Emotional Dependency

Emotional dependency feels like you can’t breathe without them.

Like you just need them to feel alive.

"This morning, I woke up, and I hadn't received a message from him, even though he had seen mine the day before. I was overwhelmed with anxiety, spending the entire morning waiting for news from him. I was unable to function. I thought maybe he had spent the night with another girl, or perhaps I had done something wrong. I always feel like I'm not good enough for him. I'm constantly afraid that he will stop talking to me and abandon me.

His message finally arrived, and all my anxiety disappeared, replaced by intense euphoria. I'm the happiest person in the world when he gives me attention, but the second it stops, I feel like my world is falling apart. He has the power to define how I feel at any moment of the day. His presence has become a vital need."

Activity 1 - Identifying Emotional Dependencies

Objective: Develop awareness of how your emotions and mood may be influenced by specific people.

Journal Prompt:

  1. What specifically do you recognize about yourself in this story?

  2. Do you feel like your mood and emotional state depend entirely on one person?

  3. In what contexts and how does this manifest?

  4. Write down the name or names of the person or people that your mood or emotional state is dependent upon. How does that feel ? 

You need your partner's attention and love to function and feel alive. It's as if you would suddenly stop breathing without their presence. You see them as perfect, the best thing that has ever happened to you. You have a panicked fear that they will abandon you and find someone better. You feel like you don't deserve their love and that you need to prioritize their needs over your own to avoid losing them. You need their validation to feel good. If they send you a message, you're euphoric, but when they take time to respond, it feels like the world is collapsing. You probably feel a deep love for this person. However, while love may exist, this closely related to emotional dependency. You are emotionally dependent on this person, meaning your mood, sense of happiness, and security depend on them. 

You're waiting for them to fill the void within you.

However, don't confuse love with dependency because love is not dependency. It's normal to feel happy when we receive a message or attention from someone we love. Nevertheless, this should not be the main factor regulating our emotions.

Emotional dependency is a major component of the abandonment wound and is strongly linked to a lack of self-esteem and self-love. You don't feel good enough for your partner, which is why you fear they will leave you. After all, isn't that what you've already experienced in the past? You were abandoned, and the child within you still believes it was their fault, that they didn't deserve that love. Of course, this isn't true, but it's a belief that became ingrained in you.

If you don't have a positive self-image today, it's difficult to recognize how lucky your partner is to have you in their life.

This brings me back to the notion of safety, particularly emotional safety. Our parents are our first relationships, teaching us what love is—how to love and be loved. A person who grows up with present, loving, and validating parents will develop emotional safety, meaning they will grow up with a healthy self-esteem because they received the necessary love for it. However, a person with absent, neglectful, or uninvolved parents will not develop emotional stability. As a result, they will be more prone to experiencing low self-esteem, which will manifest in various aspects of their life, including relationships.

When we are abandoned, we enter a state of affective deficiency. This means we feel a lack of recognition and love, which we seek to fill at all costs by attaching ourselves to external factors.

We seek outside what we fail to find within.

And, it becomes a vital need. We search for a pillar that will protect and love us. This is why we become emotionally dependent on certain people. They fill the void that has been created within us, even if it's just an illusion and doesn't last. And it's so painful because we live in a constant state of waiting for someone to save us.

The reality is that no one can save us but ourselves.

I fully understand what it feels like to be emotionally dependent on someone. 

I constantly felt in danger, deprived of my freedom, in complete loss of control over myself. I was in a constant state of panic, terrified of being abandoned by the person I loved. I imagined the worst possible scenarios and felt like I was suffocating—simply suffocating from anxiety. At times, I wished I could feel nothing ever again, to be emptied of any substance. Then, when euphoria set in, it was the most exhilarating feeling in the world, always followed by a plunge into despair. I only felt like I existed through my partner and the emotions he stirred in me. It was exhausting, draining me of energy, but a part of me was addicted—addicted to all these sensations, even the most horrible ones.

I've been there, and I'm still working on it. 

For as long as I can remember, my happiness always depended on the person I was with, even if it was just a fleeting summer romance. My partner became my reason for living, my sole source of motivation, and almost nothing else mattered.

I remember a very unstable relationship I had when I was 15; I was madly in love with this person, to the point of being sick over it. I could spend the entire day staring at my phone, waiting for a message from him. On the days when the message came, I was euphoric, overjoyed, and I would eat. But when the message didn't come, I felt like I was dying inside and couldn't eat anymore. I would wake up in the middle of the night to check if he had replied, and if not, I couldn't sleep and was paralyzed by anxiety. I literally depended on this person to function. It was an unhealthy anxious attachment. To make matters worse, in emotional dependency, we often attract unavailable partners, intensifying our dependency and reinforcing our fear of abandonment. This was the case with this person.

I talk a lot about romantic partners, but emotional dependency can also be felt with other people, such as family or friends. 

Activity 2 - Exploration of emotions felt during connections

Objective: Identifying the emotions associated with a strong connection and how they evolve when the connection ends.

I invite you to take at least 3 minutes to answer each question and familiarize yourself with the different emotions you experience.

Journal prompts:

  1. Write down 3 emotions that you feel when you have a strong connection with someone.

  2. When those connections end, and you no longer receive the attention you once had, what do those three emotions turn into?

  3. Write down your earliest memory where you felt these emotions and write down the person you felt them for.

For a long time, I ignored the mechanism that made me seek attention from men. I felt like I could fall in love in a split second with a certain "type of man." I kept telling myself that something was wrong with me. I also had no credibility with my friends. 

Receiving this attention made me feel alive, euphoric, important. I could give my whole self, even to the point of ignoring my own needs because they became secondary to this person. In reality, what I was experiencing was what we call a traumatic response.

I realized that the intense feelings I had during such "connections" were a replica of what I felt as a child when I was with my uncle. Unfortunately, life events separated us, and I suffered greatly from that abandonment. So, unconsciously, I kept reliving the same type of connection over and over because part of me—my inner child—was trying to find what she had lost. And when the connection ended, it was a repetition of the abandonment I had experienced.

Simply recognizing this pattern deeply helped me understand what I was feeling and legitimize my emotions. All the old versions of ourselves are still alive within us, expressing themselves through the emotions we feel. There is a child inside you right now who needs your attention, not someone else's—I insist—your attention. How can you not have compassion for yourself when you understand that a child within you is suffering? This allows us to take a step back from the critical gaze we often take of ourselves because it is much harder to judge a child than the adult we've become.

Activity 3 - Identifying your expectations in relationships

Objective:  Becoming aware of how your expectations impact your relationships.

Journal prompts:

  1. What are you expecting from your partner?
    a. Constant reassurance
    b. Him texting you all day / calling you every day
    c. Him letting you know his exact schedule
    d. Constant attention and proof of love
    e. To be his priority
    f. Him cutting contact with all other girls so you can be the only one
    g. Him holding you tight all night
    h. Other (please specify)

  2. In what ways is your partner unable to meet your needs?

  3. Have you ever sabotaged your relationships because your expectations were unsatisfiable? Feel free to write about it.

So, through this introspection, have you noticed that the attention you receive from outside sources is satisfying at the moment but always ends up being insufficient?

I call this craving for deep connections and attention.

We always want more. It's as if we are a bottomless pit, what we receive is never enough. This is normal because, as I mentioned earlier, no one but ourselves can fill the void within us. You will always be unsatisfied and frustrated as long as you continue to expect someone else to fulfill your needs.

This is why expectations in emotional dependency are often unrealistic and only intensify over time.

The issue? It often ends up exhausting our partner by placing too much pressure on their shoulders, triggering intense frustration for them as well. At this point, misunderstandings, arguments, and the pain that comes with them arise.

In the end, it becomes an endless quest for love and attention. We start by idolizing our partner, only to eventually realize that, like all humans, they are not perfect. This is when disillusionment and disappointment set in.

Unfortunately, by suffocating them, we often provoke what we fear the most: separation—and ultimately, another abandonment.

That’s why we are so often perceived as "needy" and "clingy” by our partner and loved ones. And yes, we truly feel like we need their presence to survive. "I need," "I need you," "I need your love," "I need you to hold me"—these are probably the words we think and say the most.

But these needs are nothing more than your abandonment wound disguised as emotional dependency and anxious attachment—simply because your needs were not met as a child.

Activity 3 - Identifying your inner child's needs related to emotional dependency

Objective: Become aware of how events from your childhood have influenced the development of emotional dependency and understand your inner child's needs in order to address them.

Journal Prompt:
Take a moment to reflect and write about how the emotional dependency you’ve experienced so far might be connected to events from your childhood. What are you trying to compensate through emotional dependency ? From whom did you lack love, attention and validation ? How did that make you feel as a child ? In what ways does it impact your life and your relationships today ? What were your needs at that time? How can you fulfill those needs today?

Your inner child needs love, validation, and attention. They need to feel seen and heard. Only by giving them what they need will you be able to detach from emotional dependency and reclaim your freedom. As long as you ignore their needs, they will seek to fulfill them through external factors, keeping you trapped in the cycle of dependency.

Today, you can reclaim your emotional independence—it is within your reach. You now know that what you feel is valid, but you also have the power to nurture the parts of yourself that need it. Make yourself your priority—you have spent enough energy on others, and it's time to bring it back to you. You are your own healer, and yes, you are capable. Think of the child within you who is waiting for your love, take their hand and show them just how worthy they are of being loved.

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The Fear of Being Alone

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The Body Remembers: How Trauma Is Stored in the Nervous System