Much of what Lighthouse Emotional Wellness Center’s team has learned about developing emotional self-sufficiency comes from therapist and Ph.D. David Richo. He says that good mental health comes with a durable sense of emotional self-sufficiency.

How to Define Emotional Self-Sufficiency

• An ability to maintain oneself without outside aid.
• A capability for providing for one’s own needs.
• An unshakable confidence in one’s own worth and abilities.

How Lighthouse Emotional Wellness Center Approaches Emotional Self-Sufficiency

The absence of any of the above coupled with a desire to change the status quo is the beginning of a therapeutic alliance. Our team at Lighthouse Emotional Wellness Team often begins counseling sessions by asking “Tell me, how do you feel about yourself?” This is narrowed to address the three components of emotional self-sufficiency. “Don’t think in terms of high or low or good or bad, but rather in terms of strong or weak.”

The answers are often paradoxical. The client often responds with “Good, high or strong,” but the behavior suggests otherwise. This is where the intervention begins.

If the strength of the therapeutic alliance is strong, we can rigorously examine the client’s behavior and interactions with important individuals within their life. The behavior is assessed according to whether or not it contributes or impedes emotional self-sufficiency. What we are looking for is to what degree the client depends upon others for praise or blame.

The behavior is often so deeply embedded that an otherwise mentally healthy client is unaware that they seek much praise and little blame. The insight gained by the client often determines to what degree “my sense of self-sufficiency depends upon others.” “Is that dependence clinically significant?”. If the answer is ‘yes’ we move toward intervention.

During this session we ask, “Can we continue with this premise? Life is filled with positive and negative events. It is the unalterable human condition. Emotionally self-sufficient individuals are not de-stabilized by either one.” When the client is intrigued by this and commits to clinical work, We suggest a list of the hallmarks of emotionally self-sufficient individuals:

What Emotionally Independent Individuals Do

• Risk incomprehension and ridicule by others by stating their position assertively.
• Trust their instincts.
• Are willing to be disliked in the service of providing an honest assessment.
• Remain happy in their own company.
• Need to be social only to a reasonable degree.
• Value wholeness and stability more than material goods and social status.

The Role of Self-Awareness

People who have good self-awareness are able to recognize their emotions, which is the first step we recommend to our clients who want to be able to regulate their negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, and sadness. It also helps to identify your triggers so that next time you can avoid them or be more prepared to handle them.

Developing self-awareness is a crucial component in becoming emotionally self-sufficient. People often struggle to control or manage their emotions due to triggers. These are situations that provoke strong emotional reactions. However, if you can identify the triggers,  you can develop coping strategies to reduce the impact on your emotional well-being.

Another key component of self-awareness is to practice mindfulness, where you engage in the current moment without judgment. We see many people mistakenly believe that mindfulness is not allowing any thoughts to enter the mind and trying to block or empty the mind of any thoughts. However, that is not the goal and can often be counterproductive.

With mindfulness, you want to allow thoughts to flow easily with a focus on not allowing them to bother you. When the thoughts come and go naturally and you don’t get affected, they will naturally go away. Your goal is to stay in the moment, not eliminate thoughts. For those new to practicing mindfulness, it may take some time to get used to it, so don’t feel frustrated. Just like other things in life, this also requires practice.

How to Develop Emotional Independence in 5 As

So far, we have made the case that emotional self-sufficiency is valuable. Now let us ask, “How do you achieve it?” Happily, David Richo provides a list in his book How to Be An Adult in Relationships. There are five ways that you can develop a sense of self-sufficiency. Also they all begin with the letter A.

Remember, these items are what we demand of ourselves.

1. Attention

Pay attention to your feelings and emotions in all of your interactions. You observe, listen and notice. Assess if you are feeling ignored, invalidated or invisible. If true, take care of yourself by developing a fondness for yourself. Write and act upon what you feel a passion for. Enjoy the moment of doing what you do. Savor the things that give you pleasure and celebrate your successes with a ceremony.

2. Acceptance

Remember that this is an internal judgment. Do not be too harsh and do not be too lenient. Instead, be accurate. Pay the consequences for your errors and relish your triumphs. Rely not at all on outside judgments. It is only when “acceptance” is solidly in place that you can accept others. If “acceptance” is absent, you risk low self-confidence, low self-esteem and low deservability. When “acceptance” is in place, you gain stability and emotional safety.

3. Appreciation

Here is where mindfulness is important. What you are appreciating is your gifts, your limits, your longings and your unique and sometimes poignant human predicament.

How do you appreciate yourself? We suggest that you rigorously self-examine yourself and appreciate your gifts, your longings and your limitations. This is an internal process that is wholly outside of other individuals’ influence.

4. Affection

Another key aspect to developing emotional intelligence is affection. When you learn how to be affectionate towards yourself, you develop a deeper sense of warmth and care for who you are. While appreciation helps you understand your gifts and limitations, affection helps you embrace them with compassion and kindness. Affection can help you treat yourself with kindness, not relying on any external validation. This can be key to emotional independence, especially during difficult moments.

5. Allowing

In the modern, industrialized world, filled with overt and covert competition, allowing is difficult. Nonetheless, allowing is valuable.

Allow life and love to be just as they are with all of their heartache and ecstasy. You “allow” them to occur without trying to control the uncontrollable. Allowing is not giving someone permission to do something, but rather allowing yourself to be yourself and refusing to let another define what you should be. An internal dialog that would assert something like this: “I am perfectly capable of living my life fully and deeply as me.”

Developing Healthy Self-Care Practices

At Lighthouse Emotional Wellness, we believe that developing healthy self-care practices can play a key role in allowing you to become emotionally self-sufficient, where you don’t rely on validation or life circumstances to manage your emotions. These self-care practices can also boost your physical and mental health and enhance your overall quality of life

Establishing a Daily Routine

A key foundational step in becoming emotionally sufficient to establish a daily self-care routine. Having a daily routine allows you to train yourself in developing healthy habits. It also provides a structure and sense of credibility to your daily life. When you know what to expect each day, you are less likely to feel anxious.

Taking control of your own life starts with a daily routine of having a regular sleep schedule. While it may take some time to get into a habit of sleeping and waking on time, once your body gets used to this schedule, your internal body clock will regulate itself, leading to better sleep quality and overall well-being.

When you wake up, don’t rush yourself, even if that means waking up a few minutes earlier. Take time to focus on self-reflection and positivity. You can even add meditation and journaling to your morning ritual.

During the day, prioritize self-care activities, such as exercise and yoga. If possible, spend extra time and money on self-care, by getting a massage or engaging in other calming and rejuvenating activities. We also recommend that before you go to sleep, have a winding down routine to help signal to your body and mind that it is time to just relax and sleep.

Incorporating Physical Activities And Hobbies

You might have heard that physical activities help release endorphins, which are chemicals in the brain that act as mood elevators, helping you feel in control of your emotions. Hobbies can also help alleviate stress and can be a powerful remedy for negative emotions.

Ideally, you want to engage in hobbies that do not depend on participation from others, as this promotes emotional independence. However, if the hobbies include other people, it can be more fun and engaging, just don’t rely on other people for your enjoyment. We recommend that you adopt or participate in hobbies that provide a sense of personal satisfaction and self-compassion. This can go a long way in helping you become emotionally self-sufficient.

Conclusions

Emotional self-sufficiency demands conscious choices, a sane fondness for others, firm boundaries and ruthless clarity.

The danger of failing to achieve emotional self-sufficiency is a chronic fear of either engulfment or abandonment by others. Emotionally dependent people lack self-control and feel great discomfort when they are not near the person they are dependent on. They often react to triggers in a way that is disproportionate to the situation, experiencing intense anxiety or distress.

This can be avoided and emotional self-sufficiency achieved through the application of Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection and Allowing in our daily lives. They are the pathways to that worthy goal.