Are You Emotionally Dependent?

Emotional addiction is extremely harmful and usually worsens over the years. It must not only be explained that emotional dependence is not synonymous with love, but also that in most cases  emotionally dependent people reveal the worst possible lack of love: a lack of love for themselves.

We can be dependent on many things, not just on people, emotional dependence can also be on an idea or substance. The strength of this emotional dependence is based on two fronts: escaping responsibility and avoiding the malaise of loneliness. 

The consequences of being emotionally dependent are very negative and long-term: we see ourselves tied up in relationships, behaviors and habits that don’t really satisfy us. We do it for the mere fact of feeling accepted and we end up not accepting ourselves or the reality that surrounds us.

I depend for fear, not for pleasure

When you discover that you are dependent on something or someone, you will not have a good feeling. On the contrary, you will realize that you have made many decisions following the direction in which others were pointing. Certainly many do not do it with bad intentions and would not have done so if they had not been asked for their opinion.

Most people only allow themselves to have their say on the choices of others when they sense that they have a chance to influence. If you don’t open the door for others to allow it, you will rarely see your choices or thoughts challenged.

We open the door to the opinions of others because we have doubts about our own: 

How to get addicted: the result of family and social teaching

We often depend emotionally for the sole purpose of avoiding suffering. Another very common and deeper reason is that the true meaning of love is not known, which should not be combined with addiction. We don’t have to feel even more guilty to realize it, although looking back and understanding where it comes from can be very painful.

In the family environment we almost always find the origins of our strengths, but also of our deepest fears. Each of us has a unique and unrepeatable story, yet only a few learn from it.

Others become more and more tied to their chains because they are afraid of their own freedom, which is determined by our ability to understand the origin of behaviors that do not bring us well-being.

The trap of negative reinforcement in the family

Many parents are happy if their child cries disconsolately for their absence,  if he requests their presence at all times even when it is not necessary, and if they are justified in limiting the time and space their children spend with other people. We listen to phrases like “He can’t live without me, he loves me too much” or “It’s normal that he doesn’t want to be with other people, I’m his mother“.

It is the trap of negative reinforcement in the family, which not only creates dependent people, but also personalities characterized by antisocial behaviors: They do not limit the demands of their children, whether they are emotional or material.

They manage to avoid malaise in the short term, but in the long run they get their children to be increasingly temperamental and dependent. These children do not have a positive attachment nor are they loved more or better than others, rather they are simply molding them to always seek their own well-being and not tolerate frustration in the future.

Be addicted and dependent on you

To realize how tiring and exhausting an addictive relationship can be, we need to look at situations in which we are not the ones who depend and appear confident or indecisive; but when it is another person who shows this attitude towards us.

People who constantly ask us for our opinion on their decisions, who reveal their most irrational fears and who on other occasions show themselves tremendously suspicious and attentive in all the activities we carry out. We feel constant and exhausting attention and pressure because we have the implicit responsibility not to make the other person feel bad.

At that moment we are aware of how the energy we place in love fades because we are too tired due to a relationship of dependence, in which one takes responsibility for the other because he does not know how to make his own decisions.

Overcoming addiction

Making decisions without feeling guilty about taking the reins of our life. Doing what we like and what we want to do without always consulting with others is the first step for many. Knowing that we can make decisions, which as ours do not need to be explained, much less justified.

Only we ourselves know ourselves and we know why we act in certain ways. Following the behavioral models of others hoping that they are also good for us means acting like a puppet who has increasingly tangled, long and numerous strings  on his shoulders. Cut these threads little by little and become the primary actor of your life without anyone having to move or subtitle you.