Emotional dependency: the importance of the GROUP in online therapy
Emotional dependency: the importance of the GROUP in online therapy
Is emotional dependency a “drug”? What is the importance of an online psychotherapy group to heal from emotional dependency? What can online therapy do?
Being emotionally dependent means experiencing an inner abyss in which the partner becomes a “drug” that gradually leads to self-destruction. When we talk about drugs we immediately think of substance abuse, as if “loving too much” and pining over this feeling to the point of total devotion weren’t similar to a drug. When you don’t love yourself enough and you were raised in dysfunctional families where abandonment and neglect were daily bread, you feel fragile and vulnerable and you seek in love the redemption for a past that did not provide the right reassurances.
In love, the emotionally dependent person gives all of themselves, loving without end to soothe that emptiness and that loneliness they carry from childhood. They are often in search of the perfect partner, but in reality they look for a partner to “fix” with their love—someone to pine for and suffer over—in order to shape and change them into a version that matches the dream dimension. This will be seasoned with intense emotions, in which the partner will be cold, standoffish, insensitive to requests for change, turning this love into an emotional roller coaster that recalls the family chaos in which the emotionally dependent person lived.
A relationship with a healthy partner would be too boring; better to suffer for a partner who does not fully meet one’s expectations, is incompatible, but with the hope that one day, with help, dedication and love, they will transform into that dream man or woman. Detachment from reality is one of the symptoms of emotional dependency, in which one sees the partner’s potential and not the partner as they are.
In my clinical experience, I have followed several people who suffered from emotional dependency and they all had one thing in common: “the obsession with the love object.” An obsession that I have always perceived as an escape from looking within in order to understand the origin of emotional dependency. When I speak of turning one’s gaze inward, I mean having to re-cross that pain linked to traumas and emotional wounds transmitted at an intergenerational level and by one’s caregiving family figures.
Those who suffer from emotional dependency have a dangerous mental schema—“love is suffering”—learned in their own childhood, when parents were not able to give love and reassurance, but in exchange gave only lack and suffering. Emotional relationships must respect this schema by seeking difficult, unavailable, irritable partners, with substance dependence—in short, with any issue to be solved; the important thing is to take care of them and change them to transform them into that available, lovable, present and desirable partner; obviously the transformation almost never happens and one sinks into depression.
What is striking is that a person with emotional dependency who is in a relationship lives this love more on a plane of dream made of waiting, comings and goings, because the partner is ever more distant and so they try to control the relationship, they ask for reassurances, but this pushes the love object even further away. The relationship is asymmetrical and there is no proper balance between giving and receiving—clearly the emotionally dependent gives excessively, while the partner contributes almost nothing to the relationship. The relationship proceeds in a toxic way between ups and downs, compromising the psychophysical condition of the emotionally dependent person. Love can heal, but it can also make one ill to the point of bringing out psychological and organic health problems.
Emotional dependency affects women more, but many men also suffer from it. This is due to a society in change because of social media, in which female and male roles are undergoing profound transformation and relationships are increasingly fragile and unfortunately based on unhealthy consumerism. The use of negative relational dynamics such as ghosting, orbiting, benching, etc., is the cause of the increase in cases of emotional dependency, loneliness and abandonment crises.
Working in group therapy to heal from emotional dependency: an opportunity to seize immediately
To heal from emotional dependency, it is necessary to: admit the inability to control the illness understood as obsession with the relationship, stop blaming others’ problems, focus on oneself and take responsibility for one’s actions, seek help, face one’s feelings instead of continuing to ignore them, and finally join a support group to get out of the emotional isolation caused by having been in a toxic relationship for a prolonged period.
The importance of joining a psychotherapy group for those experiencing emotional dependency is that missing piece that can help in healing, moving from a condition of loneliness and isolation to moments of sharing and emotional warmth together with other people who suffer from the same disorder. Meeting and sharing in a group becomes essential to establish a relational network that becomes a lifeline after a relational trauma established following having survived an asymmetrical emotional relationship.
The psychotherapy group on emotional dependency has the therapeutic function of increasing members’ self-esteem through empathic listening and storytelling. Hearing that other people have lived the same experiences and the successes they achieved with time and patience gives a sense of confidence even to those who are trying to get out of emotional dependency. One feels welcomed and confident that everyone has their own “divine timing” for liberation from suffering and that only with constant work on oneself is it possible to achieve great milestones. In the group one learns to care for oneself, to love oneself, and one stops annihilating oneself for the other—but above all one learns to stop directing and controlling the relationship. Energy must be conserved for oneself, increasing the sense of self-efficacy by practicing what is commonly called “healthy selfishness.”
The therapeutic work is aimed at bringing spirituality into the lives of group participants to detach emotionally from the toxic relationship with the partner—whether still present or whether they have moved away after the end of the relationship. In any case, it becomes necessary to remove the sense of shame and blame for what has been lived, learning to take one’s own feelings and needs into consideration. Getting out of the trap of the ego by understanding that one’s partner is not the worst monster ever encountered, but learning from this experience by transforming the negative into positive, leveraging the fact that the encounter with that man or woman was necessary to heal one’s wounds and traumas. It could not have been otherwise, since life always gives us a chance to heal our wounds, to evolve by lightening the burdens we carry from childhood.
Before being abused by the partner, one felt abused as a child, and the experience repeated itself so that it could be healed definitively. One must work on the sense of guilt for having allowed oneself to be abused and free oneself from anger and resentment, which slow personal and spiritual evolution. Forgive and forgive oneself to learn to love without ego, moving toward unconditional love as a symbol of inner strength and compassion toward oneself and others.
What can online therapy do?
Online therapy can help with group work on emotional dependency (Online group psychotherapy on emotional dependency) and bring healing and well-being into participants’ lives. The online psychotherapy group consists of a cycle of ten meetings on the Zoom platform, where one part will be dedicated to group work and one part to individual work. The goal is to bring together online people connecting from Italy and abroad to work in a group, who want to get out of emotional dependency while maintaining anonymity and privacy, with the aim of healing through the processing of pain via the intertwining of stories. Telling one’s story and hearing others’ is fundamental to giving new meanings to what happened; finally one feels part of a whole and in deep connection with other people who have a common goal: to heal and be reborn. It is said that the only way to be reborn is to die to oneself, and that is essentially what happens when one chooses to work on one’s experience, giving life to an inner evolutionary transformation.
Individual online therapy is also recommended to heal from emotional dependency and to better analyze dysfunctional relational schemas that prevent recognizing the signals that hint at red flags when meeting the other. Learning to save oneself becomes more important than saving the other, whereas the emotionally dependent person is often used to wanting at all costs to save the partner to change them into the most desirable version. Learning to see the other for who they are without idealizing them is one of the first important steps toward healing.
After all, nothing forbids relating to a problematic partner, but the important thing is to accept that person as they are without wanting to change them. Indeed, in many cases accepting relational imperfection could be an evolutionary challenge to grow and evolve, but it is a valid premise only for those who have acquired such inner and spiritual strength that they can face any situation or relationship while remaining always steady and balanced.
For information write to Dr. Jessica Zecchini.
Email contact consulenza@jessicazecchini.it, whatsapp contact 370 32 17 351
