the paralysis that often accompanies fear is to join a group of women who are working on issues similar to our own. If you are unable to find the help you need among your friends and family, there are co-dependency seminars and other support groups everywhere. They can be found by inquiring at your local mental health department, checking with churches that often have lists of community services, or by asking friends.
In the seminars my partner, Bonnie, and I gave, the most important thing the women in them learned was to talk openly about their feelings. As we shared our shortcomings, secrets, fears, hostilities, joys, and disappointments, we realized we were not alone. Breaking out of isolation gives us permission to fully experience our feelings and then work through them.
Katy, a sweet, soft-spoken woman, sheepishly told me I couldn't possibly guess what she had discovered in one of our seminars. She was certain I'd be shocked and horrified to know that the main stress in her life related to her husband. Of course, I was neither shocked nor surprised. I know her husband, and he's a good man; but I also know that many women who are in relationships with good men feel stressed out. In Katy's case, the mere reassurance from another woman that she wasn't alone in her unrevealed feelings, and that she wasn't a terrible person for having them, gave her the freedom to accept what she was really feeling.
Knowing and accepting our true feelings is an essential step in moving beyond emotional dependence toward the ability to be ourselves. It takes an enormous amount of courage to be emotionally independent because we have been taught to believe that our natural role is as an adjunct to other people—a constant support, a helpmate, not an equal. However, with the advent of the partnership paradigm, the concept of inequality is obsolete. Having the courage to be who we really are is our natural birthright. If this is the case, then why is it so difficult for many of us to be ourselves, enjoy emotional independence, and have satisfying, equal relationships?
Establishing new patterns of beliefs and behaviors is always difficult. We seem to gravitate to the familiar even when it is uncomfortable. Giving ourselves permission to move into the uncharted waters of emotional independence and create new patterns for our lives takes courage and commitment.
Though it's often hard for us to give up the old habit of asking, “Mother (or Father, Husband, Boss, Child), may I?”, we're living in an age when we have unprecedented opportunities to make our own decisions to be ourselves. As we embrace an expanded vision of ourselves and unravel our emotional dependencies, we learn that no one can fill us with confidence, independence, and a sense of inner worth but ourselves, with the help of whatever we interpret as our Higher Source.
Another very important piece of the courage-to-be-yourself puzzle is the awareness that the most essential and important connection we can make is with ourselves. We have heard this so often that we know it in our heads, but it is still difficult to believe it in our hearts and guts, because we have been socialized to conclude that our commitment is to others and our job is self-sacrifice. A pervasive underlying belief women grow up carrying is that they come last. Yet, without a deep commitment to and connection with ourselves, we cannot truly relate healthily to others.
Yearning to have my inner dependent and insecure feelings match my outer independent and successful demeanor, I began to search for ways to free myself from the tyranny of fear and learn how to express who I really was. It has been a great adventure— sometimes terrifying, often exciting, but always educational. Only since I began my quest to find Sue have I felt truly alive.
EMOTIONAL WISDOM
Women naturally possess an innate sense of connectedness—to God, to others, to our world, and to our own inner lives, which I call “emotional wisdom.” Because of this wonderful emotional wisdom, we are relationship specialists. But too often we let our connection to our own inner lives languish and specialize only in keeping the peace in our outer relationships. True, their demands and needs can be loud and insistent, but our challenge is to give ourselves the same love and care we so readily lavish on others.
Being emotionally independent and connected to our authentic inner selves doesn't mean that we'll turn into selfish and selfcentered women who are unavailable to others. It does mean that we're centered in an awareness of who we are—no longer fragmented by fear or unrealistic demands from ourselves or others. In reality, an emotionally independent woman is a happier, more loving and giving woman. As we find the freedom to express who we really, uniquely are, we tap into our inherent emotional wisdom and, as a result, create a climate around ourselves in which others can also grow, heal, and become better connected to themselves. Freed from the torment of looking outside ourselves for approval, and empowered by having our own identity, we have more to give. Plus, our lives are enhanced by a spirit of lightness and spontaneity.
Although The Courage to Be Yourself has no pat answers, it is filled with ideas and exercises designed to help you become aware of your fears, learn to transform them, move from emotional dependence to strength, and enhance self-esteem. Freed from the shackles of limiting fear, you can give yourself permission to own your own excellence and live up to your highest potential.
Even as we make progress, we may long to return to the easy fantasy that it's okay to be emotionally dependent, that others will take care of us, that it's their responsibility to keep us safe and support us. To really know that the buck stops with ourselves is frightening, but it's also extremely freeing to realize that we can be strong, independent, confident, and in control of ourselves. We are all—men and women—called to grow up and to assume responsibility for ourselves. As grown-ups we are better able to love—independently, interdependently, and joyfully.
We women are emotionally wise and wonderfully courageous. We have what it takes to overcome our fear-full inner dragons and live our lives expressing our true selves. I have been honored to walk with many women as they courageously tamed their dragons and surmounted obstacles and traumas that had once nearly destroyed their faith in themselves. As I said earlier, we teach what we need to learn the most, and that is certainly true in my case. So, as you read these pages, know that we are walking together. Live gently with yourself as you continue your journey toward being who you authentically are. Be patient with yourself, and please don't try to go it alone.
CHAPTER THREE
FACETS OF EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCE
A woman's public identity is her husband's and her private identity, her children's.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
I was tempted to call this chapter, “Ya gotta name it to overcome it!” Why? Because we can only move beyond what is limiting or upsetting us when we honestly define what is going on. If we feel our identity is not our own, we must acknowledge that feeling before we can forge an identity for ourselves. If we've sacrificed our lives on the altar of everyone else's needs, we need to recognize the resultant malaise in order to remedy the situation. No matter what it is, we gotta name it before there is any hope that we'll learn to move around, over, and through it.
Toward that end, we will define some of the forms emotional dependence can take. Emotional dependence is many faceted and can put its depressive foot on our necks in a host of different ways. Anytime we come away from an encounter with someone feeling used or abused—not having stood up for ourselves or what we believed—it's a pretty sure bet we have acted, or not acted, out of an emotionally dependent internal space. When we find ourselves believing it's not okay for us to have a self who can come first—at least part of the time—when we know that our “self”-concept is really an “other”-concept, or when we suppress our feelings in order to please someone else, we have undoubtedly come face to face with a facet of our own emotional dependence. A profound
