How to Achieve Emotional Independence
Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of your surroundings and internal feelings without being overwhelmed by them. Practicing mindfulness can help you build emotional independence because you will be better able to control your reactions to the things around you. Try this beginner mindfulness exercise called “the body scan:” Take a moment to settle into a comfortable position where you feel relaxed but alert. Scan through your body: start at your toes and feet and gradually move up through the ankles, lower legs, knees, and thighs. Continue through your pelvis, hips, and lower torso. Slowly move up through your torso, ribcage, spine, shoulders, and shoulder blades. Move back down through your arms, wrists, and hands. Finally, scan your neck, face, and skull, then hold the entire body in your awareness for a final moment. As you scan your body, notice and observe what you feel without judgment or a focus on right vs. wrong. Take note of the physical sensations, areas of tension, and tissues that connect your body.
Identify how emotional independence benefits you. Spend time reflecting on your values and long-term goals. Let your mind wander without judgment, and if it helps, record your thoughts and feelings in a journal. Becoming emotionally independent can help you be less reactive, less distracted, more proactive, and feel better about yourself. Thoughtfully consider or write responses to questions like: Why is it important for you to become emotionally independent? What does it mean for you to be emotionally independent? How do you envision it will change your life? How does it make you feel when you have to depend on others or things outside of you to make you feel better about yourself?
Reflect on why you may be struggling to be emotionally independent. Take some time to figure out if and why you might be having a hard time accepting yourself and making your own decisions. Try meditating, journaling, or just sitting in a quiet place for a while and thinking about your reasons for judging yourself. Try to identify whose voice you are hearing when you judge or criticize yourself. For example, do you hear your parents, your partner, your friends, or someone else? Do you get jealous easily? Do you compare yourself to others so much that it can ruin your day? Do people often fail to meet your expectations? Who does this most often? When you're alone, do you seek out others to feel okay? Does a void spring up when you're not with others? Does your partner or the idea of a partner mean happiness to you?
Confront your negative internal thoughts. Write down the thoughts and internally held beliefs that keep you emotionally dependent. For example, you may think, “I need other people to like me so I can like myself.” When these thoughts pop into your mind, replace them with something neutral like “Nobody is universally liked—I can feel okay with myself despite how others think of me.” Remember that happiness really does come from within—by changing your thinking over time, you can condition yourself to feel happier about your life! If you’re struggling to find happiness during tough situations in life, clinical psychologist Kim Chronister recommends “finding either a therapist or life coach. If you can’t afford either…read as your therapy.” “Certain books about positive psychology,” says Chronister, “can help you determine the ingredients for contentment and de-stressing for you as an individual.
Improve your self-esteem. Increasing your self-love and self-compassion can help you rely on yourself for validation and support rather than constantly seeking it from others. Take care of yourself, do things you like, and spend time with people who genuinely make you happy. You may have to cut out people who try to manipulate your emotions and tear you down. Practice self-compassion when you’re feeling negative emotions. Say something like, “It’s okay to experience loneliness. There’s nothing wrong with me for feeling sensitive about rejection.” Self-compassion is a form of self-soothing that can help you be more self-reliant and emotionally independent. Similarly, learn to validate yourself and permit yourself to feel your feelings. This may sound like, “My emotions make sense. I’m allowed to set boundaries. It’s okay to feel how I’m feeling.” If you’re struggling to stop seeking validation or compassion from someone else, consider what you’d like that person to say and practice saying those words to yourself.
Set boundaries around your needs and wants. Identify the things that are important to you and necessary to your well-being, and be vocal about the things that upset you. Say “no” to things that don’t interest you, make you uncomfortable, or that you don’t feel like doing. If you’ve always relied on other people’s opinions, for example, your friends may be accustomed to giving you unsolicited advice. If you’re trying to become more emotionally independent, set clear boundaries with friends about what you need from them moving forward. Use “I” statements, like “I appreciate your insight, but I’m trying to work on forming my own opinions right now.” When it comes to setting boundaries around events and activities, however, there’s a fine line. Should you skip your best friend's wedding because you don't feel like it? Probably not. Should you avoid the mandatory work meeting because you're feeling lazy? Nope.
Practice letting go of other peoples’ expectations. Try to let go of the need to please or control other people. If you want to stop worrying about other people, life coach Rahti Gorfien recommends “noticing when you’re doing it, then pausing and making a choice. And that choice is, where else do you want to put your attention?” “It all starts with that pause, with stopping and choosing to focus on what you want more of in your life,” continues Gorfien. “And this is a lifelong process.” According to Gorfien, simply realizing that you want to worry less about what other people think about you is a huge first step—“if you don't realize that that's a waste of your time and energy, you can't change it.” Let go of your internal expectations as well. Rid your brain of “shoulds” and “ought to's”—if you feel behind other people or like you’re not following a traditional path, so what? We all move at our own rhythm, and you can’t be “behind” in your own life.
Take responsibility for yourself. When we blame others, they're at fault. Therefore, they become the only ones who can fix the problem, which makes us emotionally independent of them. Take responsibility for whatever role you’ve played in the problems in your life. This step toward emotional independence forces you to become reliant on yourself for a solution. Instead of wallowing in misery, you think about what options you have at your disposal to improve the situation. While you may not be responsible for everything that’s happened to you in your life, you are responsible for responding to and making good choices in the more challenging moments. Paying attention to how you naturally respond and contribute to difficult situations can help you make changes regarding the choices you make.
Make your own decisions. “Make decisions on your own without opinion shopping,” advises clinical psychologist Jennifer Guttman. “We often delegate decisions to others which undermines our confidence,” continues Guttman. “Making decisions builds confidence in showing yourself that many positive outcomes occur and that you also have the ability to cope with less than positive outcomes should they occur.” Remember that your choices are completely yours to make—whether they’re about what you make for dinner tonight, whether you thought your Bumble match was cute, or whether you should ask for a raise at your next review. The next time your friends are sitting around the table badmouthing the latest movie or even gossiping about a friend, instead of letting them shape your opinions, decide for yourself. How do you feel? Why should their opinions have any weight on yours? Try this in tiny ways, too. The next time you want to check out a cafe or a movie or a shop, etc., and you've heard pretty mediocre things, go anyway if that’s what you want to do! When you have decided for yourself, work up to speaking out about it. It's possible other people feel similarly but are too shy to say anything! You may also bring up a good point that no one else considered.
Learn to fix your own emotional problems. You can’t rely on others to meet all of your emotional needs—so the next time you’re feeling down in the dumps, do something about it! Spend the night doing something you really enjoy, treat yourself to retail therapy, or just relax. When you're successful, this can show you that you have the power to make everything better, not other people. Reader Poll: We asked 236 wikiHow readers about living independently, and 67% of them agreed that the best way to seek help and information is by searching online or using search engines. [Take Poll]
Take control over your emotions. The next time you get offended or have an emotional breakdown, reflect on why. Recognize when your emotions become out of control and if this is constantly happening with the same person or situation. As natural as it is to become upset when someone says something that triggers you, you also have to maintain control over your emotions and reactions to others. Don’t let someone else control your feelings. If that person is rude or unkind, why give them the satisfaction of caring? If you’re consistently having strong emotional reactions to someone else’s behavior, this person may have a negative or toxic presence in your life that needs to be addressed.
Spend intentional time with yourself. When was the last time you had some free time to kill and didn't whip out your phone or otherwise distract yourself? You're constantly bombarded with stimuli, which ultimately prevents introspection and getting to know yourself. Starting now, take 20 minutes or so a day for some "me-time." Who's better company than you, anyway? Take yourself on solo dates, develop new interests and hobbies, and regularly spend time with your friends and family. During your time alone, reflect on all the things that make you you! What are your talents, interests, thoughts, opinions, values, beliefs? If you’re in a relationship, make an effort to carve out alone time for yourself. Solo time will help you to remain independent in your relationship in a way that's healthy for you and your partner.
Reframe your thoughts around past situations and people who’ve hurt you. Instead of blaming an ex or parent for your pain or your emotional dependence, reframe and try to forgive them. This person is only human and likely deserves compassion or, at the very least, pity. Whatever the reason was that they did what they did, it likely came from a place of insecurity, trauma, or other personal issue that they were having. If this person did or said something that affected how you felt about yourself, remember that you shouldn’t base your self-worth on their opinions or actions. If you have or want to interact with that person again, clinical psychologist Nicole Barile contends that “concentrating on that [hurtful] thought is not going to help you succeed in having an interaction with them.”
Move on from people who have hurt you. Forgiveness is an integral step in accepting yourself and reframing past hurt. When you stop holding grudges and taking things personally, you're left with an organic, untainted version of yourself: an emotionally independent and resilient you. And you'll be happier, too! The next time you catch yourself being upset with someone, realize that it has nothing to do with you. It's them making their own decisions, and you have no control over that, which is fine. That being said, this doesn't mean that some people should be let off the hook. Forgive them, forget the behavior, but modify your expectations. Was your friend an hour late to your lunch date? Noted. Next time (if there is a next time), you'll know how to handle it. Forgiving someone doesn’t actually have to involve the other person. Rather, forgive them internally so you can move on and let go of the past. If you feel guilt or shame toward your own role in the situation that hurt you, work toward forgiving yourself, too.
Get to know yourself through your closest relationships with loved ones. Examine when you feel triggered around your family, friends, and significant others. How you relate and respond to your closest people can reveal a lot about your emotional dependence and how reactive you are to other people’s opinions of you. If you often feel negative about yourself after spending time with loved ones, you may be overly emotionally dependent on them. However, it’s normal for the people in your life to affect you. The key is to strike a balance between emotional closeness and distance. Then, when you do feel triggered by someone close to you, you can self-regulate your emotions and temper your internal reactions.
Hang out with different groups of people. When our entire lives revolve around a small group of people, it's hard not to think that their opinions couldn't move mountains. To widen your world and lessen the importance of one or two people’s opinions, hang out with more people! Having a wide social network is good in fair and foul weather, too. All humans have to attach themselves to things. It can stink because it means our emotions are at the whim of other people and other things. The key here is to not overattach yourself. It's a fine line that only you can find. The best way to do this is to spread yourself among different people and divide your time accordingly.
Do your own thing. You are your own person, and therefore, you're going to do your own thing, whatever that means. When you find who you are and stick to it, no one can stop that inner sense of happiness that'll prevail as a result. People who genuinely stick to who they are are a rare breed. It shouldn't cause judgment—it should inspire. People will see that you are your own fountain of happiness and wish they were the same! While some won't be able to handle it, they're not the ones you want to be around anyway!
What is emotional independence?
Emotional independence is the ability to manage your own emotions. Being emotionally independent means being able to control one’s reactions to potentially triggering situations. Also, emotionally independent people rely less on the opinions, expectations, and perceptions of others.
Emotional independence helps you heal and let go of negative habits. The primary purpose of emotional independence is to learn healthy techniques to move through life happily and successfully without the burden of unpleasant memories and traumas. Other benefits of practicing emotional independence include: More self-confidence Decreased anxiety and depression Less self-criticism and guilt Increased awareness of yourself Increased self-worth Improved sense of inner peace
What causes emotional dependence?
Emotional dependence is often caused by traumatic relationships. Most frequently, emotional dependence is developed during childhood based on the relationship between a child and their parent or caregiver. Often, parents may unintentionally perpetuate a child’s need for emotional validation by over-indulging the child or somehow contributing to their low self-esteem. Emotional dependence can also be caused later in life by a traumatic experience in which one person was heavily controlled or hurt by another. Sometimes, people are just emotionally dependent without any clear reason or cause. It is always possible to take steps toward healing past wounds and becoming more emotionally independent.
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