Emotional Dependency: What It Is and What to Do

I’m keeping my word here. As we started exploring in the post Could You Imagine Your Life Without the People Around You?, it’s possible we keep an emotional attachment or certain degree of dependance with our couple, friends or relatives.

What Is Emotional Dependency?

Everything starts with our need to interact with someone else. Then, we bond with that person. However, in some cases we might go from there to develop a sort of addiction for him.

“We encompass emotional dependency within a frame of affective or sentimental dependency, and it consists in a series of addictive behaviors that happen in a interpersonal relationship, where there is an asymmetry in the role each person plays (Instituto Europeo de Psicología Positiva).”

For example, according to psychologist Paola Graziano, it’s normal to have a case where one person is dependent and the other dominant. And what happens to the dependent person? Well, he shows “anxiety at the idea of being abandoned.”

In the previous post we published on this topic, I asked you if you could imagine yourself without the people around you, especially those within your closest circles. And although we all need friends, family and affectionate relationships in general, “when our happiness depends exclusively in a person [and I would add in a couple of people, why not], suffering is inevitable.”

What does this mean? According to Sara Clemente in her article “4 pasos para eliminar la dependencia emocional” (4 Steps to End Emotional Dependency), we tend to lose our emotional self-sufficiency. “We depend on someone up to the point we don’t think or act for ourselves.”

Are You Dependent on Someone?

Same author, Sara Clemente, provides us with a list to identify if we have a dependency tendency. Here are some criteria:

1. Your happiness depends on one person to the point where you don’t enjoy anything else but to be with that person.
2. Your joy depends on how you’re treated.
3. You are ok with yourself if you feel loved.
4. You’re afraid of losing the person you depend on.
5. You want to control that person’s life to make sure you won’t lose him.
6. The relationship gives you anxiety, for instance, you always want more from that person.

I believe this sums it all: “What breaks apart someone who’s not dependent is that when he is alone he may have melancholic moments, but that doesn’t stop him from still enjoying other facets of his life.” (Sara Clemente)

How to Build Healthy Relationships?

A healthy relationship might be what psychologist Paola Graziano, in her blog Psicología Estratégica, calls horizontal dependency:

There is an “inter-dependency among adults. They all give and receive back, and they take care and support each other.”

And as we already know, in order to give to others, we must start by giving ourselves. “Emotional dependency can be avoided by cultivating self-love and self-knowledge.”

Who do you see when you look yourself in the mirror? Who are you? What do you like? What do you enjoy doing? These are basic questions about yourself. Though, you can dig deeper. What are you afraid of? What stops you? How do you react at different situations? What language do you use to refer to yourself?

This last question is very important. Sometimes we don’t realize how self-deprecating we are, how we punish, insult and devalue ourselves. Do you remember Shauna Shapiro in her TED talk about the power of mindfulness? Stand in front of a mirror and start your day by repeating “(Your name), good morning, I love you.”

Quick Tips

• Dedicate a couple of minutes, it doesn’t have to be more than 5 minutes a day, to grooming. A good image on the outside can awaken your inner self and improve your confidence.
• Find that something that will make you want to wake up everyday. It can be a hobby, a job or something as simple as contemplating the sound of birds for a minute. For poet Mary Oliver, a poem didn’t make sense if it didn’t include birds. In other words, it seems, for her, life didn’t make sense without nature.
• Follow your values, beliefs, and instinct. Believe whatever you believe because you choose to and not because someone else says so. Say goodbye to comparisons. Your life is unique and yours only.
• Take risks. Get out of your comfort zone. Live!
• Enjoy being alone. And when you get tired of that, surround yourself with people who support and encourage you to be a better person.