Are You on Your Mobile Phone? Click here for 2800+ mobile optimized, self help and self growth articles.

Healing Emotional Dependency

By Dr. Margaret Paul
February 15, 2010



Are you tired of trying hard to get the love, attention and approval that you believe you need to be okay? Learn how to achieve emotional freedom.



needinessYou are emotionally dependent when your happiness, sense of safety, and sense of worth are dependent upon others' love, attention, and approval.

When you were growing up, perhaps you heard statements like:

"What will the neighbors think?"

"What will______(so and so) think if you do that?"

Where you taught that what others think of you matters? That you are okay if you are approved of and not okay if you are not? Was your worth tied to your achievements - such as your grades or sports? Did you learn to define your worth externally by your performance or your looks?

Most people were brought up to believe that others are responsible for defining their worth, and the media certainly plays on this, implying that if you buy this car or that product, you will get the approval that defines you as worthy. The media even implies that the product itself somehow enhances your worth.

This is a hard way to live, as you have to constantly prove yourself. And what happens to your happiness, safety, and sense of worth when you grow old and lose your looks, or you lose your money in a down market? What happens to your worth if you gain weight or never make it financially? Does this mean that you have no worth as a human being?

There are two major decisions you need to make to heal from emotional dependency:

  1. You need to decide to learn how to take full responsibility for your own feelings - your happiness and pain, your inner sense of safety, and your sense of worth.
  2. You need to decide to define your worth - not by what others think of you or by your looks or by how much money you have, but by who you are intrisically - your kindness, generosity, compassion, empathy - by how well you love and what you contribute.
     

Taking Responsibility for Your Feelings

Taking responsibility for your feelings means that you stay aware of how you are causing your own feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, aloneness, emptiness, jealousy, and fear by what you tell yourself and how you treat yourself. It means that you discover how you abandon yourself by judging yourself, ignoring your feelings, turning to addictions, and making others responsible for you. It means that you learn how to love yourself rather than continue to abandon yourself. The Inner Bonding process is a powerful process for learning to love yourself.

Taking responsibility for your feelings also means that you become kind and gentle toward yourself with the painful feelings of life - the heartache, heartbreak, loneliness, grief, sorrow of life, and helplessness over others. It means that instead of avoiding these feelings by trying to control others or by turning to various addictions, to embrace them with deep compassion, allowing yourself to feel them and allowing them to move through you and be released, and stay open to what these feelings are telling you about others and events.
 

Defining Your Worth

Taking responsibility for defining your own worth means that decide to define your worth internally - by your kindness, caring, compassion, and contributions to others - rather than by approval, looks and performance. It means that, rather than trying to get love, you make being loving to yourself and others your highest priority. It means that, instead of defining your worth by how thin you are, or by how much sex you have, or by the clothes you wear, or by the car you drive or the house you live in or by how much money you have, you define your worth by your kindness toward yourself and others, by what you contribute toward helping others, by your generosity of spirit, by your ability to love without strings attached.

In order to truly love others, you need to first learn to love yourself - taking emotional responsibility for all your own feelings. This is what the Inner Bonding process is all about. This is what creates personal power and emotional freedom.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."



Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND


Send this article to a friend    Print this article    Bookmarked 12 time(s)
Bookmark and Share    Share with Del.icio.us    submit 'Healing Emotional Dependency' to digg Share with Digg    Share with StumbleUpon
There are no videos, Click to add one to the gallery!
There is no audio, Click to add audio to the gallery!
There are no pictures, Click to add one to the gallery!

Comments


More Help

Looking for help with Healing Emotional Dependency?

Search for solutions on Healing Emotional Dependency within the InnerBonding.com website using Google's Site Search.




 
 



Daily Inspiration

Which journey do you focus on - the earthly journey or the soul's journey? When focused on the earthly journey, we want to get all we can while attempting to control others and outcomes. When focused on the soul's journey, we open learning with our spiritual Guidance, allowing the Love and Wisdom that is God to guide us. Since we are here to evolve our souls in our ability to love ourselves and others, focus today on the spiritual journey of the soul.

By






Explore More Inner Bonding

 

DAILY INSPIRATION

Which journey do you focus on - the earthly journey or the soul's journey? When focused on the earthly journey, we want to get all we can while attempting to control others and outcomes. When focused on the soul's journey, we open learning with our spiritual Guidance, allowing the Love and Wisdom that is God to guide us. Since we are here to evolve our souls in our ability to love ourselves and others, focus today on the spiritual journey of the soul.

By

INNER BONDING EVENTS

Inner Bonding Events

10/19/2024 08:00 AM
Saturday Immersion
Karen Kral, MA, LPC

10/23/2024 08:00 AM
5-Day Virtual Intensive
Dr. Margaret Paul

10/28/2024 08:00 AM
3-Day Intensive & Add On to Margaret's Intensive
Karen Kral, MA, LPC

All Inner Bonding Events