What Is Behind Emotional Addiction?
We are all addicted from the moment our lives begin. In our mother’s womb and the first time we cry. When we fall for the first time and in our first encounters with unknown worlds. We are addicted both practically and emotionally. We need other people to do things for us, or at least show us how to do them. We all need other people because we are social and emotional beings. Does this necessarily mean that we are victims of emotional addiction?
Nothing can cause emotional turbulence like another human being. Think of your first kiss, seeing someone for the first time in many years, or a soothing hug. You breathe, I breathe, we breathe.
As teenagers, we fight with beaks and claws for our independence. Afterwards, we realize that true independence is not possible. Our primary needs do not respond well to independence. Think of love and affection, encounters and disagreements. Creating a utopia of independence would not be good for us.
Emotional addiction: a fact of life, or links that bind us
So if emotional addiction is natural, why does psychology treat it as a problem to be avoided? One reason is that psychology is not immune to social trends. These trends are becoming more and more individualistic. Another is that the addiction can become negative when it is fixed on a particular person. When we give someone else the responsibility to deal with the whimsy and appetite of our inner child, and we believe that the person is irreplaceable.
Let’s look at a simple example. Ana is making some changes to her home and she would like to move a piece of furniture. It is too heavy to move alone. She needs help from someone. She could have helped herself by studying physics and mechanics and building a jack on wheels to move the furniture. But that solution is not currently helpful.
The most obvious solution is to find people who are stronger than her. Ana thinks of her children, but they are on vacation. Instead, she asks her nieces for help and they are happy to lend her a hand. So, Ana is addicted, but she is not addicted to her children. If they can not, she is able to seek help elsewhere. The same thing happens with emotional independence / dependence.
It becomes dangerous when we are dependent on a single person. When we expect them to be responsible for our emotional state. It’s dangerous because it weakens us. In the long run, it will ruin the relationship. But the worst part happens before the relationship ends. We destroy ourselves with desperate measures to avoid losing the person our happiness depends on.
The four steps of emotional dependence
The path to emotional destruction caused by addiction tends to have four different steps. We begin to take these steps when we begin to fear loss. This type of fear is usually unfounded and makes the addiction even stronger.
The first step for an addicted person is to try to make himself indispensable to the person he is dependent on. He constantly talks about and highlights the contributions he makes to the other person’s life. “If it were not for me…”, “Who else would do this for you?”, “You can try, but you will never find anyone else like me”.
The dependent person can also try to become a type of guarantee or insurance. “If you stay with me, you will never lack for anything.” He tries to get the other person to stay with him, even if it’s just for the sake of it.
We go down to the second step when the first one does not work. The second can also continue to work with the first. In this step, the addicted person pretends to be the victim of compassion. His daily struggle turns into real tragedies. If the other person tries to walk during these moments, she looks like a monster. This is usually a strategy that a dependent person knows well and has probably used before to get attention.
The third and fourth steps are paradigmatic. With these steps, he tries to protect himself from what he fears most: indifference. These two steps can be swapped. They can happen at the same time, the order is not important.
In addition, both steps are alluded to primary emotions: hatred and fear. For fear of indifference, the addict tries to make the other person hate him. It is a form of self-deception. He wants to be present in the other person’s life. He tries to create long-lasting feelings and bonds, even if the feeling is hatred.
The fourth step is to threaten. “If you’re even just thinking of leaving, I do not know what to do”, “If you disappear, I will not have a reason to live”, “If you decide to leave me, I promise that you will never see me again ”,“ Do not cry after I am gone ”. The addicted person tries to spread his fear of loss. This fear is a ploy, but it serves as a substitute for love.
The addicted person suffers and causes others to suffer
Somehow the addicted person is tortured by his own addiction. If he is a victim of something, it is of trusting others regarding his destiny and hope. This forces him to sacrifice himself so that the person does not leave him. He really feels that if the other person leaves, he will lose his life. Much of what he says is manipulative, but beneath it is real suffering.
Unfortunately , emotional dependence is difficult to admit. You risk being marked as cowardly, weak in character, or even stupid. Nevertheless, identifying addiction is the first step in rebuilding it. The key is to understand that although our needs are unique, there are many who can satisfy them, and the ways in which they can satisfy vary.
