Unmet Emotional Dependency Needs

Why is knowing about Emotional Dependency Needs important and how does it impact me if I have unmet EDN's?

To answer that, let's look at our childhoods for a moment. It is important to acknowledge that none of us had perfect parents. Some of us even experienced abuse as a child. For those of us who did, it is somewhat easier to validate that perhaps we were never able to develop a feeling of being safe in the world if we were hit, yelled at, sexually abused or abandoned on a regular basis.

And if any of those things happened or some of them happened, in an effort to protect us, our minds developed a set of ego defenses. Some of us acted out and developed confrontational ways of dealing with real or perceived threats. Some of us went in the opposite direction and withdrew inwards in an effort not to disturb the delicate balance of the living environment we grew up in.

In either case, there were basic emotional dependency needs that we had and which did not get met. Every person born into this world has emotional dependency needs. These differ from physical dependency needs.

Physical dependency needs are essentially the need to be fed, clothed, tended to when we're sick and sheltered. These are very important and without them, we would either die or have our physical health compromised in some way.

Emotional dependency needs are just as important and if they are not met, they can have the same impacts. A person can die if their emotional dependency needs are not met...or their health can be severely limited or altered.

An example would be if as a baby, we were perhaps fed every few hours, but never held...never nurtured, never rocked to sleep with a big warm blanket wrapped around us so that we felt safe and comforted.

In growing older, this could be if we were left alone a lot to fend for ourselves, if we were expected to grow up faster and assume adult responsibilities at a time when we still needed to be taken care of or if we did not have both a male and female role model on which to balance the masculine and feminine energies within all of us.

Perhaps we had to take care of our parents in some form...or as the oldest take care of our siblings. It could be something as simple as getting good grades and just not receiving much support or encouragement for working to get that. This can sometimes set up a pattern of either giving up since we develop a belief that there are not sufficient rewards for our efforts...to the other extreme of becoming a neurotic overachiever in an unconscious effort to finally get the acceptance and approval we seek, but never adequately received from our parents...or even a combination of the two where we give up in some areas of our lives and work like crazy in others.

It can be said that to the degree we grow up to be successful and happy in all major areas of our lives is directly proportionate to how well our parents fulfilled our emotional dependency needs. And since people can generally only give away that which they themselves have, if our parents did not get their emotional dependency needs met as a child, how could they meet ours?

In this generation, we have an opportunity to make a radical shift forward in how much of our unmet EDN's get passed down to our children. Passing these down from generation to generation is not a new phenomenon. It has been happening since the beginning and is what is meant by "the sins of the father being passed on to the son."

If we take a look around at our society from the perspective of how well our EDN's were met, we can easily see examples scattered throughout our communities. Here are just a few examples:

- the millions of people who wind up in our judicial system every year. Do any research at all on this and you will find that the vast majority of these people had very traumatic childhoods.

- the celebrities or athletes that seem to have everything they could want at their fingertips and yet still continue to create emotional upheavals in their lives

- people who are obviously talented in whatever field they find themselves in...but cannot seem to rise to the level of their physical or creative talents because they consistently self-sabotage themselves. This can happen through procrastination or even injury / dis-ease.

- each one of us who lives in an unsatisfactory relationship, goes to work every day in an unsatisfactory job and lives an unfulfilling life

If our EDN's are not met, that need doesn't just go away.

Ask the little boy or girl who grew up without their father or mother in their life if the need to have that parent went away.

The need stays with us and it colors our perceptions of what we believe is possible in the world.

The sadness, disappointment, anger or fear stays within us if we have never been taught to release it...and the Law of Attraction says that whatever I hold onto...even if I do not hold onto it consciously, I continue to attract people and experiences into my life to remind me that I need to heal this.

Look out at your world.

What areas of your life are being limited by unmet emotional dependency needs?

How well were your EDN's met when you were a child?

Have you been able to heal these within you or have you simply found band-aids such as food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, sex, etc to numb out those feelings?

Are you passing your unmet EDN's down to your children and if so, how can you see them reflecting that back to you in your life?

What can you do today to start meeting your own EDN's?

There are many books out there which can help you. There are many coaches and counselors who are trained to teach you how to meet your EDN's.

There is help available. Sometimes you simply have to ask.

In that vein, if anyone knows of a Literary agent that would be interested in working with the type of information that I write about, please contact me through my website. I am about 2 weeks away from finishing my book.

I need a good agent who can help me find the right publisher for my work.

My blog is not my book though. :-).

Thanks and Namaste

Jeff

http://www.learningtoflow.com/