Dejunk the Junk

Are you ready for some constructive criticism?

To tell you the truth I don’t think any of us are ever READY for constructive criticism. Evaluation is important to improvement, but criticism, to me, sounds bad from the start. Criticism too often occurs within conflict situations or can foster conflict when offered inappropriately. The truth hurts and it doesn’t help when it feels like there is no foundation of concern or love from which the criticism is offered.

Criticism well received means that the person receiving the criticism must appreciate that what is being said is constructive. That appreciation must come in the form of personal realization. If the truth doesn’t reflect on our senses then the truth will probably do more harm than good.

In order for a person to achieve lasting success & happiness in this life and in the life to come, a person must come to these important realizations, especially spiritual realizations. They are important breakthough understandings. One of those is this: Sometimes we need to get rid of emotional junk.

If you are having relationship problems, perhaps the problem isn't the other person at all. Perhaps the real problem is your own emotional junk.

Perhaps you have been shoving emotional junk in hiding places instead of getting it out in the open and resolving it. In order for you to clean house, you will need to face the junk to get rid of it. You need to dejunk the junk. You need to let go of the past and put the past in your past.

In addition to the idea of emotional junk, we also need to realize that part of letting go of the past includes learning to be less emotional about things. When we get too emotional, we let fear and worry control too much of what or how we think.
Our fears and worrys are often that we are afraid we are going to lose someone. And although it seems counterintuitive, that kind of desperate thinking is exactly the kind of behavior that drives those we love away instead of drawing them closer to us. When we began to feel as if we couldn’t live without the other person, our love becomes desperate and dependent. The part that we claim is "in love" is really reflective of a person who is needy.

A person who is needy for love, needs love because they are not giving love to themselves or to others. There is an emptiness inside that person and that needy person expects someone else to fill the void, because they are not taking responsibility for their own feelings, especially for their own feelings of self-worth.

When we are desperate and needy we attach our worth to another's love, which is why you can't live without that person.

If you fall in love as a confident loving person instead of as needy person your need for the relationship is totally different. As a confident and loving person, you have learned how to fill yourself with love and define your own worth. Instead of needing someone to fill you and make you feel lovable and worthy, you already feel worthy and full of love.

You experience this inner fullness because you have learned how to take full responsibility for your own feelings and needs, and you have learned to fill yourself with love. This fullness overflows and you want to share this love with another person, another loving person who is also filled with love. Your desire is to share and give love rather than to get love or take love.

The kind of person you are is usually the kind of person you are attracted to or the kind of person you attract. The kind of person you are attracted to often has a similar level of neediness and a similar level of emotional health. If you are needy, you will pick someone whom you believe wants the job of filling you up. The problem is that the other needy person may be attempting to fill you up in the hopes that you will also fill them up as well. Two people who each want to get love rather than share love will eventually find themselves very disappointed with each other. They will each blame the other for not loving them in the way they want to be loved. When relationships break up, it is often because one or both partners are not taking responsibility for their own feelings and self-worth and are blaming the other for their resulting unhappiness.

Love in marriage is much more than a sexual issue. It is about the relationship (or the lack thereof). Many couples who struggle in a marriage struggle with codependency or emotional dependency.

An emotionally needy or dependent person often gets close to the other person very quickly. They spend an inordinate amount of time together, and when they are not together they think or talk about the other person often. A person who is emotionally needy often spends a great deal of time on lengthy phone calls or internet correspondence with the other person. A person who is emotionally needy often gets jealous and feels rejected when the other person spends time with other friends.

A person who is emotionally needy puts little or no effort into relationships with others. A person who is emotionally needy expresses affection in a way that makes the other person feel uncomfortable. A person who is emotionally needy doesn’t seem to notice when the other person uses or abuses them. A person who is emotionally needy feels easily and badly hurt by the other person. When confronted about relationship issues, the emotionally needy person gets angry and defensive. The person who is emotionally needy does not feel comfortable or does not know how to act without the other person there. A person who is emotionally needy can’t have fun without the other person.

The emotionally needy person doesn’t mind abuse from the object of their affection, because abuse is a form of attention. But if the person they are attached to does anything which makes them feel rejected or left out, they become extremely hurt. The emotionally needy person gets feelings hurt very easily and therefore is usually very defensive and takes things wrong.

A person might see just one of these things in a particular relationship, and that is not necessarily a big deal. But if a person starts to see several of the things in a relationship, it’s a good bet you’re looking at a person who is emotionally dependent.

At the core, a person who is emotionally needy is emotionally broke and needs healing. A person who is emotionally needy really does need love, friendship, affirmation in their life. But the needy person has some mistaken beliefs about his or her self worth and how to get those needs met. These mistaken beliefs are false beliefs and even lies by the adversary. Some of those lies are:

I have no innate self worth. I get my self-worth from other people.
I am a loser. I never fit in with other people.
When someone tells me no or asks me to stop doing something, that equals personal rejection.
Sex/physical affection equals love.

To overcome the effects of these false beliefs, the struggler needs to believe something different, often the complete opposite!

For instance, instead of “I have no worth”, the truth is that “I am a child of God, I have infinite worth and no one can take that away from me!”

It will take a lot of time, support and discipline for a broken person to fully embrace this new way of thinking.

It is important to note that the “weaker half” of the relationship is not the only person with a problem! While the emotionally needy person has an unhealthy need for love and attention, the other person loves and often needs to be needed. Love and friendship need boundaries, one enables the others unhealthy behaviors because it often medicates their own inner wounds. Even worse, in an otherwise normal relationship, selfish people have a hard time saying no to the attention.

We all need love and attention, but we also need to maintaining healthy boundaries. Remember, just because a person may struggle with unhealthy attachments doesn’t mean they can or should go without real love and intimacy.

I found a list of many issues an emotionally dependent person faces. See if any of them describe your own personal situation

1. I have a hard time feeling lovable and worthwhile without another persons approval.
2. I need a lot of attention from certain people to feel that I am okay
3. I often don’t trust my own feelings. I need others to validate my feelings
4. I am afraid of rejection. I isolate or try to be perfect or agreeable with others, or I give up or shut down and/or do many things to avoid rejection
5. I am afraid to be alone
6. I often feel empty inside
7. I am often anxious around others
8. I am often jealous in my relationships
9. I take others uncaring behavior towards me personally
10. I get angry when others do what they want to do instead of what I want them to do
11. People have told me that I am too needy
12. I don’t know what to do with myself when I am not around others.
13. I am fine when I am alone, but I get tense and anxious around others
14. I often find myself blaming others for my feelings-my anger, emptiness, insecurity, anxiety, etc
15. I believe that my good feelings should come from someone else loving me
16. I believe that my safety and security should come from someone else
17. I can’t have fun unless I’m with someone else who knows how to have fun.
18. I am often anxious or depressed, hurt or angry

An emotionally dependent person is a person who does not take the full 100% responsibility for his or her own feelings. An emotional dependent person does not define his or her own inner worth, instead makes others approval and attention responsible for his or her own self worth.

When we don’t take responsibility for our own feelings and for defining our own worth, we become dependent upon others to do this for us. Instead of using our agency to act upon these things, we are acted upon. Then we become a victim of others choices and have lost our agency.

Emotional freedom is emotional free agency. Emotional freedom occurs when we decide to take 100% responsibility for all of our own feelings.
Taking responsibility for our own feelings means:

1. Facing all painful feelings in life—loneliness, helplessness, heartache, heartbreak, sorrow and grief. Learning how to manage these difficult feelings so that you don’t have to avoid them with various addictions. As long as you use addictions to avoid these feelings instead of learning to manage them, you will continue to be emotionally dependent and in the grips of addictions. These feelings are being caused by others and circumstances, but it is up to you to learn to lovingly manage them without closing down or turning to addictions.

2. Explore the feelings you create with your own thoughts and actions. Your anxiety, depression, guilty, shame, anger, jealousy, rage, envy etc. As long as you believe it is other’s choices rather than what you are telling yourself and how you are treating yourself that is causing these feelings, you will be emotionally dependent. You will see yourself as a victim until you take full responsibility for how you are creating these painful feelings with your own self abandonment.

3. Turn to God for inner strength. Strength from the Lord gives us personal power to take responsibility for our own feelings and this power and strength can set us free.

4. Try learning to give to yourself and others what it is you want from others. Your challenge is to change: To become the person to yourself that you want the other person to be. Then you will be able to be "in love" rather than "in need." You will be able to love another person for who he or she really is rather than for what this person can do for you. Instead of needing to get love, you can give love from the heart for the joy of it and feel refilled in the giving.