#klaus addiction and codebendency

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Three | The Dependent: Relapse

I want to look at Klaus’ arc in season two.  A lot of people disliked this arc because they believe it undid all the progress he made in the first season, or made a joke of his arc.  This is not true.  In fact, it’s a harmful view.  A relapse doesn’t necessarily mean starting from square one.  It doesn’t mean you have to go back to the start of the trail and walk the whole thing again.  A relapse means straying off the path—you can find your way back without going back to the beginning.  It does, however, suck, because the first few days and weeks of sobriety feel like years and there’s many a time when I’ve considered drinking again only to decide I just don’t want to go through the early days all over again.  Relapse is incredibly common and often considered part of recovery, not that that’s a reason to go ahead and do it.  But addicts who relapse often get treated like they’ve thrown away any progress they’ve made on themselves and they’re back to being the person they were at the start, when it’s important for their loved ones to be understanding and support them as they get back on track. Being treated like a failure only discourages them from getting back on the wagon.

Remember addiction isn’t a lifestyle.  It’s a coping method.  A maladaptive one, but still.  Going back to a bad coping mechanism doesn’t mean you might as well have never stopped doing it in the first place.  Truly, it just happens sometimes.

Here’s a secret about the twelve steps that somehow hasn’t made it into the mainstream: you don’t get to step twelve and consider yourself done.  Recovery isn’t going from point A to point B.  There is no finish line.  We’re all stumbling around trying to find our own way forward and we, being humans, tend to fuck it up.  Then we lose our way and we have to remember step one: we are powerless against the thing we’re addicted to.  We originally stopped fucking with it because we cannot moderate it.  And after a while of feeling in control of ourselves, we can forget that the only way forward is to cut ourselves off from it completely.

That being said? Klaus’ relapse could have been worse.  Alcoholism is not less dangerous than drug addiction, causing more deaths per year than all drug overdoses combined in the U.S., but Klaus has not yet gone back to drugs.  Withdrawal can be deadly if he drinks enough, but he doesn’t have to worry about his gin being laced with fentanyl.  Moreover, he sought Allison and talked to her about what made him relapse.  This is actually a huge deal.  Addicts deal with a loooooot of shame (don’t let Klaus’ act fool you), which leads them to self-isolate, which leads to loneliness and depression, which leads to more drinking.  The fact that she asked him what happened is also important, since the most prominent feature of a dysfunctional family is a lack or breakdown of communication, which all of these siblings share.

But most of all, most viewers won’t know why this relapse happened or why it was practically inevitable, going so far as to overestimate the amount of progress Klaus made to begin with, and that’s where I’m going to talk about what people in AA call a “dry drunk.”  At the end of season one and for the first half of season two, Klaus is a dry drunk, or someone who has stopped using their substances, but who has not replaced them with anything better.  Rather, he has transferred his addictive behavior to something else that is also unhealthy—namely, attention.  It seems like a running issue in this family that everyone either mistakes attention for love, or thinks they cannot be loved and attention is the closest thing they can get.  I think Allison and Vanya are the former while Klaus strikes me as the latter. Once Klaus tires of all the attention due to it not being as fulfilling as real love, he leaves, and a vacuum reappears in him that will shortly be filled by alcohol.  Let’s peek at the scene where this happens, mostly as an example but also because I love the song “Renegade” and this is a great excuse to listen to it while I transcribe this.

Ben: It’s not too late, Klaus.

Klaus: Oh, I think we both know that it is! (here Klaus is making excuses, embracing his learned helplessness and denying responsibility before he has even started drinking).

Ben: You really want to throw three years of sobriety out the window? (a fallacy—three years of sobriety don’t suddenly mean nothing just because of a relapse, but Ben is aware how hard it is to get sober for the first or tenth time because he went through it with Klaus)

Klaus: In case you didn’t notice, the last three years have been a royal shitshow! (because other than not drinking or using, he did not actually try to change his mental state for the better)

Ben: And this is only going to make it worse! (true—once you are drinking, you are no longer in control)

Klaus: Maybe! Let’s find out. (pretending he doesn’t know Ben is right)

In order to actually get sober and stay sober, he has to be willing to work on the issues that made him start using in the first place, and he’s not even willing to acknowledge those things, let alone work on them.  His relapse doesn’t signal that he has lost progress so much as it shows how an addict who stops using but hasn’t added anything else to their life hasn’t made as much progress as people think.  He needs a hobby.  He needs more than one friendship.

His cult doesn’t count.

No, seriously.  His cult was just another way for him to get high. Then the feelings of self-loathing and shame caught up with him.  I mean, look at his first scene with Keechie and tell me he doesn’t feel more guilty than boosted when he’s adored by him.

Credit: Circumstellars

It’s not just the cult he was running from, it was this.  The cult no longer gets him high.  It just reminds him of what a terrible person he is.  Running is a major theme of this season.  Every character is doing it to some degree.  Hell, it’s why Five’s plans for saving the world were doomed to fail—they were all about fleeing 1963 before they could cause the apocalypse. The world was only saved when they turned around and helped the person who kept causing the end of the world. Facing, not running.

By the end of season one, Klaus started to see his powers as, well, empowering, whereas before, he’d seen them as a curse.  That gave him motivation to get sober for his own sake and took care of one major reason for his addiction (the fear of his powers).  It still left the emotional reasons for his addictions unaddressed, the ones related to the abuse he endured.  He was still running from those.  To really make progress, he needs to be willing to feel terrible for a while as he confronts how much pain he is in and works through trauma he’d rather pretend doesn’t exist.  He needs to build new habits and develop new coping skills.  Specifically, he needs to learn self-management of his emotional dysregulation and grounding techniques for emotional distress.  And that’s fucking hard.  It’s so much easier to drink when you’re in distress, especially since he was never taught a better way growing up.  He missed out on that being built into his development.  I’m sure he heard what group therapists parroted in rehab, but your gut reaction to that shit is that it’s like fighting a house fire by spitting at it.  Thing is, coping skills take time to develop, but they are much more effective than alcohol.

It’s good that Klaus got sober.  It’s good that it lasted as long as it did.  Ben’s dismay at his relapse is warranted.  But from a writing standpoint, it’s so smart and so realistic and shows the complexities of addiction recovery.  It’s not clean, it’s not pretty, and it always gets worse before it gets better.

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#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #tua meta #klaus hargreeves #dear god author is long-winded #I swear there is ben content coming

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Four | The Dependent: It’s About Isolation, Not Addiction

This is the crux of it—Klaus’ character arc is not really about his addiction.  Even his addiction isn’t really about his addiction. No one’s is.  It’s another piece of baggage, but it’s a piece of baggage the addict takes on in response to pain.  Something I previously said was that Klaus has chosen the master he can bear. The other masters, the fear, shame, and memories of his father, that’s all something he’s still running from.  His addiction is a reaction.  And even though he relapsed, he has made tremendous strides in terms of what his character arc is really about.  It’s the thing that’s been found to have the single biggest effect on addiction and sobriety: isolation.

Just look at where he is in the beginning of season one versus the end of season two.  At the beginning of season one, Klaus is terrified of his powers and of the dead, but slowly begins to realize that in terms of his fear, the only way out is through.  More importantly, though, the devil-may-care attitude toward his family changes after he meets Dave and learns that he can, in fact, be loved. The episode of his return, he begins to really bond with his siblings, starting with Diego.  At the start of season two, he has been sober for three years, suggesting he has found ways to cope if he hasn’t overcome his fear altogether. In season one, even at the end of it, he’s resistant to the attempts the others make to get him involved and volunteers for practically nothing.  At the end of season two, he is the first to choose to go with Vanya to the farm to help Harlan even though there’s no clear use for his power there.  His usual excuse that his power is “useless” doesn’t stop him—he goes because he doesn’t want Vanya to face the situation alone. That’s a massive difference of attitude. And it’s that change of attitude that makes me feel like he is still making progress against his addiction because he is finally reaching out to his support network and thinking beyond himself.  He still has a long-ass way to go, having not even touched his very pervasive post-traumatic stress from both his childhood and the Vietnam war, and I suspect he’ll be struggling with his grief for Ben for some time, but you know what?  A start’s a start.  And I wasn’t ready for Klaus’ issues to all get solved in two seasons.

All of this progress has been made, and I think it’s a mistake to overlook it strictly because we’re seeing Ben and Klaus’ relationship closer-up than before.  I don’t think Klaus is more of an asshole this season.  He was an asshole last season, too.  Two things are different this season: he endures less new trauma so we feel less sorry for him, and we’re being shown more instances of how unhealthy his relationship with Ben really is.  Klaus gets the blame for the latter because, and I will go into greater detail on this in the next post, codependents are seen as selfless and good by society’s standards while addicts are seen as losers and bad people.  Yes, Klaus is shitty to Ben sometimes, but the reverse is true as well.  People just see Ben’s actions differently because they are motivated by another person, as if that alone makes them good actions.  Klaus has made a lot of progress.  He wasn’t featured quite as prominently as he was in season one, but that doesn’t make him less complex, nor does it mean his arc this season was unimportant.  To the contrary, his relapse and the loss of Ben will change a lot going forward, as will his closer relationships with his other siblings.

Speaking as an extroverted child of a dysfunctional family, fans also need to reconsider the idea that it’s only Klaus’ siblings who are maintaining the distance between them.  Klaus is an escapist.  Talking too much to his family invites too many serious conversations.  When they do talk, he maintains distance the way extroverts tend to—by talking their ear off about anything but the serious thing, distraction, redirection, and, if necessary, making the other person uncomfortable.  If we’re good at it, we can push people away by coming toward them.  He relishes attention and company—demands it, even—but it took a nigh-on Herculean effort for Diego to even get him to admit anything was wrong after he came back from Vietnam.  It took less for him to open up to Allison in the second season, showing, perhaps, some character development.  In both cases, Klaus’ siblings rewarded him with comfort and companionship.  This is so reflective of the loved ones of many an addict.  Any number of them have this fantasy of the addict coming to them for help and them being able to be there for them and be a comfort and help them get sober.  The reality is that addicts use substances and/or behaviors so they don’t have to deal with the thing their loved one wants them to talk about.  Klaus is no different.

It’s no coincidence that the inciting factor of the relapse was a social one--the diner incident with Dave. Remember Dave is the entire reason Klaus stopped settling for a life he floated through half-aware, too numb to care about no one caring about him.  Dave taught him he is capable of being loved for who he is.  In the years since he lost him, I think Klaus has sugar-coated Dave’s memory in a lot of ways, forgotten he was a human and not some angelic ideal incapable of dealing harm for bad reasons.  Being hit by him and seeing Dave take on a shade of his own abusive father was devastating for Klaus.  He knew, logically, that that’s not the sort of man Dave really is, that the pressures of being gay in the 1960’s (in Texas of all places) got to him, but the fact is, Klaus will always remember it.  The image of the love of his life so carefully kept in his heart is now tainted by the feeling of having his lip split open by him.  In a lot of ways, Dave became lost to him in that moment in a way he hadn’t been before, only increasing the feeling of isolation.  It would have been enough to lead to him deciding to drink again, with or without the CPTSD and comorbid emotional dysregulation.

But even what came before that day at the diner had an effect on Klaus’ isolation.  He left his cult.  It was an unhealthy behavior and it hardly brought out the best in him, but it was a stopgap measure for the howling loneliness.  None of his relationships there had any meaning, but he wasn’t walled up in an apartment somewhere, bored out of his mind and alone with his own thoughts.

So Klaus was a dry drunk at the start of the season.  He couldn’t deal with his own self-loathing sober, so he first reached out for other peoples’ esteem instead of building his own self-esteem.  He opened up to Diego (a little) in the first season after it being dragged from him.  It was easier when Allison asked him why he relapsed, and then in the salon, he didn’t even need to be prompted in order to open up to his sisters.  He’s getting better at this with practice!  And it does take practice.

That’s what makes sobriety stick.

Next up: The Codependent!

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#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #tua meta #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #there are lots of reasons to be proud of s2 klaus #not the botched retelling of the frog and scorpion story #or the cult #or the relapse #but did you see him zoom to rescue allison #my shipper heart was distracted by being broken during that scene when i first watched it #is it rallison or almond? #either way klaus sees police and zooms without ben even telling him to #though in s1 with luther he was sick as a dog #so I guess we can forgive his lack of enthusiasm for rescuing him then #still

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Seven | The Codependent: Hope, Love, and Letting Go

I’ve talked for a while about the ugly aspects of Ben and Klaus’ relationship.  Now, I want to talk about its beauty and poignancy, including this fucking moment:

 Credit: tuagifs

 Because despite their relationship being codependent, there was every reason to root for these two.  Relationships don’t have to end just because they are codependent.

There needed to be more boundaries set by both Ben and Klaus.  I mean, look at Klaus’ sorry excuses for ground rules for the possession.  There were only three: don’t look at the junk, don’t cut the hair, and don’t eat the dairy.  Come on. These two never learned how to set healthy boundaries because their childhood was entirely boundary-free. There wasn’t a boundary that could be set that their father wouldn’t violate, and that taught them both that boundaries weren’t important and/or would always be crossed, so they were pointless.  

But for all of the dysfunction, there are many things they do well.  Things that prove they love each other.  Throughout both seasons, we see Klaus habitually doing little things to make Ben feel like he’s part of the world—pouring him coffee, asking where he wants to get dinner, opening the car door for him, things that he definitely doesn’t have to do and could only have one reason for doing. These are things that reinforce Ben’s personhood, and if I’m correct about how reluctant Ben is to ask for his needs to be met, they’re things Klaus does without being asked.  And when Ben does manage healthy support, he nails it.  When Klaus decides to get clean, Ben isn’t just there for him—he encourages Klaus to reach out for the support of others, as well.  He tells him when he’s proud, he comforts him when he’s in withdrawal, and sometimes, he just hangs out with him without strings attached or unsolicited advice.

The tendency in life as well as fandom is to label one of these people as toxic and encourage the other to cut them out of their lives.  That’s not the right way for everyone and every relationship.  Neither Ben nor Klaus are hopeless.  They genuinely love each other.  Not every difficult relationship has to end.  But as it stood, they were all each other had, and a single person cannot meet 100% of another person’s needs.  Klaus could never be everything to Ben, nor vice versa, and neither is bad for failing to meet that impossible standard.

These two would have been capable of a healthy relationship, but they were never capable of healing each other.  Trying to do so is where it got fucked up.  By the time the show begins, Ben is far too much of a mess to accomplish what he was trying to accomplish with Klaus.  He always needed to let go of his mission.  Then, they could have just been brothers.

A wonderful example of a codependent relationship becoming a healthy friendship is on the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend between the characters Rebecca and Paula.  They explain how to move from codependency to a healthy friendship beautifully when Rebecca tells Paula there’s to be no more “big spoon” or “little spoon,” because “You know what size spoons fit best together?  Same-size spoons!”  Ben needed to quit being Klaus’ big spoon and become his equal.  He also needed Klaus to quit gatekeeping his access to the others, which was Not Great and contributed a lot to the codependency.

A fan theory has been put forth that I like: that the reason Klaus kept Ben to himself (in the second season—he wasn’t exactly trying to hide him from the others in the first season) was because he was insecure, uncertain if Ben would want to talk to him if he had the choice to talk to other people, or that the other siblings would consider his company worthwhile aside from being able to conjure Ben.  I buy this because we see Klaus questioning his worth in the eyes of the others, and the way he words his reasoning for Ben to stay with him.  He frames Ben’s relationship with him with a sort of hostage vibe (“You don’t even have a body without me.  You need me!”).  In this light, I don’t think Ben is the only one of the two who would settle for being needed rather than loved.  This is by no means an excuse to perpetuate a very harmful problem, but it is a likely explanation.  Klaus is clearly terrified of losing Ben, so he makes sure he has incentive to stick around.

Little did he know Ben was sticking around out of his own free will anyway.

Ben has shelved his own needs and wants for years.  That’s not something Klaus is doing to him, it’s something he’s doing to himself.  Therefore, Ben has the power to stop.  The twelve steps aren’t that different for codependents as for alcoholics, and there are still steps devoted to making amends to people they have hurt.  The striking thing everyone has to realize, especially the codependents, is that hurting themselves counts as hurting someone.  It is a moral failing.  You have been harmful to a person and there’s no excuse.  If someone is being hurt, it cannot be the right way, even if the person being hurt is yourself.

Was I ready for Ben to go? Fuck no.  However.

If he had to go, I’m glad it wasn’t because of Klaus.  I’m glad it was because of Vanya.  First of all, it means he gets to finally detach before he goes out, to be a hero for someone else, something I so wanted to see.

But also?  ALSO?  Think about what it means that he stood in that hallway, locking eyes with Klaus, hesitating to do what only he could do.  Think about what it means that he knew what saving Vanya would do to him, and he did it despite his years of codependency with Klaus.

Well, the world needed to be saved.  He may have been hesitating to leave Klaus while he was vulnerable, but seeing him in particular helpless and minutes from dying gave him the motivation to move forward.  But I also think he knows Klaus will be okay without him.  Why?  Because his last message to Klaus wasn’t advice, it wasn’t affirmation, it wasn’t “I know you can do this.”  It was a confession he owed to him.  A confession that also amounted to admitting he’d wanted to be around Klaus all this time, that despite how fraught their relationship had become, he liked his brother and would rather be with him than in some possible paradise.  It was pure honesty and love, not some final measure taken to try to get Klaus through the rest of his life.  So yeah, I think he believes Klaus will be okay without him.

I can only think that he’s come to believe that by watching Klaus draw closer to the others.  Even though he has broken his sobriety, Klaus is closer to his family than ever.  Ben can see that.  He sees it, and knows he is free to do what must be done—to be a part of the team, instead of being just Klaus’ attachment.  Klaus finding his family leaves Ben free to find his family as well.

Side note about the hallway: Vanya was going to blow up the building any second, and Klaus wasn’t reaching for Dave’s dog tags—he was looking Ben in the eyes.  I don’t get super into the ships on this show because the family relationships give me all the feels I require.

And if we were gonna lose one of the Hargreeveses, it kind of had to be Ben.  For everyone else, their narrative was about coming together, but Ben’s required him to let go.  It just really sucks that in doing that, he let go of everything else, too.  Recovery from addiction is grueling work; recovery from codependency is joyful, liberating work.  It’s sad he never got to do it.  This shouldn’t have been the choice they had to make or the life they were boxed into.  It just was.

I don’t want anyone to look at this relationship and think of it as bad or altogether toxic.  This relationship isn’t bad, it’s tragic. They love each other, but each of them has such shitty self-esteem that they think they have to work too hard or have some contingency to keep each other.  In the end, Ben moves on for good before they’re able to fix what went wrong, and the effect it has on Klaus is immediate.  Don’t believe me?  Fucking look.

 Credit: tuagifs

 But for all that, Ben’s last message to Klaus struck a chord in him.  The range of expressions on Klaus’ face when he heard it tells an entire story.  When he first asks Vanya if Ben said anything about him, he looks embarrassed, rolls his eyes, and appears to brace himself for disappointment.  When Vanya nods, he looks apprehensive.  That’s some shitty self-esteem, folks.  The last thing he expects is to hear that Ben stuck around because he wanted to, not because he had to.  And as crappy as their communication always was, especially given Klaus’ denial and Ben’s bluster, I’d be surprised if Klaus had ever expressed that he felt guilt over “making” Ben stay.  In that case, Ben knew anyway.  Ben saw more than what Klaus told him about.

And that, ultimately, is the beauty and tragedy of these two brothers.  Both of them have been written off and overlooked for so long, they never realized how seen they really were—until they lost each other.

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#fortunately this part is not nearly as long as the last one #author is usually concise #does not understand what happened with this series #tried to edit out as much as possible #is not peter jackson #thank god #ben hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #the umbrella academy #tua meta #tua #umbrella academy

[allisoooon]

On the topic of Luther and Allison, you mentioned in your Codebendency posts- which are great btw- that they are the second and third most codependent respectively. Would you be willing to elaborate a bit more on that? As well as the other siblings if you have any takes there. Only if you have the time and motivation of course. I just haven't seen anyone go as deeply into that topic before your posts and it's really interesting.

Thank you, and happily. This subject is close to my heart.

Codependency is a set of learned, maladaptive behaviors that happen when your personality becomes subservient to another. It’s sort of like being a pathological, compulsive big spoon. Someone who refuses to cut the cord. You’ve decided you can’t be loved, so you will settle for being needed, and if you’re not needed, you lack purpose in life. This most notably happens in relationships with addicts, hence Ben being a prime example, but it also happens a lot with people attached to narcissists or people with BPD, or caretakers of the chronically ill. This is not the same thing as being selfless or generous, but can be considered almost a type of addiction. It can even come with a kind of sick high, in my experience. All seven of these kids are children of a narcissist, putting them all at risk. I wouldn’t say they all are codependent—really only two of them are—just that they were all put in a position where they could have learned that set of behaviors.

The Hargreeves siblings who seem least codependent to me are the ones who have different social priorities than appeasing their abuser. Two, Diego and Vanya, have been deliberately pitted against their siblings, so their resentment puts more boundaries (walls, even) between them and the others than is typical of codependents. Rather than appeasing people, they’re working on proving their adequacy. Then Klaus just doesn’t seem to have a personality built for codependency. In fact, he’s the sort of person who attracts codependents like a magnet, more than any of the others by far, thanks to his addiction, learned helplessness, and a whopping case of CPTSD (codependents head straight for the ones everyone else has given up on). He lacks any sense of compliance. All three of these siblings have wretched self-esteem and completely valid reactions to abuse, but they’re not codependent.

Luther seems to have diminished himself so he can anticipate the needs of the abuser more easily. This allows him to protect both himself and his siblings, but at great cost. Allison’s issues are more about boundaries, and I’m a little less clear about Five, but those are the three that seem most codependent to me apart from Ben.

Oldest children in the family, in my experience, seem slightly more prone to this, though it wasn’t the case in my family. Oldest children are often expected to look after their younger siblings, and that’s really the position Luther is in as “Number One.” I’m not sure how many people realize that. Again, this is scarcely a hard and fast rule—I had Luther’s role in my family, and I was the youngest. My oldest brother was the Scapegoat (a role I think taken by either Diego or Klaus) and my other brother was the Golden Child (Allison). I think I’ve seen the kind of role I took on described as the Hero, but I relate more to the term Normalizer. I was there to caretake the family dynamic. I must have been seven or eight when the house was just about an impossible place to live in because someone had smeared toothpaste on the bathroom mirror and none of us were willing to admit to it. I didn’t do it, but I eventually “confessed” just so the situation would be over, the villain would be named, and we could all move on with our lives. I have no idea why this was such a dramatic moment in my family history (a “who broke the coffee pot” comparison wouldn’t be amiss), but it’s an example of this kind of role in a dysfunctional family. It’s how I became codependent, and it’s why I think Luther in particular was always at highest risk of any of the kids.

From the get-go, Luther’s priorities are about managing his family and solving problems—whether his family wants to comply or not. Controlling behavior is a pillar of codependency. Ben is more subtle about it, but Luther has been repeatedly told he must be in control, he must put aside his own needs and wants for the greater good, and like hell is he going to make those sacrifices only for his siblings not to cooperate. This is a man who essentially didn’t have a young adulthood, and he told himself it was a sacrifice he had to make because people needed him. Compared with the world (i.e. his father), he was unimportant and had no business pursuing selfish dreams of having a life because his time was better served helping others and placating his father.

Yeah, that’s definition codependency. This is why his utter meltdown, complete with drug use and very questionable sexual activity, was to be expected. There’s no excuse for physically assaulting your much weaker…anyone, but what crossed my mind when Luther was violent to Klaus while so disinhibited from drinking was that it really had nothing to do with Klaus. Luther was raised to see everyone in the world as being more important than him, especially his siblings. He, along with the others, was squarely blamed for Ben’s death. The most defiant thing he can do to stick it to his father is to harm one of the people he was taught to protect. Again, that is so, so far from being an excuse. But it’s fascinating to me to look at these exceptionally out-of-character moments and try to pinpoint the reason behind them. Bad writing has characters OOC for no reason; good writing understands that sometimes, people are OOC for their own reasons.

Allison is a little different. She was always able to get whatever she wanted (the Golden Child). Losing her daughter was a wake-up call, and now she almost seems to be overcompensating for her historical selfishness by trying to make up for Vanya’s entire childhood in a single week. Most of Allison’s codependent tendencies come out around Vanya and they tend to revolve around a lack of boundaries, particularly with regard to Leonard/Harold. She feels so guilty after seeing the surveillance footage of Vanya being left out that she’s willing to forgive whatever Vanya does to her when lashing out (Vanya, obviously, has even bigger issues with emotion regulation than Klaus, thanks to chemically having her emotions suppressed during that stage of childhood development). Even when Vanya cuts her throat (something Vanya feels horrible for), she blames herself. Codependents often self-blame for things that are objectively not their fault, then chafe when expected to take responsibility for their own actions. It’s a bizarre sort of mindfuckery when this happens—no one asked you to take on the blame for what someone else did, but you’re doing it as if that’s going to spare the guilty party some pain. Or maybe it’s as if you feel you should have had a better handle on the situation. Then when confronted with something you actually did wrong, it feels like the straw breaking the camel’s back. The person confronting you doesn’t see all the self-blame you’re carrying, but it can still feel like an attack.

Nonetheless, breaking into Vanya’s boyfriend’s house and essentially stalking him spoke to a serious lack of boundaries. It was done for the same reason as Luther, but as I said repeatedly in the CodeBendency posts, being motivated by the wellbeing of another person doesn’t mean an action is a good one. Do I get where Allison is coming from? Oh yes. But it’s still wrong.

One other thing can make Allison a bit higher-risk than the others. While she was not raised in a black household, black women are often expected to be tougher than other women, swallow their problems without complaining, and be there for other people with nothing in return. And being raised in a mixed-race household by a white man means almost nothing in this regard, as white people also expect this of black women, to the point of thinking they physically feel less pain than white women. I kind of don’t think this is Reginald’s thing, since he’s an alien who expects all his children to behave that way, but it’s still a risk factor.

Whatever the reason, Allison does exhibit some of that worrying tendency to consider oneself an acceptable sacrifice when someone else benefits from that sacrifice. Again, this is mostly with Vanya and the way she stands and takes it when Vanya is rude or hostile in the first season.

Five’s an oddball, having some behaviors that seem codependent on the surface and possibly even some codependent lines of thinking, but without the personality markers of a codependent. Codependents tend to be people-pleasers and manipulators who care way too much about what other people think of them, and while Five can manipulate with the best of them, his preferred method is more like the verbal equivalent of blunt force trauma. He knows what he wants and will threaten long before he people-pleases. And he definitely doesn’t give a crap about what most people think of him.

What does seem somewhat codependent is that his actions are undeniably for the benefit of his siblings, often at his own expense, and he’s only semi-interested in involving them in his plans. He spent forty-five years building up this idea that he would save his siblings, that he alone could do so because, clearly, they weren’t able to save themselves the first time, so I could see how he’d start to think of them as a little helpless. He didn’t even tell them (apart from Vanya) about the imminence of the apocalypse until three days prior to it. Even in season two, he doesn’t trust them. He trusts them more than he did, but not enough to give them any input with regard to his Big Plans. Codependents very, very often don’t see other people as competent and trust only themselves to get things done. This is because they come from a world where chaos reigned unless they, specifically, were the one to control it.

The more I think about it, it seems less like codependency and more like straight-up PTSD (which we know he has). It’s not that his identity and self-worth have been taken over by his siblings so much as he is hypervigilant. He had only himself to rely upon in the apocalypse, whereas codependency is learned through a social situation where someone needs or expects you to take care of them. Still an interesting thought. Someone else might have a different conclusion, and obviously, a person can have as many psychological problems as their psyche damn well pleases, but I don’t think he’s a codependent the way Ben and Luther are, nor even borderline like Allison in season one, just that he has some tendencies, such as ignoring a shrapnel wound or shoving his nigh-invincible brother out of the way of falling bricks and being buried under them himself, that smack of those types of behaviors.

One other family member who is probably codependent is Pogo, but I’m holding out for what season three reveals about him and his motivations. He fascinates me and I want to see so much more of him.

#the umbrella academy #luther hargreeves #allison hargreeves #five hargreeves #tua #klaus hargreeves #diego hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #dr. pogo #this got long #a bit of armchairing about the PTSD #tua meta #ask answered #viktor hargreeves

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency | Master Post

The master post for my giant-ass meta concerning Ben and Klaus’ relationship.

Part 1: Defining Codependency

Part 2: The Dependent | No More Excuses

Part 3: The Dependent | Relapse

Part 4: The Dependent | It’s About Isolation, Not Addiction

Part 5: The Codependent | A Different Kind of Addict

Part 6: The Codependent | Patterns and Characteristics

Part 7: The Codependent | Hope, Love, and Letting Go

Part 8: The CodeBendency | Dissecting Scenes from the Show

Part 9: What About the Future?

If you read this and found something resonated, make sure to take a peek at the links below.

If you feel you have a drinking problem, check out https://aa.org/. If you feel you have a problem with narcotics, check out https://na.org/.

If you know someone who has a drinking and/or drug problem, https://al-anon.org/ is here for you.

If you feel you have the patterns and characteristics of a codependent person whether you’re in a codependent relationship or not, https://coda.org/ may be helpful to you.

Seriously.  If you are suffering, get help.  If a loved one is suffering, then you are also suffering. Get help then, too.  There are people who understand your pain and want to help.  You’re not complaining about nothing.  Both you and your loved one(s) can get help; there’s enough to go around.

#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #tua meta #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Six | The Codependent: Patterns and Characteristics

Codependency can look like a lot of things.  I know a lot of people get confused about whether they’re codependent or if they should get screened for Borderline Personality Disorder, or any number of other issues.  From the outside, codependents alternately look like extreme doormats and complete assholes.  They hate being alone because they need someone to remind them who they are.  Let’s look at what makes Ben codependent as opposed to something else.

There are five major aspects to codependent behavior according to Codependents Anonymous, and I’ll go through each of them with regard to Ben.

Denial.  Ben hardly ever sticks up for or even acknowledges his own needs, except in the sense that he needs Klaus to stay sober. He also doesn’t strictly pay attention to Klaus’ needs, or rather, he thinks Klaus’ needs are different from what they are.  In season two, when Klaus relapses, Ben shames him, puts him down for falling off the wagon, and frames all of it in Klaus-centric terms rather than explaining his own feelings.  Instead of support, there is judgment.

This is to be expected after years and years of trying and failing to help the only person in his life. Frustration builds up and eventually, empathy is replaced by anger and a usurpation of the dependent’s pain—you take on their pain as if that’s going to take any of it away from them, then feel like they’re hurting you.  Ben even masks his own pain through this expression of anger at his brother.  He as much as admits to this in the first season when he is telling Klaus, who is a captive of Hazel and Cha-cha, that the real torture is watching his brother throw his life away.  While people shouldn’t automatically think he’s hyperbolizing, it’s absolutely way too hostile a tone to take while Klaus is undergoing literal torture.  What Ben goes through is horrible, but Klaus is in the midst of being beaten, waterboarded, and locked in a closet while going through drug withdrawal and PTSD flashbacks.  Ben may be doing this because he feels it will have the greatest impact while Klaus is in pain himself, but it’s going to have the opposite effect.  Instead of making him think “Wow, Ben goes through bad shit, too?” Klaus is too overwhelmed to think about it at all.  It’s also going to leave him with the impression that Ben is just playing dirty whenever he speaks that way instead of being honest. Worst-case scenario is that it drives a wedge between them.  Fortunately, this is the worst Ben gets during this episode, and he definitely does better after this.  In fact, I’d say he does well once he realizes Klaus can use his power to sow discord between his captors.  But his ill-timed belittling of what Klaus is going through indicates he doesn’t have as good a handle on Klaus’ needs as he thinks.

Low Self-Esteem. The particular signs of low self-esteem in codependents may seem contradictory: a sense of superiority, difficulty admitting when they’re wrong, a lack of boundaries, and a need to be/look right in the eyes of others.  It’s hard to explain this one.  Your entire self-worth is wrapped up in this relationship, and if you suck at it, there’s no point to you.

Morally, Ben is in the right.  If he is not, then all of this, all of his pain, has been for nothing, and he is worth nothing.  His only purpose is guiding Klaus, who is his entire life.  He has sacrificed so much, given so much of himself, without Klaus even asking for it most of the time, so he feels he is owed something in return. We can see this in their struggle over whether to let Ben possess Klaus.  On the one hand, Ben is deeply sympathetic here—he wants to feel alive, to be alive, to interact with the world again and talk to his crush. However, his approach to convincing Klaus is manipulative, including making him feel guilty for what he has put Ben through with his addiction.  Instead of discussing Klaus’ reservations and trying to negotiate, he tells Klaus he owes him.  Then, when he refuses to give Klaus back his body when he wants, he insists he regrets nothing, showing that he feels his ignoring of boundaries is justified.  And yes, the circumstances were extenuating, but it was still a violation of boundaries in which Ben did not trust that Klaus could meet the deadline and show up at the alley on his own.  He believes only he could have met the goal, that Klaus would have failed and did not deserve a chance to prove himself.  If that belief is untrue, then what does that say about Ben?  If he is not Klaus’ guardian, who is he?

And now for a quick tangent.

That being said re: the possession, it’s clearly not meant as a 1:1 you-know-what analogy and I dislike the tendency to demonize some characters while refusing to hold others to any accountability no matter what they do (and by “others,” I mostly mean Five).  Wanna know how I know Klaus wasn’t really upset about it?  That whiny, whimpery tone both in the elevator and in the alley.  That is only a tone you use with your family when you’re not actually hurt but you want to make a scene anyway.  Speaking as the baby of my own family.  Compare it more to Ben dragging him along by his arm against his will.  It’s still a violation of boundaries, still actually counts as physical assault, but it’s not leaving him traumatized.  These boys are both deeply flawed, but they’re not fucking evil.

Also also, in real life no means no and don’t use character analysis techniques on real people.

Compliance.  Ben’s situation is symbolic of this.  He can’t detach from Klaus, following him around everywhere as his “ghost bitch.”  Codependents can theoretically detach, but stick around out of fear for what will happen to the dependent if they do.  And as much as dependents resist and resent a codependent, they can also get angry when the codependent leaves.  I once had a depressed friend grow enraged when I had to detach for the sake of my own mental health, because she saw me as her only lifeline to sanity.  I was propping her up (she’s fine now).  But it’s common for a codependent to remain in a harmful situation like that for far too long, as Ben has done.  Ben has absolutely no regard for his own mental health.  All his thoughts are of Klaus first and foremost, until eventually they are of Jill.  He frames a lot of what he says about Jill in terms of how Klaus has ruined her life.  When Ben finally asks for something he wants, it is still ultimately about another person more than it is about himself.  And he can’t bring himself to tell Klaus “I want to possess you so I can talk to Jill” before he’s first tried some dirty manipulative tactics. It’s hard for codependents to ask for something straight-up because we don’t think us wanting something is a convincing enough argument.  Notice Ben looks almost embarrassed to admit he wants to talk to Jill, like his desires are invalid by default.

And yet it’s not until after Ben expresses what he really wants that Klaus relents.  That’s not a coincidence.  Klaus isn’t stupid.  He knows what Ben is doing.  He resists manipulation, but yields when Ben is real with him.

Control.  This is a big one for Ben, and for all codependents. Codependents found themselves in a life made dangerously chaotic by someone else, and learned that since the person creating the chaos refused to maintain any sense of order, they were the only ones who were willing to even try.  Let’s actually go over what CoDA.org says about control patterns, crossing out the ones that don’t seem to apply to Ben:

Codependents often:

·         Believe people are incapable of taking care of themselves.

·         Attempt to convince others what to think, do, or feel.

·         Freely offer advice and direction without being asked.

·         Become resentful when others decline their help or reject their advice.

·         Lavish gifts and favors on those they want to influence.

·         Use sexual attention to gain approval and acceptance.

·         Have to feel needed in order to have a relationship with others.

·         Demand that their needs be met by others.

·         Use charm and charisma to convince others of their capacity to be caring and compassionate.

·         Use blame and shame to exploit others emotionally.

·         Refuse to cooperate, compromise, or negotiate.

·         Adopt an attitude of indifference, helplessness, authority, or rage to manipulate outcomes.

·         Use recovery jargon in an attempt to control the behavior of others.

·         Pretend to agree with others to get what they want.

Ben has exhibited most of these behaviors.  I struck out the last one because he only seems to want one thing throughout the series, and there is no pretense in his agreement to Klaus’ (worryingly paltry) terms with regard to possession.

The most important thing to understand about control patterns is that it is utterly impossible to control someone.  I can’t say this enough.  Even the control granted by possession was limited.  Ben’s attempts to control Klaus through words generally backfired, leading to Klaus doing the opposite of what Ben wanted.  Nonetheless, Ben keeps trying, keeps berating him, keeps guilting him. What Allison did by joining Klaus in day drinking was not as bad as a lot of people claim because he was going to drink no matter what anyone did.  A person cannot be controlled.  The only thing Ben ever accomplishes by trying to do so is hurting them both (because no, Ben does not want to be doing it).

It makes sense for this to be Ben’s biggest hangup because control is also a major theme of the show—control over others (Reginald, Five, Luther, Allison, the Commission) and control over the self (Vanya, Klaus, Diego, also Allison).  Ben and Klaus spend two seasons battling for dominance instead of communicating with honest intent.  This can be traced back to the fact that control was the only language their father spoke, and they were never given a better model to learn from.  Their father, who suppressed Vanya’s powers because he could not control them, who favored the child he was best able to control, who chose to manipulate his children through his own death rather show up at someone’s house to explain the situation.  That was their only model for all human interaction.  Pogo was only a sort-of exception, as he didn’t have the power to overrule anything Reginald did. Ben’s particular brand of control, however, is some of column A and some of column B.  His attempts to control Klaus are an attempt to control his own life.

Avoidance.  Ben distances himself by judging Klaus harshly. Unlike some codependents, he doesn’t seem to be afraid of conflict, but he certainly resents Klaus for it.  He appears to suppress his own feelings, his own wants and needs, except in the case of Jill.  All of his requests of Klaus are for Klaus’ benefit until late in season two.  This isn’t just compliance behavior—it is a refusal to admit he needs something, because he believes his own needs get in the way of taking care of Klaus.

But the most concerning avoidance pattern with Ben is that, with the exceptions of his family and Jill, he doesn’t seem to ask Klaus if he can talk to anyone else.  This may be partly because of Klaus’ own reluctance to “share” him—yet another thing they really should have had an honest conversation about—but Ben not making it a point, not even telling Klaus about his feelings for Jill until late in the season, contenting himself with sitting near her on the bus and smiling adorably, leads me to worry either he has asked Klaus so many times that he has given up, or that he hasn’t asked him nearly ask much as he should.  If the former, then Klaus is exhibiting some fucked-up controlling behavior.  If the latter, Ben is self-isolating the way codependents often do, so exhausted by taking care of one person and unable to imagine a relationship where they don’t take care of someone that they just avoid people altogether.

Or, again, a little of column A and a little of column B.  Klaus’ behavior is controlling, but Klaus isn’t a monster.  He has empathy, whenever he bothers to turn on the tap.  He loves Ben. So I think it’s most likely that Klaus’ behavior is making Ben’s self-isolation problem that much worse because he’s not listening on those rare occasions when Ben wants to be let out. He doesn’t think he’s hurting him. I’m not sure he’s thinking about it much at all.  That does not let him off the hook, though.

And again, none of this makes Ben a bad person.  He’s not doing this because he’s controlling and mean by nature, he’s doing it because it’s the only thing he knows.  Being controlling and manipulative is something he sees himself as doing for the greater good—Klaus’ good.  Codependents are ends-justify-the-means thinkers until we learn how to let go of old habits.  The entire point of CoDA is to learn how to have healthy relationships, because it is something you have to learn.  Who taught Ben how to have healthy relationships?

Who taught any of them how to have healthy relationships?

…

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#author turns in giant end-of-term project and does this with newfound free time #honestly this part was emotional to write #ben hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #the umbrella academy #tua #tua meta #umbrella academy

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Two | The Dependent: No More Excuses

There is a lot of room for empathy when it comes to Klaus’ difficult behaviors.  Some people respond to trauma by going over-compliant and trying not to exacerbate the problem, but others do the opposite.  In a flashback, we see Klaus jumping up and down on a bed after setting fire to a piece of furniture.  That is not typical for a child his age, but it smacks strongly of that loud, brash attitude of “I get hurt whether I act out or not, so I may as well act out.”  That’s my impression, anyway.  I can imagine the other siblings wondering why Klaus insists on provoking their father and not making the connection when that carries over into other things he gets pressured about.  Not every character flaw is a trauma response, but when they get into the extreme, it’s worth the thought.

This shouldn’t be mistaken for sticking up for himself, however.  It’s just noise.  Kicking and screaming knowing he’s going down regardless.  He learned from an early age that he is helpless before his father and his own powers.  Once he latched onto the drugs as the thing that broke him away from that, he accepted that he was helpless before the drugs.  Learned helplessness is a thing and all of these kids experience it to some degree, as does Pogo (Grace’s helplessness is literally programmed into her). In Klaus’ case, he chose the master he could bear being slave to.  Maybe the drugs were even deliberate sabotage, an attempt to make himself useless to his father so the abuse would stop.  So our hearts break for Klaus, and they absolutely should.

However, fans make a lot of excuses for Klaus that don’t fly.  Yes, addiction is a disease, but it’s not just like any other disease. No, he would not get immediately sober if he had an alternative way of blocking out the ghosts.  Certainly, his addiction began as self-medication, but once the addiction begins, it becomes its own, self-sustaining thing.  When the cravings hit, he’s not just thinking about seeing ghosts, he’s thinking he’s not high and that feels wrong.  Being sober is so boring at first, too.

 His PTSD is agonizing, and many, many people with PTSD become addicted to substances, but his abusive father did not force him to become an addict.  His reasons are sympathetic, and I would almost definitely do the same shit if I were in his shoes, especially if any of his comic-canon abuse also happened on the show, but it wouldn’t have to happen.  The Klaus we meet in the first season is lonely, but as long as he’s high, the pain of that loneliness goes away.  He doesn’t have to fix his life or his relationships because when he’s high, he doesn’t care about any of that.  As much as he is a victim of his addiction, it’s important to remember so are his siblings.

Fans seem to think the other siblings act the way they do around Klaus because they don’t understand him, because they don’t know how much pain he’s in, that if they only had a little more information, they would be sorry for how they treat him.  Those fans need to think about just how agonizing it is to have an addict as a sibling.  Obviously, it’s not his fault he was abused.  It’s not his fault he sees ghosts.  It’s not his fault he has what is very likely to be the pervasive, lifelong condition of complex childhood PTSD, leading to a sense of shame and permanent struggles with emotional dysregulation.  But many addicts both deal with and deal out suffering, and we can have empathy for both them and their families.  Klaus stole from his siblings and lied to them to the point where he wore their trust down to nothing.  In a lot of ways, it was the addiction that did the stealing and lying, but it’s not about the loss of goods or money, it’s about the feeling of betrayal.  In their eyes, Klaus chose the addiction over his family.  And they’re not…wrong.  Look at Allison’s face when he shows up drunk at her house in 1963 and tell me that’s the first time this has happened.  Did he ever do that with a sibling, only to disappear the next day along with any money in their wallet?  Probably.

Is addiction a disease? Absolutely.  But if you choose not to treat your own disease, you bear responsibility for what your addiction does in your name.  In other words, it’s up to Klaus to mend those bridges.  It wasn’t his siblings who burned them, so it’s not up to them to make things right.

This being said, it takes tremendous strength to break free of an addiction, and even then, you’re never completely free.  It is important to understand that Klaus’ addiction is his responsibility because that means it is within his power to quit.  Addicts need empathy, but they also need to learn they don’t have to be slaves to their addiction, that they can in fact find a healthier way to cope and even be happy. “I can quit at any time” is a common excuse, but the thing is, I only ever said that when I didn’t believe it. It was a way to deny my problem, not a statement of empowerment.  Addicts need to find their own power, and patting their hand and chalking it all up to a disease they can’t control may be sympathetic, but it also reinforces them as a victim.

Klaus’ learned helplessness is problem enough.  Between the severity of the abuse he endured (and if he went through anything he went through in the comics on top of what we’ve seen on the show, we don’t necessarily know how severe his abuse got, especially given how he says his father was always “plotting his next torment” in the first episode) and the chemical and psychological dependence on drugs, he doesn’t seem to believe at the start of the series that he can have a better life than this.  Only meeting Dave awakens him to the fact that he can be loved, and it changes everything for him.

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#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #tua meta #klaus hargreeves #this part was kind of rough to write #klaus is a huge mess #but I mean the whole family is a huge mess #like its sad how no one realized he was kidnapped in season one #but no one realized diego was kidnapped in season two either #which had a better outcome admittedly #my point is this family needs to keep track of each other #tags got off topic

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part One: Defining Codependency

It’s not uncommon to hear fans claim any particularly close and faintly unhealthy relationship is “codependent.”  Occasionally, these fans even get it right, as in the case of Ben and Klaus Hargreeves, without necessarily knowing what the term means or why it applies to this relationship.  It’s led to some complaints about season two in particular, people claiming Klaus is more of an asshole to Ben than ever, or that he’s lost all his character development along with his sobriety, or that Ben is the “angel on his shoulder” when the reality is anything but.  Alternately, I see people yelling about how Ben is secretly the worst and Klaus is his victim.

 Credit: I could not find the maker of this gif.  If it’s yours, let me know.

Codependency is a term that popped up as people first tried describing the relationship addicts have with a loved one who tries to help them.  Unlike other relationships that have a healthy, “loving detachment” quality, a codependent relationship leaves the addict’s loved one with little identity apart from the addict.  Their purpose and self-worth are tied up in helping the addict.  They will sacrifice anything for the addict, who typically repays their devotion with discomfort and rebellion.  The addict is the “dependent,” describing their relationship with drugs or alcohol, while their loved one is the “codependent,” who tries to steer the dependent away from the substances, but whose life is just as much caught up in them.

The term eventually evolved to describe any relationship where one person is trying to “fix” another, usually without being invited to do so; not just between addicts and loved ones, but spouses and children of narcissists, the chronically ill, and other situations where a loved one believes the other needs them in order to function--and, in return, needs to be needed by them.  This can ultimately result in actually prolonging the irresponsible or destructive behavior by shielding the dependent from the full consequences of their actions (this is called “enabling”).  It is not a mutual need for one another, but a deeply imbalanced relationship by its nature, with one person serving and the other being served.  A particular defining trait is a lack of boundaries, wherein the codependent tries to control the dependent and make the dependent’s business their business.  This can be accompanied by the horrible pain of the codependent feeling like they can’t be loved, so they will settle for being needed.  If, when separated from the dependent, the codependent still exhibits these traits in their other relationships, then it is not only the relationship that is codependent—it is the person, and they need help.  If you feel like this might describe you, I’m including links to the websites for Codependents Anonymous and Al-Anon in the master post for this series.

So!  In TUA, we have Klaus and Ben.  Klaus is obviously the dependent, Ben the codependent.  It has become Ben’s purpose in not-life to try to “fix” Klaus despite Klaus explicitly not wanting to be fixed.  Klaus seldom reciprocates the emotional work Ben takes on for him, which can look, to an outsider, like Klaus cares less about Ben than Ben does about Klaus, and we can see Klaus alternating between pushing Ben away and drawing him close. Codependents are not martyrs, dependents are not (usually) victims of the codependent, and oversimplifying this relationship one way or the other does an injustice to how very, very well-written it is, as well as the degree of love these two have for each other.  To understand this relationship, we need to look at the realities of addiction.  I’m both a recovering alcoholic and a codependent, so let’s get started.  Keep in mind I’m speaking as one person, and every experience is different.  I can’t tell you how it is for all addicts or all codependents.

I meant for this analysis to be of a manageable size, but it’s such a complex topic that I’m breaking it down into about nine parts.  Remember I’m not an expert.  The expert is your therapist.  This series exists for the purpose of analyzing two characters and their relationship, not diagnosing anyone.

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#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #tua meta #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #this is going to be long okay #no bashing #we love both ben and klaus but they have issues #author enjoys stupid pun #author needs to be working on paper #keeps getting distracted by this monstrosity #maybe posting will help get it off brain #update it did

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Nine: What About the Future?

Moving forward into season three, I think Klaus’ season two arc will unlock a lot of positive changes! It may get ugly first—it will almost definitely get ugly first—but languishing as a dry drunk in early season two left him in a place where he’d plateaued, and it wasn’t a good plateau to be stuck on.

The Ben we’re familiar with has passed on (which is why this post is mostly about Klaus) and as much as we wish Sparrow Ben were a replacement goldfish, he’s going to come with his own history and his own set of issues.  He won’t give a shit about his Umbrella siblings.  And if anyone’s going to take that hard, it’s going to be Klaus (but let’s be real, they’ll all take it hard).

Still, ultimately, it’s an exciting development for Klaus as a character.  He and Ben treated each other poorly for a long time, figuring they’d always make up eventually—only now, there are no more second chances.  The mistakes Klaus made with Ben are mistakes he will have to live with for the rest of his life.  And with so many things Klaus is going to have to live with for the rest of his life, he may collapse under the weight of them all.

 Credit: I could not find the maker of this gif.  If it’s yours, let me know. 

All the Hargreeves siblings have had difficulty keeping themselves upright without a strong-willed person in their lives taking most of the weight.  It makes me think of what a local said when I went to Germany and she was talking about the end of soviet socialism in Berlin, how there were so many people who went decades without having to worry about taking care of themselves that when the Iron Curtain fell, they had no idea what to do. That’s what’s going on here.

How do you think they keep attracting Reginald-substitutes?  And by that I don’t mean they act like Reginald, I mean they take Reginald’s place as the person who gives them meaning and direction in life without actually fulfilling any emotional needs they have.  Luther has Jack Ruby for a short time, during the only time in his life when he doesn’t have his dad.  Diego attached himself to Patch, an opinionated woman who is a lot less attracted to him than he is to her, who clearly has different stakes in their relationship than he does.  When he loses her, he immediately goes for a woman who is actively violent to him (and I love Lila, but she has no idea what a healthy expression of affection looks like).  Allison had Claire, who is a small child and therefore incapable of providing Allison with an emotional crutch—and when she didn’t, Allison mind-controlled her to turn her into a daughter who made her feel better about herself (but she’s been becoming independent ever since).  Five morphed himself into his own Reginald-substitute, which has made him the most independent of the family, but he’s never learned any kinder way of treating anyone since his distant Academy days, not even himself.  Vanya’s eventual foray out of self-isolation led her straight to Leonard, who was controlling even when he was somewhat kind (she, too, has done well becoming independent since then).

Klaus and Ben have been each other’s Reginald-substitute since they walked away from Reginald however long after Ben’s death.  As a dumpster fire of a person, Klaus gave Ben a project to work on, a person he could help, while Klaus got someone who kept him putting one foot in front of the other even when he didn’t listen.  And now, Klaus has no Reginald-substitute propping him up.

This in itself isn’t a good thing, because the first thing Klaus will want to do is find someone to fill that void, and who he finds next may not be as interested in his well-being as Ben was.  The absolute most terrifying thing when you’re facing this situation is realizing that the person you’re trying to replace (Reginald, in this case) is obsolete in your life, as toxic and wretchedly habitual as the substances you became addicted to.  Reginald is heroin, Ben is methadone, and now Klaus has three options: find another abuser, find another codependent, or learn how to be independent.  Independence is his only route to having healthy relationships, and trust me when I say learning to be independent as an adult survivor of narcissistic abuse is the scariest thing he will ever do, especially if his struggles include emotional dysregulation (which would make sense, given how desperately he avoids negative feelings; he probably has CPTSD, a type of PTSD that comes from repeated trauma such as abuse, but even without, the bullshit he went through during his teens in particular would have cut down on his time to develop healthy emotion regulation).

But he will also have his family there with him, and they know what this is like.  Luther, in fact, is no further along his journey than Klaus is, thanks to having his eyes opened so recently.  That at least would give him emotional support if he was ready for it.

Thing is, I don’t think he’s there yet.  I think this will get way worse before it gets better.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Klaus started using drugs again.  He got sober and, for a time, he felt better. His addictive behavior transferred to the worship he got from his cult, but it was still a better life than he had with the drugs.  The second he decides his life is back to a shitty enough point that he may as well start using again, he’ll start using again, and that might be very soon.  He’s already relapsed with alcohol, and hey, stupid Ben left him behind and isn’t here to nag at him about it, so why not get high to stick it to the one person he thought he could always count on? Wouldn’t it be nice to get high without the nagging?

Often what comes with something like this is also an increase in…well, we may want to brace ourselves for Klaus becoming even more of an asshole.  This isn’t because he’s a bad person or less complex than before.  It’s just a way of pushing people away. Still, if that’s where he goes, I hope it’s done tastefully and sensitively so it doesn’t look like they’re painting all addicts as bad people.  I think the main trick will be keeping him vulnerable.

If he does start using drugs again, that doesn’t mean the last three years didn’t happen for him—it means the next step in his journey is going to hurt.  But the lessons learned from grave mistakes are ones that stick with us longer.  Hitting rock bottom often lands people on a road to true recovery—one that will take the rest of his life and have many setbacks, but actually gives him a chance to be happy.

Whatever form his arc takes, the loss of his emotional support ghost means being left alone with those things he has been running from, and that shit is ugly.

As for Ben, the original Ben finally gets to rest.  With regard to his time post-death, he said, “It’s all been gravy,” and I think there are younger people who aren’t sure what that phrase means; gravy is good stuff, but it’s a garnish, not a meal.  Pouring more and more on doesn’t add substance.  Ben is telling Vanya that he accepted long ago that his life was over, and that his years with Klaus since then have been a bonus he’s grateful for, but they’re not life.  What he and Klaus had was never going to be sustainable and he was always going to have to move on one day.  His Sparrow Academy doppelganger will probably be gradually taken back into the fold the way Lila was, and if that happens, he and Klaus may actually stand a chance at having a healthy friendship one day.  The metaphor here is that Ben moved on—lovingly detached—and now he and Klaus have a chance to start over.  Ben Prime’s passing gave them a new start.  Not his death—he was already dead.  His detachment.

It's sad, and Klaus is clearly devastated after the cold open in 2.10, but their relationship hurt to watch when you knew what was going on.  There was so much love there, but there was also pain.  Klaus finding the rest of their family and embracing them meant it was okay for Ben to go, and I think he believed, in the end, that Klaus would be okay without him.

And he won’t be.  Not at first.  But he will be.  Maybe.

  That’s it for this giant-ass meta series.  Thank you for reading.  Once again, exactly 0% of this post is meant as advice, diagnosis, or anything else besides character analysis.  If you are suffering, please check out the links in the master post.

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#it was only nine parts long you guys #tua s3 speculation #tua meta #tua #the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Five | The Codependent: A Different Kind of Addict

Warning: I am probably a bit harder on Ben than I am on Klaus, but it’s not because Ben is worse. It is simply because everyone knows, or at least has heard, that drug addiction is bad, whereas codependency is applauded and encouraged.  For proof of this, just look at how fans talk about Klaus vs. how they talk about Ben. Even Klaus’ biggest fans know the drugs are bad for him, but Ben gets described as “the angel on his shoulder” and praised as if a saint.  This behavior isn’t saintly just because it’s done for someone else’s benefit.  People don’t have any such rose-colored glasses for Luther, who has the second-most codependency issues, or Allison, who probably has the third-most.  Luther is seen as a controller and Allison is seen as a meddler, but Ben has pushed past that weird threshold for codependents where he’s become so extreme that he’s just seen as exceptionally patient and selfless.

The reality is that codependents are not UNICEF volunteers, they are not running homeless shelters or tutoring at-risk kids.  Codependency is not a sign of a charitable disposition, nor a healthy expression of one. Codependents are nearly as self-destructive as the people they are trying to help, and just as in denial about their wrongdoings toward both themselves and others.  They will take the blame for everything except what they have actually done wrong (because being confronted with something you did wrong while juggling self-blame for everything else is overwhelming).  They manipulate, obsess, and self-deny themselves sick.  Celebrating their “selflessness” is celebrating the horrible pain they endure because they think utter self-denial is what they need to do to be a good friend or family member.  It’s not unlike Luther admiring how Klaus seems “so carefree” and wanting to “be Number Four.”  Ben loves Klaus, hates seeing him in pain, and thinks that the only response is to regulate the behavior Klaus refuses to regulate himself.

Ben is not the angel on Klaus’ shoulder.  Ben is, in his own way, just as much of a mess as Klaus, and a lot of it is because of Klaus, though not always Klaus’ fault.  Season two shows him longing for a life separate from Klaus, but we never get to see him actually attempting such.  It probably wouldn’t last.  Ben’s situation is that Klaus is the only person he can interact with. The show has made his position symbolic of the sort of relationship they have—Ben cannot take part in the world except through Klaus.  And where does that leave the both of them?  Absolutely nowhere.

I’ve heard it said many times that a codependent is an addict in their own way—addicted to people. Unable to maintain their own sense of self, they gain it from other people.  Ben is a literal ghost who has to stick close to Klaus if he wants to interact with the world at all, so the show’s leaning pretty hard on the people-addiction thing.  If he had resurrected at the end of season two, he would have emerged into a life where he had no idea who he was or where he fit in.  Knowing he wants some boundaries with Klaus doesn’t mean he knows who he would be without him.

I mentioned in another post how many loved ones of addicts would give anything for the addict to open up to them and let them help them.  That’s what this is for Ben, but taken to an extreme.  He cannot escape Klaus, so his only option is to help him, and Klaus does not want to be helped.  Ben has no other purpose in life, can have no other purpose, because of the nature of his existence.  And yet, his situation isn’t 100% fantasy.  Plenty of spouses and children of addicts are in his position.

This is such a pervasive and agonizing problem that you have groups like Al-Anon specifically for the loved ones of addicts.  Unfortunately, if Ben picked up reading material about this topic, he’d find “loving detachment” hard to accomplish.  He could always stop reacting to Klaus’ bad behavior, but that’s easier said than done. So what he veers toward is manipulative and unhealthy—not because there’s no better way, but because he’s become so burnt out and resentful after all these years that even his acts of love have a drop of bitterness.

A normal person’s world revolves around themselves, and what I mean by this isn’t that narcissism is the default, but that we all worry about our own shit before we help other people with theirs.  Ben has lost this.  Klaus deals with Klaus first, but so does Ben.  Even when Ben complains about leaving the cult behind, he never tells Klaus why he wants to stay, just berates him for not doing so. Codependents don’t often feel like they can express their own needs or give a good enough reason to prioritize them over someone else’s.  They build up a massive amount of frustration by suppressing their needs and desires in favor of someone who probably never asked them to do so and get angry when they perceive this sacrifice is not appreciated.

I’ll tell you, you guys, I was definitely codependent before becoming an addict, and it was actually one of the reasons I started drinking so much.  I got mad when I had friends who weren’t grateful in spite of all I did for them, and only later realized that what I’d been doing wasn’t serving—it was controlling.  I wanted to be an amazing friend to someone, so I spent hours and hours she never asked me to spend researching things for her wedding.  She never once thanked me, and I was so frustrated, but the truth is, she only asked me to help with choosing a musician, and I’d been looking up clothing, venues, making calls while on the clock, just generally going way overboard.  Looking back, I suspect she felt smothered by the whole thing.

Which is the cycle we see with Ben and Klaus.  Klaus is self-destructive, Ben tries to help, Ben goes overboard, Klaus responds by pulling away or lashing out, Ben gets frustrated, Klaus continues to be self-destructive.  Meanwhile, Ben would give anything for Klaus to stop using, but is entirely unequipped to know what to do after Klaus does stop using because Klaus needs, at the very least, people who have been through what he’s going through.  There’s a reason support groups work so well.  Ben is so puzzled about why this isn’t working and so disappointed when Klaus relapses, not knowing enough to realize Klaus’ situation was unsustainable.  Ben’s not a therapist.  Ben’s just doing his best for someone he loves dearly, but in such a way where it makes them both uncomfortable.

 Credit: I could not find the maker of this gif.  If it’s yours, let me know.

 Addiction is a coping method, not a lifestyle.  So is codependency.  In the face of Klaus’ self-destruction, Ben feels powerless, angry, and afraid.  When that happens, it’s not natural to go “well I can’t do anything” and drift along at the addict’s side without ever intervening. So you intervene, and it doesn’t work. You step it up, intervening more often and more forcefully because you cannot deal with actually being powerless over this situation.  Every time they resist your help, you feel struck in the face.  You don’t get why they love their addiction more than they love you.  They must, because otherwise, why is the addiction standing directly between the two of you?

What does Ben really want? Yes, he wants Klaus to be sober. Yeah.  But what he really wants, and what his behavior often gets in the way of, is a close relationship with his brother.  In a lot of ways, you think your own ego is getting in the way of that, so you get rid of it, and…you’re not closer to this person you love.  You just feel shittier.

Welcome to Ben’s existence.

But the real kicker, and what makes Ben a codependent and not just in a codependent relationship, is that when Klaus gets sober, Ben’s behavior doesn’t change.  I mean, he has his moments (refusing to fight in the bar in the first episode of season two, excellent assertion of boundaries my man), but his attitude is still very much that he is Klaus’ babysitter.  This brings us back to what I said at the beginning of this post: people know addiction is bad, but commonly don’t know what codependency is or why it is bad.  I think that includes Ben.  Ben knows Klaus has a problem, but I don’t think it’s occurred to him that he has a problem as well.  

Not all of Ben and Klaus’ interactions are codependent.  Many are genuine, honest, and loving.  The scene with Hazel and Cha-cha where Ben encourages Klaus to use his power to turn his captors against each other, then tells him how proud he is of him?  Beautiful.  There are many times we see the love these two have for each other, and often it’s non-verbal—the crushed look on Ben’s face when Dave strikes Klaus, Klaus’ gutted look as he lies in bed and deals with Ben being gone forever, Ben ending his attempt for control and just asking if Klaus is emotionally ready to try to save Dave’s life, Klaus letting Ben borrow his body to experience the world. With so many words spent talking about how unhealthy this relationship is, I want to acknowledge that parts of it are healthy and that the contention wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t so much love there.  And some of the contention is normal sibling stuff, the kind that ceases to exist the instant something serious happens.  For example, Ben deliberately freaking Klaus out by moving closer every time he closes his eyes.

Ben is not a bad person. Neither is Klaus.  Addiction is a reaction; codependency is a learned, compulsive behavior.  Both make you do bad things.  Both can be unlearned.  Klaus knows he can recover; Ben does not.  As much empathy as we can have for Klaus, we can also have just as much empathy for Ben. He is trapped, with no one to tell him he doesn’t have to suffer or teach him a better way.  He’s stuck watching the person he is closest to, someone he has always loved (Word of God is that Ben and Klaus were close even before Ben died), treat himself like garbage.  He has literally watched Klaus die.  As hard as Klaus’ addiction is on their siblings, Ben is the one who has seen the most of it.  When you love someone, you hate anyone who treats them the way Klaus treats himself.  That creates a fun little paradox for Ben to cope with.

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#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #tua meta #ben hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #being codependent sucks though #we love both ben and klaus but they have issues

[allisoooon]

Klaus, Addiction, and CodeBendency Part Eight | The CodeBendency: Dissecting Scenes from the Show

This is the one where I back up all the things I’ve said in this series so far with examples. Because I would be remiss.

Let’s look at what happens after Klaus has his first conversation with Baby Dave and they get back in the car.

Ben: This is why you dragged me away from San Francisco (blame, shame, guilting him instead of talking about his own wants)?  So you can rekindle your little Vietnam fling (denial/not seeing Klaus’ needs/belittling the very real pain Klaus went through with Dave)?

Klaus: Why don’t you stay out of my business, Casper? (trying to assert boundaries)

Ben: Your business IS my business! (control, refusing to acknowledge boundaries)

Klaus: Oh, well, then congratulations!  Because you’re FIRED! (stronger assertion of boundaries, but in an uncommunicative way)

Ben: This is wrong, Klaus!  It’s selfish! You’re just gonna confuse the kid! (very reasonable reservations, but notice he isn’t asking why Klaus is doing this, only assuming the worst)

Klaus: (fed up—caving and surrendering boundaries) Dammit, listen to me.  When we were on leave in Saigon, Dave told me about the day he enlisted.  It was the same day that Kennedy was murdered.  And if you would just please leave me alone for five goddamn minutes, then maybe I can convince him not to sign up to that stupid war and maybe I can save his life!  GODDAMMIT! (angry outburst—he slams his hands against the steering wheel hard enough for it to hurt).

Ben: (looks somewhat guilty, but also compassionate) …Look. Just promise me you can handle this. Whatever happens.  (spoken with real sympathy, gently and lovingly detaching and giving Klaus his autonomy, a good interaction).

Klaus: Yeah!  Yeah, I can handle it. (Klaus responds well to this change)

Ben: (smiles at Klaus, allowing him some trust and distance).

It’s easy to understand where Ben is coming from in this scene—Klaus is a selfish person, and it’s possible some of Ben’s assumptions about Klaus’ actions have been correct in the past.  But he’s not thinking about understanding Klaus right now.  He thinks he already understands Klaus and doesn’t need any more information about this situation.  Really, he is simply repeating old behaviors out of habit even though his methods don’t work.  Klaus is adding fuel to the fire by being uncommunicative in response.  It’s an act of rebellion.  Ben is trying to control him, so Klaus takes control back in whatever way he can.  His outburst is more to shut Ben up and end the barrage of criticism than to share something weighing on him—something he refused to even hint at when Ben kept asking why they were going to Dallas.  It’s scenes like this that make me wonder if Klaus is more controlling of Ben in the second season for this reason—he’s sober and having to deal with Ben’s constant attempts at control without being high to soften it, so he controls right back.  It’s an unfortunate reaction.  There are less hurtful ways for him to assert his boundaries.

Let’s take a look at the morning after Klaus’ relapse.

Ben: And how are we feeling this morning? (this line may as well be “I told you so,” without real concern for Klaus’ well-being.  Ben goes through this a lot.  He always tries to get Klaus to stop, always warns him about what will happen, and he’s always right.  After a point, you stop caring whether you’re polite about it.)

Klaus: (horrifically hung-over) Oh, peaches and cream.  How are you?

Ben: Curious: how many more rock bottoms are you gonna have to hit before you start taking care of yourself? (bitter—Ben resents that Klaus would rather self-destruct than listen to him, but is also putting this in Klaus-centric terms rather than saying how he feels)

Klaus: I’m thinking of a number between eleven and twenty-five. (defiant, minimizing the relapse)

Allison: What ghost are you talking to now?

Klaus: Oh, just another old cowboy.  Texas is lousy with ‘em.  They’re usually pretty cute, but this one is…this one is ugly and dumb. (punishing Ben for his behavior by keeping him separated from Allison and throwing childish insults)

Ben: Is that really necessary? (shaming Klaus by posing as superior instead of telling him how he feels)

Klaus: Mm-hm. (to Allison) You want some?

Allison: …Klaus, if you’re looking for an enabler, look elsewhere. (misunderstanding the term ‘enabler’ and unfortunately phrasing it as a rejection)

Klaus: Allison, your marriage is in trouble and your rally turned into a riot. If now’s not the time to do some DRINK PARTAAAAAY I don’t know when is! (manipulation, pushing buttons to bring her down to his level so he doesn’t have to feel as ashamed of himself.)

Allison: (sits down next to him) What happened? (the most important two words in this entire scene—Allison is showing empathy instead of judgment, perceiving that this didn’t just happen because Klaus is weak or a bad person)

Klaus: Oh, where to begin, heheh?  My claustrophobic cult tracked me down, I fell off the wagon, and I professed my undying love for this young gay man who doesn’t know he’s gay yet in a 1963 diner in front of his blatantly closeted uncle.  Well, not in that order, but… (notice that the thing that actually caused Klaus’ relapse is what’s mentioned last, because it’s the thing that makes him feel the most vulnerable)

Allison: (taking the flask) Aren’t we a pair? (sniffs the flask, caps it, sets it aside) Oh, Jesus.

Klaus: Excuse me?!

Ben: Attagirl! (he sees Allison doing what he would do; he considers himself the foremost expert on Klaus, which he probably is, but sixteen years of this relationship have burned him out)

Allison: I’ve got a blender and some much better booze, so if we’re gonna start day-drinking, we should do it right. (I address this below)

Klaus: I love you so much! (honestly, I think the biggest deal for him is that he’s not alone with someone who judges him harshly)

This will be controversial, and DO NOT TAKE THIS AS ADVICE ON HOW TO HANDLE THIS TYPE OF SITUATION, but Allison could have done much, much worse.  She 1) made sure he wasn’t drinking alone 2) switched him to drinking cocktails instead of straight spirits, so he’s drinking more slowly 3) can keep an eye on him and listen if he keeps opening up.  Allison seems to understand that the choice isn’t between giving Klaus booze and making him sober up—the choice is between how he drinks, not whether.  Nothing in her power except literal mind-control would have made him stop.

Again, this is not advice, given the sensitive nature of addiction and the uniqueness of every person. If you are struggling with an addicted loved one, please see the links in the master post.  Anyway.

This is exactly why it’s so important for a dependent to have a network of support instead of relying on just one person.  This has all happened to Ben, who had the reputation of being the gentlest of the family, because he never got a break.  He never walked away and left Klaus in someone else’s hands.  He never went to Al-Anon or CoDA.  He has had no one to support him, and he may not even realize he needs support.  Klaus comes first, to him.  Klaus is the one with problems.  Klaus needs him.  He doesn’t realize he needs Klaus just as much, so much of his post-death identity being formed around him.  The show symbolizes this beautifully by making it so Ben is literally unable to walk away without entirely surrendering his only connection to the world.  Nevertheless, it is not Ben’s fault that Klaus hasn’t expanded his network of support.  It seems, in fact, that Klaus has busily burned bridges because his addiction has a louder voice than Ben does, and his addiction is telling him to steal and take advantage.

I wanna look at one more scene, this one from season one.  I adore this scene because it’s such a turning point for Klaus as a character, but also show’s what he and Ben are capable of when they work together.  The context is that they’ve just brought Allison back for medical treatment.  Klaus was willing to donate blood (DO THEY ALL HAVE THE SAME BLOOD TYPE?  WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?) but turned down because he’s…honestly, I don’t know how long after your last hit you have to be in order for your blood not to have drugs in it, but being in withdrawal, all his blood really needed to be where it was, bolstering the rest of him.

Klaus: (rooting around his room)

Ben: What’re you doing?

Klaus: Lookin’ for drugs.

Ben: (in a tone suggesting he’s already given up—they’ve been through this a hundred times) Don’t do it.

Klaus: I’m done listening to you.  Just go away. Go away, please! (Lashing out—Klaus is disappointed in the last day or two and is blaming Ben for the fact that he wasn’t high through it)

Ben: I like the sober you! (doesn’t sound sincere.  Ben’s saying this hoping it’ll be what Klaus needs to hear in order to change course.)

Klaus: Yeah, well, sobriety’s overrated.

Ben: Look where it’s gotten you, though! (this is empty as fuck. There hasn’t been time for sobriety to get Klaus anywhere.)

Klaus: Where has it gotten me?  Where has it gotten me?  Nowhere! I can’t talk to the person I love. People still don’t take me seriously. I want to be numb again! (when you’re not used to going a full 24 hours sober, it really can feel like it’s been ages. You are coming up with any reason to go back because it is so hard.)

Ben: You’re a colossal wimp. (also pretty insincere—I think Ben keeps trying different tacks to see which one changes what Klaus is going to do)

Klaus: Really. (he seems to know it’s insincere, too, or possibly just doesn’t care because he’s about to be high and it won’t bother him then)

Ben: Yeah, really! Hey! (snaps his fingers to get Klaus’ attention) Life isn’t supposed to be easy!  Life is hard!  Bad things happen.  Good people die! (this is insultingly patronizing and a gross oversimplification of Klaus’ problems.  Sometimes, a codependent just tries for any reaction when they fail to get a positive one)

Klaus: Wow, playing the dead card again?  You need new material, bro.

Ben: I was talking about Dave.  (sees this gets no reaction from Klaus) You know, I’m tired of seeing you wallow in self-defeat.  (This isn’t self-expression—it’s an attempt to guilt Klaus)

Klaus: Well, then, avert your gaze!  (he can recognize Ben’s old tricks)

Ben: You’re better than that!  And Dave? He knew it, too.  (This is a dirty-ass trick, using Dave’s name to try to manipulate someone grieving for him.  Please remember the scene at the beginning of the post.  Dave is either Klaus’ “little Vietnam fling” or he’s a standup guy who sees the best in Klaus, depending on what suits Ben at the time.)

Klaus: (seems to have a sincere emotional reaction, but definitely not the one Ben intended) Yeah, you’re right.  You’re right. I’m-I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.

Ben: Thank God. (turns around and starts to walk away when he should probably sit and distract Klaus through his craving)

Klaus: PSYCH!  (pops the pills in his mouth and laughs loudly without swallowing)

Ben: (Patrick Swayzees Klaus)

Klaus: Ow.

(both of them stare at each other in abject wonder)

Klaus: You just Patrick Swayzeed me.  How did you do that?

Ben: (clearly a bit shaken) I-I-I didn’t!  You did. I think.

It’s at this point we see Klaus go from elated to unsettled in his facial expressions.

Ben uses a shit-ton of tricks straight out of the codependent’s manual and honestly, when you know what’s happening, it’s hard to watch.  Punching Klaus is the move I have the least issue with because he thought it wouldn’t connect.  It was just an actual, honest-to-Little-Girl-on-Bike expression of how he was feeling and not something he ever intended on repeating. But using Dave to manipulate Klaus?

And yes.  It’s manipulation.  Guilting is manipulation.  Hell, people-pleasing is manipulation, though it’s not something Ben does a lot of.  The point is, it’s an under-handed way of trying to regulate Klaus’ behavior.  As we’ve already established, it’s totally impossible for this to happen.  It doesn’t matter how good Ben’s intentions are, how much he loves Klaus, or how afraid he is for him when he’s doing something this shitty.  It’s no wonder Klaus responds by popping the pills into his mouth and laughing in Ben’s face.  This is the man who put a cigarette out in his abusive father’s ashes.  At this point, I think he’s just hard-wired to do the opposite of what people are trying to get him to do as a form of protest.

That being said, Ben is not Reginald, and Klaus jerking him around is pretty mean, and part of the tragedy of Ben is that he tolerates it.  The imbalance in Ben’s eyes is not Klaus’ treatment of Ben, but Klaus’ treatment of himself.  It’s such an extreme stance that it’s actually become a problem—Ben will tolerate wayyyyy too much of how Klaus treats him, until he finally snaps and throws a punch he didn’t know would connect.

But then?  Klaus is amazed by what Ben did, and Ben turns it around, saying it must have been Klaus’ abilities.  This does not seem to be him trying to give Klaus a boost, since we find out on the show that it is Klaus’ power.  This indicates to me that on some level, Klaus did want to be stopped, but rebels out of habit anymore.  I actually think Ben could have had a sincere conversation with him instead of trying to manipulate, since Klaus got clean of his own free will this time, but that method probably didn’t work at all in the past, so he doesn’t resort to it anymore (once again, this is why an addict needs a network of support).

The little smile on Klaus’ face right after he says it shows how badly he needed a sense of power over his life.  All his life, he was slave to one of two entities: his father, or the drugs.  He’s never once considered that being sober doesn’t make him more fragile, that it could give him power he’d never believed he could have.  He went through withdrawal to contact Dave, only to find a new, better motivation. It wouldn’t have happened without Ben, but it didn’t happen as a result of Ben’s more toxic methods.  It happened because Ben was there, knew what to say when the moment came, and really, it happened because they were both lucky.

Goes to show quite perfectly that if you are a loved one of an addict, you cannot make a plan for them to get sober.  Only they can do that.  What the show gives us in regard to Klaus’ difficult behavior and Ben’s attempts to control him is a poignant and accurate example of codependency poisoning an otherwise loving friendship.  And they write it on a micro level, as you can see in these examples, knowing the kind of thought process that happens with it.

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#it's only three scenes #but they are good scenes #ben hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #allison hargreeves #the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #tua meta