The Art Of Being Totally OK On Your Own: 6 Ways To Stop Being So Needy
Excessive dependence can ruin even the most loving relationship.
Brock Wegner | Unsplash We all long to be understood, supported, loved, and accepted, and it's OK to feel this way. It's also OK to need help or support from your partner. But being too emotionally needy creates an unhealthy dynamic in even the best relationships. if you find your own neediness is out of control, you need to figure out how to stop.
Being a healthy person means standing on your own. You should be able to tolerate being alone and manage your own stuff. You should have the ability to express your needs. And your relationship should be best described as interdependent, with a reasonable balance of time spent together and time spent apart.
The art of being totally OK on your own: six ways to stop being so needy
1. Become aware of your neediness
Awareness is the very first step to recognizing and fixing a problem. This is key in any life challenge. As you become more aware of your behaviors, you start the process of gaining greater insight into who you are as a person so you can make necessary, sustainable changes.
Take the time to ask and answer the important questions above. Gaining awareness of your attachment style is step one because this creates the chance for you to create a happier, more fulfilling relationship.
2. Sit with your anxiety and the uncertainties of life
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A more anxious person engages in more protest behaviors, actions that are attempts to reestablish contact with their partner and get their attention. Unfortunately, when you do this, you act in harmful ways.
Being able to move through the shades of gray, uncertainty, and unanswered questions is key to making change. Even if in the moment it feels like a good idea to react a certain way, work on pausing to think through how you would feel if you didn't act in a certain way instead.
What are your triggers? Can you learn to communicate them in a way that will be beneficial for both you and your partner?
If you give in to your anxieties and impulses every time, you will never know how things could be different. If the impulse or obsessive thought is there and you act on the compulsion, all you are really doing is repeating the same cycle and reinforcing the behavior.
Sit with that anxiety and anxious feeling and focus on reacting less.
3. Create space in your relationship
No matter how close you are to another person, it's unhealthy to spend all of your time with them. They will feel overwhelmed and start doing things to back themselves out of the relationship. If it's difficult for you to tolerate alone time, you will inevitably sabotage your relationship.
Simply force yourself to back off to give both of you some space. I recognize that "force" might be a strong word, but sometimes it's necessary to make changes to help the relationship pivot.
Talk to your partner about this and take some time away from them in small, purposeful increments until you become more comfortable on your own.
4. Work on improving your self-esteem
Begin by doing things on your own and focusing more on yourself. What are you doing that is contributing to the demise of the relationship? What negative feelings come up for you about yourself?
Engage in activities that are healthy for you and learn to feel more secure and confident. This could be by giving back, volunteering, taking up a hobby, or journaling, among other things.
It's also important to think about your strengths, as we all have them. Don't shortchange yourself. Remember that another person can boost you up and make you feel good once in a while, but this is not their job. It is our responsibility to do that for ourselves.
Another person cannot be your only source of happiness. That's a lot of pressure to put on them.
The good news is that you can change your attachment style by identifying the behaviors that have been keeping you stuck.
5. Work on your trust issues
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Neediness is often associated with not trusting in others, as well as with a fear of abandonment. If you start doubting someone's feelings for you or fear being abandoned, you will start to put the neediness wheels in motion, and doing that will only provoke the person to want to run from the relationship.
Do you fear abandonment? Are you afraid your partner won't be there for you when you need them? Are you looking for others to make you feel good about yourself, always looking outside of yourself for reassurance? If so, where did these feelings come from?
Learning to connect the dots helps you to understand the reasons a situation makes you feel a certain way, which in turn helps you better understand and change your response.
6. Recognize your capacity for change
In life, there is always the opportunity to change. You can change your attachment style and move from being anxious or avoidant to being secure, so asking yourself what changes you need to make in order to become more secure is important.
Understanding the types of partners you pick is also key. People with an anxious attachment style often choose people with an avoidant attachment style, and vice versa. Looking back over your relationship history to figure out the types of partners you tend to pick and why will also encourage positive change.
Dr. Kristin Davin is a Clinical Psychologist specializing in marriage, divorce, dating, and relationships. She helps people build better relationships, whether it’s with their spouse, partner, children, siblings, parents, coworkers, or friends.
