Is There More to Love Than What You’ve Experienced?
One of the core traits of a dependent personality is difficulty accepting challenging or disturbing truths about self or others out of a need to maintain the status quo.
Growing Through the Storms
Often, it’s only when our eyes have been washed clear with buckets of tears that we will ever get a handle on the larger vision for ourselves and our place in the world.
Why the Key to Relationships Is You
How you feel about yourself affects all of your other relationships. Some of you may not be used to the idea that you have a distinct relationship with yourself, but you do.
When Parents Play Favorites
Julie looked up and scanned the bleachers. Nope, he wasn’t there yet. Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself for the fact he probably wouldn’t make it — again. When it came to her swim meets, something always seemed to come up — an...
Does Worry Stem from Your Childhood?
I believe a negative pattern of worry is established in childhood, based upon life circumstances, experiences, and perceptions. So, in order to find a way out, you need to be able to backtrack along your way in, to where worry started in the first place.
Emotional Abuse: The Effects on Sense of Self
Any kind of abuse, emotional abuse included, is an attack on a person’s sense of self. It demeans and controls that person through words or actions, devaluing that person and ultimately elevating the abuser.
What Causes a Negative Image of Yourself?
Perhaps you have forgotten who you really are. Maybe you’ve never known. What causes a negative image of yourself? Your life story holds some valuable clues to solving the mystery.
Depression: Learning False Truths
Sadly, many of us grow into adulthood with a list of childhood truths that can include many false and incomplete truths. Families, for good or ill, give us our first lessons about ourselves.
What’s Going on with Your Teenager: Part 1
The nearest comparison I could give to what I remember about being a teen and what I hear from teenagers about adolescence is that of a reptile shedding its skin. When a snake or a lizard sheds its skin, the new growing skin cells separate from the old established...
Family Relationships: The Foundation for Job Interactions
Your working relationships can be affected if the personalities of your boss or co-workers closely approximate someone in your past who emotionally abused you. Your boss could be just like your dad. A supervisor could treat you just like your mother did. A co-worker...
How Does Fear Create Relationship Dependency?
When people fear themselves, they will sometimes turn to activities to try to outrun the fear. They may use alcohol, drugs, shopping, eating, gambling, or the internet to keep from being alone with themselves. Other people may turn to family, friends or co-workers to...