Emotional Dependence Cripples People

I was so dependent on the thoughts and feelings of other people.

Growing up, we need to wean ourselves from other people.

There has to be emotional independence, that is, we stop depending on other people to make us feel bad, good, or anything else.

Through Scripture, we find that milk is for little children, and real meat is for adults.

Milk is for believers who are not trained in righteousness by faith:

"12For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. 13For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. 14But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." (Hebrews 5: 12-14)

This passage also outlines that we need to depend on a God who is greater than our understanding, and just about everything else:

"I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety." (Psalm 4: 8)

This passage has made a great difference in my understanding. I have begun to learn why there were so many struggles in my life.

For too long, I was running to someone else to make all my decisions, to give me a sense of peace and safety in my life.

If I was afraid, I would run to someone. If I was angry, or sad, or anything else, I lived my life from the perspective that I had to do something about how I felt in order to thrive and be safe.

Such emotional dependence is quite crippling, and such emotional dependence is inevitable in Alcoholics Anonymous.

How can it be otherwise, with or without abusive parents, sponsors, or even the best group which encourages independence and grace?

A program which claims that you can choose your own conception of God, yet at the same time tells you that you are insane, an alcoholic, and that "your best thinking brought you" to the rewmz, is hardly a recipe for critical thinking and emotional independence.

A life in which one must continue to watch for self-centeredness, resentment, fear, and all the rest becomes a life of frustration, pain, and never-ending self-centeredness, filled with resentment and fear.

I cannot tell you how long I lived in pain, trying to get someone else to comfort me, because I had been deceived so much into thinking that I could not think, that I could not trust what I was feeling or not feeling.

I look back on the last five to six years, and just marvel at God's grace, in spite of all the nonsense, the distortions, the mixture of law and grace, and every other unsightly lie which I had succumbed to in my life.

Emotional dependence cripples people and very badly, but thanks be to God and His Son Jesus, that the truth sets me free!

We have to be free of anger, resentment, fear, and all other emotions. We try to seek emotional balanced