Overcome emotional dependence: 10 tips to achieve it

Human beings need to establish meaningful and deep relationships with the people around us, who fulfill us, give us happiness and make us feel better both psychologically and psychophysically.

However, some people develop a type of maladaptive relationships both socially and emotionally with the people around them, generally with friends, family or their partners.

This type of relationship generates great discomfort in the person who suffers from it and can be explained as an "addiction" towards another person. We are talking about emotional dependency.

Emotional dependence consists of a series of dysfunctional behavior patterns when interacting with a person that someone puts into practice in their relationship with another person and is characterized by giving rise to low self-esteem, submissive behaviors, insecurity, fear of loneliness and need constant being with that person to whom one is dependent.

Guidelines to follow to overcome emotional dependence

These are the main guidelines and practical strategies that we can use in our dependency relationships to overcome this problem that affects millions of people in the world on a daily basis. These are principles that psychology professionals apply in therapy .

1. Identify the problem

As with any other psychological problem, the first step is always to identify the problem and recognize that there is something wrong with our daily lives .

Emotional dependence is a psychological alteration that can be easily perceived by an external observer but is usually not recognized by the person who develops it.

Instead of making excuses of all kinds that minimize the problem and hide emotional dependence under the guise of love and exclusive dedication, recognizing that we have this problem will allow us to start the process until we overcome it.

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2. Learn to be alone

As has been indicated, people who develop an emotional dependency on another close person usually have a real panic that their partners or friends will abandon them and that they will be left alone.

This exacerbated fear is one of the reasons why this maladaptive dependency and obsession appears , since the person considers that they will not find happiness in life by themselves and that they need others to be happy.

To break with this toxic dynamic, we must learn to be alone and understand that our happiness does not depend on one person, but that it is in ourselves, we just need to find it.

3. Reinforce self-esteem

Another of the classic causes of emotional dependency is having low levels of self-esteem that push the person to establish a dependency with another person to feel better.

Low self-esteem can make us believe that we are worthless , that our life is meaningless without the other person, and that we will never find happiness without our partner or close friend.

To overcome these negative thoughts we can train our own self-esteem by going to a qualified psychology professional who guides us in learning various mechanisms, strategies or guidelines to achieve it.

4. Learn to set limits

People who are emotionally dependent on others also show submissive attitudes and very little ability to set limits or make personal decisions for oneself.

This submission sometimes leads them to tolerate all kinds of disrespect or humiliation from the person to whom they are submissive, something that undermines their self-esteem and their psychological health in general.

To overcome this problem and regain an assertive and confident attitude, we must learn to set limits and know how to say "no" when we disagree with anything.

5. Question your own beliefs

Negative beliefs about oneself often contribute to undermining a person's morale and developing a greater emotional dependence on a certain person.

These beliefs about oneself must be questioned and replaced by more positive and adaptive ones that help us increase our self-esteem levels and make us aware of all that we are really worth.

6. Dare to overcome uncertainty

Uncertainty is another of the conditions that push someone to develop an emotional dependence on another person.

The fact of not knowing if someone else will love us or thinking that sooner or later they will abandon us can push us to develop an emotional addiction towards our partner or towards a close friend.

To overcome this fear we must dare to live with uncertainty and conceive it as a possibility of building our own future , rather than as a curse that will lead us to suffering.

7. Find happiness in yourself

To overcome emotional dependence, it is essential, as has been indicated, to forget the idea that we will only be happy with x person and begin to believe that happiness is within each one of us and that we alone are worth our own.

This will allow us to improve self-esteem and allow us to live life with confidence in ourselves without depending on anyone else to achieve a full life.

8. Maintain an active social life

As the social beings that we are, people need to interact with other people to feel better, share experiences and feel better by putting our experiences into words .

Maintaining an active social life, hanging out with other friends will help us overcome dependency on someone in particular, as it will allow us to see that everyone has something special and that it makes no sense to obsess over the love of anyone in particular.

9. Work on yourself

Working on oneself means taking time for ourselves and our mental health, as well as giving preference to our own interests and needs over those of anyone else.

Starting by prioritizing ourselves and our own well-being, we will learn that we are more important and that it is absurd to pour body and soul into the well-being of another person, rather than our own.

10. Avoid idealizing the other

Emotional dependence is often based on an idealization of the other person, a psychological phenomenon consisting of maximizing the virtues and minimizing or making their defects invisible.

To overcome a case of dependency we must see the other person objectively and taking into account many nuances when interpreting their actions , looking at their virtues and also their defects, always keeping in mind that we are all human beings and no one should be deified.

We must try the same thing when we meet someone new with romantic or friendship aspirations, so as not to fall back into emotional dependence.