Boundaries or lack thereof in the Movies - Henry's Crime

I just watched the movie Henry's Crime with Keanu Reeves, James Cann and Vera Farmiga.

In this movie Henry has an "empty life", there isn't anything "wrong" with it.. he has a wife, a job, a car, a house.. yet he is obviously empty inside.
Codependency does that to you.

He has almost no internal boundaries, he agrees to stuff and doesn't really know why.. he has difficulty in saying "NO" to almost everybody.

Early in the movie a high school friend shows up on his door step, the guy is a shyster, a petty crook, a manipulator.. in short he is a predator and remembers that Henry is "prey"

codependents frequently set themselves up as "prey"

OR.. being Prey is intolerable.... so codas often can cover up their deep rooted feelings of inadequacy by becoming manipulative or even aggressive, bullies are more codependent than the people they prey on.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/henrys_crime_2010/

Henry wants out of his life.. it feels so empty he would rather go to jail for a crime he did not commit

Psychologicial Reversal - Part Of You Wants Something And You Want Something Else

What is Psychological Reversal?
In 1980 top American psychologist Dr Roger Callahan invented a new treatment for psychological problems called Thought Field Therapy (TFT).
Source WorldwideHealth.com

In context of his audio series, Dr Robert Anthony explains Psychological Reversal as "our sub conscious is holding some contradictory interntion than our conscious mind"

"... to put it simply, you want something, and your sub conscious doesn't"

Similar to and often in combination to what Family Systems Theory calls "secondary gain"

What is Secondary Gain?

Secondary gain is a psychiatric term meaning that a person has a hidden reason for holding onto an undesirable condition. Frequently this reason is unconscious. It is obviously unconscious because the loss of holding onto the condition is often far greater than the perceived gain.

For example, this term is often used in chronic pain management. Chronic pain is pain that continues on past the time of an injury being healed, often having no apparent cause in the present. Finding and releasing the perception of secondary gain, such as the attention one receives, monetary compensation for disability, or just the need to deny the original cause of the pain, can greatly contribute to healing.
Source Circles Of Light

This is not to be confused with Reverse Psychology according to Dictionary.com:

a method of getting another person to do what one wants by pretending not to want it or to want something else or something more.

This site is for informational purposes only: Disclaimer: if you are in crisis contact a local to you hotline and/ or seek professional psychiatric help

Status Quo, your family will not want you to get better

What came first?
the chicken or the egg?

With boundaries it's not just "YOUR boundaries", it's your families boundaries that are in play.

You can't be a victim in a vacuum

What does this mean in English?

You realize you have less than functional boundaries
what does that mean?

You let others (allow others, fail to object to...) treat you with a lack of respect
why would they do that?

Boundaries aren't "you" or "about you", they are "ABOUT" the interaction/ the interplay/ an interpersonal relationship

The "pecking order" is currently interpreted by others as "you are one down" making them "one up"

"OneUpmanship" is THE underlying theme in codependency.

the other people who interact with you, for what ever reason, (doesn't matter if the egg came first or the chicken came first), they LIKE being "one up"

Let's say you have a history of drug abuse, that means someone else has had to "cover for you", you have let someone down, now more than likely that person is a family member

After a while they will resent (rightfully so) the fact that you've failed them in some way

Soon after that they will "collect injustices", you will be running a "defiecit" with this family member

What niether of you realize is, without them "setting out to do so", they "LIKE" being "one up"

Let's say time passes, you "get better"

the family member in question doesn't realize they WANT the status quo to change, they LIKE being one up...

Now you need to restructure your boundaries with that person

.... and you're shocked to find out, they actually don't WANT YOU TO GET BETTER