity to remain yourself. When a person does not know his potential and is in no hurry to realize it, loneliness can be used as an excuse. “If my loved one were nearby, then I would... But now I’m alone and I can’t do anything.”
- Lack of everyday problems and routine. You don’t need to serve anyone, think about what to cook for dinner or what brand of refrigerator to choose.
So is it good or bad?
There are no absolutely bad and absolutely good things in nature, and there cannot be. We apply the subjective labels at our disposal ourselves. Consciousness helps us in this, and the unconscious reasons, sees further and deeper. It is able to see both sides of the coin, and white in black. Therefore, secondary benefit - as a tool that protects the human psyche - was, is and will be. The whole question comes down to how beneficial it is for us? To what extent can it determine/limit human behavior? To what extent is it realized?
Of course, for a person who knows his goal and is moving towards it, focusing on secondary benefits is one of the proven ways to deprive himself of any opportunity to change. As long as the secondary benefit exists, fundamental psychological changes will not be able to occur. And we are left with only two options: either identify it, realize it and make a decision on how to continue to be with it and at the same time with ourselves; or endure and perceive it as a fact until receiving it loses its meaning for us.
Imagine if your illness allowed you to hold on to your loved one. And now he is gone - the meaning was lost, but the illness also subsided. And no magic.
From the editor
"Women's loneliness. Can it not be tragic? is a book by the famous Russian publicist Marina Kravtsova, in which the author offers effective advice on overcoming this sad condition:.
Natalia Dorfman-Chiarini knows how to make loneliness your ally and stop feeling like an empty place if you are not in a relationship .
The Cartesian coordinate method is one way to look at a problem from different angles. How to make an informed decision using this method, coach, manager of psychological games Alexandra Moshchenskikh tells: .
Karpman triangle
The triangle greatly slows down the solution to a specific problem. For example, walking in a circle is called a “swing”, that is, a man is eager to go this way and that, a wife is sometimes nervous, then regrets, a mistress is sometimes nervous, then regrets. That is, torment comes from all sides. The problem won't end. There will be problems and suffering in any case.
Each of the heroes must make the following decision for themselves: “Why am I in this relationship? What does this relationship give me? How great is the degree of suffering in these relationships? How much can I be with this person?
It will be very good if all three are conscious people, and all three ask themselves these questions. It often happens that one of these three people who is in this triangle makes a decision and the chain falls apart. And then, going beyond this triangle, three people can become happy. Perhaps through some kind of kick, perhaps through some difficult events.
If this comes into the life of a particular person, then perhaps he is stuck, does not want to open his eyes to some situations, does not want to work, bear responsibility or change at all, and wants to “get stuck in the swamp.” This is the choice of everyone. Nobody accuses anyone of anything. Each person creates his own destiny.
Whining about bonuses
A typical example is that a person is constantly sick , his quality of life is definitely deteriorating, but at the same time he does not receive treatment, does not comply with doctors’ orders, that is, he does everything to continue to suffer. It would seem that a normal person should strive to be healthy, cheerful and energetic, but many people, although they constantly complain about their painful condition, are in no hurry to fight it. They are not in a hurry, because they “reap” the sympathy of others, a gentle attitude towards themselves (“you can’t upset dad, he has a heart”), attention to his person, help and care.
There are “misunderstood geniuses” who seem to be talented and capable, and their ideas are not empty - but they will either leave the project with a scandal, or quarrel with their partners, or suddenly do something rash - and that’s the end of the matter. Illogical? Yes. However, a person can insure himself in this way against the risk of failure, for example, from the collapse of self-esteem. His projects always collapse due to circumstances, accidents, someone else's will, and never because of his own mistakes. You can reassure yourself with this: “It was not I who made a mistake, it was not I who failed - it is the world that is cruel and unfair to talents.”
“Black sheep” can also benefit from their status. They are guaranteed to receive attention, albeit peculiar. If the family as a system in itself is not very healthy, then the household members also need their “black sheep”. Sometimes it is only on the discussion and condemnation of a family member who is “not like other normal people” that the whole system rests.
Naturally, such a strategy of behavior in a person is not formed from a good life.
As a rule, “eternal patients”, “misunderstood geniuses”, “black sheep”, “complainers” are people from dysfunctional families or people who have experienced significant life disasters that they were unable to cope with.
You feel like an interesting person who has something to tell others.
All your life’s troubles, for which you are actually to blame, are framed by your ego into very interesting stories in which you are good and “they” are bad. And what “lessons” do you learn from this, and what “emotions” do you get...
Coupled with your desire for the approval of others (which you successfully achieve through victim games), your sense of self-righteousness, the desire to be pitied, and the desire for attention, your endlessly generated stories give you the feeling that you are an interesting person with riches. life experiences that are very - VERY - important to share with other people.
So what, do you want to give this up? Do you really want to get rid of the victim mentality, knowing what you have to sacrifice (pun intended)?
After all, the only story that you will have after eliminating the MF is “I’m an idiot, and it’s all my fault, I have to sort everything out myself, there’s nothing to talk about.”
And how interesting an interlocutor are you after that? After this, how interesting are you as a person with rich (albeit negative) experience in “coping” with life’s troubles?
You are just an ordinary person, just like everyone else, alone with your idiocy.
How to deal with yourself?
But what if you suddenly discovered that this “complainer”, crushed by the burden of unsolvable problems, is you?
- Firstly, don’t blame yourself, and it doesn’t matter whether you find those same “secondary benefits” in your bad situation, or in fact, you sincerely want to change everything, but you can’t. Self-flagellation can be a fun activity, but, unfortunately or fortunately, it is absolutely useless for solving problems.
- Secondly, if possible, without unnecessary emotions and thoughts about the “cruel, unfair world,” analyze what is happening in your life (possibly with the help of a psychotherapist, written practices, or other methods).
Even if you were horrified to discover that you were still receiving some secondary benefits, this is not a death sentence, it is not a sin, and it does not make you a terrible person. This is just a reason to start changing your life for the better.
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aggressionvictimitysecondary gainchoicebenefitvictimviolenceresponsibilityself-esteemfreedomfear
