Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.


The following article is offered for free use in your ezine,
print publication or on your web site, so long as the author
resource box at the end is included, with hyperlinks.
Notification of publication would be appreciated.

Title: Emotional Dependency or Emotional Responsibility Author:
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com
Copyright: © 2004 by Margaret Paul URL:
http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 794 Category: Emotional
Healing, Personal Growth

Emotional Dependency or Emotional Responsibility By Margaret
Paul, Ph.D.

Emotional dependency means getting one’s good feelings from
outside oneself. It means needing to get filled from outside
rather than from within. Who or what do you believe is
responsible for your emotional wellbeing?

There are numerous forms of emotional dependency:

* Dependence on substances, such as food, drugs, or alcohol, to
fill emptiness and take away pain.

* Dependency on processes such as spending, gambling, or TV,
also to fill emptiness and take away pain.

* Dependence on money to define one’s worth and adequacy.

* Dependence on getting someone’s love, approval, or attention
to feel worthy, adequate, lovable, and safe.

* Dependence on sex to fill emptiness and feel adequate.

When you do not take responsibility for defining your own
adequacy and worth or for creating your own inner sense of
safety, you will seek to feel adequate, worthy and safe
externally. Whatever you do not give to yourself, you may seek
from others or from substances or processes. Emotional
dependency is the opposite of taking personal responsibility for
one’s emotional wellbeing. Yet many people have no idea that
this is their responsibility, nor do they have any idea how to
take this responsibility.

What does it mean to take emotional responsibility rather than
be emotionally dependent?

Primarily, it means recognizing that our feelings come from our
own thoughts, beliefs and behavior, rather than from others or
from circumstances. Once you understand and accept that you
create your own feelings, rather than your feelings coming from
outside yourself, then you can begin to take emotional
responsibility.

For example, let’s say someone you care about gets angry at you.

If you are emotionally dependent, you may feel rejected and
believe that your feelings of rejection are coming from the
other’s anger. You might also feel hurt, scared, anxious,
inadequate, shamed, angry, blaming, or many other difficult
feeling in response to the other’s anger. You might try many
ways of getting the other person to not be angry in an effort to
feel better.

However, if you are emotionally responsible, you will feel and
respond entirely differently. The first thing you might do is to
tell yourself that another person’s anger has nothing to do with
you. Perhaps that person is having a bad day and is taking it
out on you. Perhaps that person is feeling hurt or inadequate
and is trying to be one-up by putting you one-down. Whatever the
reason for the other’s anger, it is about them rather than about
you. An emotionally responsible person does not take others’
behavior personally, knowing that we have no control over
others’ feelings and behavior, and that we do not cause others
to feel and behave the way they do - that others are responsible
for their feelings and behavior just as we are for ours.

The next thing an emotionally responsible person might do is
move into compassion for the angry person, and open to learning
about what is going on with the other person. For example, you
might say, “I don’t like your anger, but I am willing to
understand what is upsetting you. Would you like to talk about
it?” If the person refuses to stop being angry, or if you know
ahead of time that this person is not going to open up, then as
an emotionally responsible person, you would take loving action
in your own behalf. For example, you might say, “I’m unwilling
to be at the other end of your anger. When you are ready to be
open with me, let me know. Meanwhile, I’m going to take a walk
(or hang up the phone, or leave the restaurant, or go into the
other room, and so on). An emotionally responsible person gets
out of range of attack rather than tries to change the other
person.

Once out of range, the emotionally responsible person goes
inside and explores any painful feelings that might have
resulted from the attack. For example, perhaps you are feeling
lonely as a result of being attacked. An emotionally responsible
person embraces the feelings of loneliness with understanding
and compassion, holding them just as you would hold a sad child.
When you acknowledge and embrace the feelings of loneliness, you
allow them to move through you quickly, so you can move back
into peace.

Rather than being a victim of the other’s behavior, you have
taken emotional responsibility for yourself. Instead of staying
stuck in feeling angry, hurt, blaming, afraid, anxious or
inadequate, you have moved yourself back into feeling safe and
peaceful.

When you realize that your feelings are your responsibility, you
can move out of emotional dependency. This will make a huge
difference within you and with all of your relationships.
Relationships thrive when each person moves out of emotional
dependency and into emotional responsibility.