What Are You Doing to Create Emotional Independence?
Breaking free for yourself after years of toxic connections and codependency.
It was Robert Frost who said, “Freedom lies in being bold,” and that’s certainly the case for those forging lives of their own after trauma, abuse, and dysfunction. We have to find immense courage to break the patterns of our families and our relationships. Stepping out into the unknown, we have to face a lot of uncertainty in life to become our own people, to establish a value-aligned sense of self.
The development of emotional independence is a huge part of that process.
Instead of aligning our emotions to others, and calibrating our feelings according to theirs, we have to feel our feelings from the inside out. We have to be honest about those feelings too, and live in a continual state of emotional integrity with those feelings.
Who are you as an emotionally independent person? What does your life look like when you’re not hiding how you feel? When you’re not pretending that you’re someone that you’re not?
You can’t get to this point of radical courage until you have the faith in yourself to break the cycle. Acknowledge where you’re at so that you can get where you want to go.
What is emotional independence?
When I think of emotional independence, I can’t help but to think of my mother. She was a woman always making emotional messes. If she had a bad day or work, or didn’t like how someone looked at her in the store, her kids paid the price. She would scream at us after a boss said something to her and would even dump on us when she felt insecure or otherwise put out by the people who riled up her big emotions.
She was the opposite of an emotionally independent person…
In the most basic terms, emotional independence is our ability to manage and regulate our own emotions, without relying on others to regulate those emotions for us. Just look at the example above.
My mother had both an inability and an unwillingness to regulate her own emotions. When she was angry about something upsetting at work, she wanted me to be angry with her. What’s more, if she couldn’t punish or resolve those emotions at work, she would punish me and resolve those emotions through her interactions with me.
This is the sign of someone who lacks both emotional intelligence and emotional independence.
My mother never developed the skills to talk herself off of the ledge. She couldn’t sit with her emotions. They made her too uncomfortable. So she often offloaded them onto me (or anyone else in the environment) by picking fights, starting confrontations, taking passive-aggressive jabs, etc.
Recognizing the toxic patterns
There’s no moving forward toward emotional independence without first understanding the toxic patterns of emotional codependency that have held you back. Within and without. Who is crossing the line around your happiness, and where are you crossing the line in terms of your emotional resolutions?
Unmasking the toxicity
Have you ever felt like walking on eggshells around your loved ones, or like you're always the supporting role in someone else's drama? If that feels like your every day norm, then it may be time to explore the tell-tale signs of a toxic family or a codependent partner.
From constant criticism to control tactics, toxic elements in our relationships with others can affect our ability (and willingness) to be emotionally independent.
You have to honestly unmask the toxicity that’s lurking externally. How is your environment affecting your emotions? How is it encouraging you to hide your emotions? To mask them? To change them to fit the emotional needs of others?
The more you can be honest about these external factors, the quicker you can put yourself on a path to make a change in the way you regulate and process your emotions.
Breaking the grip of codependency
Where do you end and others begin? Codependent people often blur the lines between healthy and unhealthy, creating emotional entanglements that don’t benefit emotional independence. If you feel like your emotions are reliant on the people you love, that can signal a codependent union or a codependent approach to handling your feelings.
Other people aren’t going to fix this for you. To get to a place of true emotional independence, you’re going to have to take action and set boundaries with yourself. Instead of leaning into others when the big feelings come, learn to process on your own first (and most importantly).
Taking steps to heal
Our emotional independence relies on our ability to heal the above issues. Does that mean erasing them? No. Does it mean becoming a different person? Of course not. What does it mean? Healing our toxic relationships and our dysfunctional codependency patterns is a matter of changing the way we relate to ourselves and the world around us.
"To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear." – Stephen Levine
Your job is to acknowledge the past and acknowledge the present. From, using the power of boundaries, you can create a ring fence around your new life and the steps you want to take. Seek support and take action to love yourself. On the other side lies your ability to be an emotionally independent person.
1. Acknowledge the past
There’s no moving forward into a better you without taking a sober look at where you've been. Only by recognizing the wounds that damage us can we begin to heal. Take it from me. I had to wake up to the cycle of misery my toxic family inflicted. The way they approached things (and me) was shaping my path to independence.
I had to step outside of myself and look honestly at who my mother was.
Instead of taking responsibility for how she felt, she made others feel that way too. She wasn’t healed, she wasn’t enlightened. She wasn’t even independent. My mother didn’t love herself enough to be any of those things. If I wanted to be different, I was going to have to learn to love myself and create a life I could love, too.
You’ve got to start there too.
What’s gone wrong? How has it weakened your position? How can you strengthen your position now that you see the type of life and future you want to create? If the pain is making you emotionally codependent, how can you break those shackles and step into the light of what you want and how you feel?
2. The power of boundaries
Setting boundaries is not about creating distance but about granting yourself space to thrive. You’re telling the world, this is how I want to be treated. To yourself you’re saying, this is where the line is. Don’t go past it unless you want to be unaligned and uncomfortable. This is a crucial part of breaking the cycle and going on to establish emotional independence.
My most practical advice for setting boundaries is this:
Figure out your absolutes: Figure out what is absolutely not okay with you in terms of treatment, feelings, goals, desires, people, everything. Then, figure out what is an absolute must in your life. Your boundaries are the things that reinforce these necessary defenses, while helping you maintain what is good and important around you.
Learn to embrace confrontation: A part of having boundaries is learning how to say no. “No thanks, I don’t want to do that.” Or, “No thanks. I don’t like when you treat me that way.” Develop a simple system of scripted responses that helps you get used to drawing the line around your well-being.
Get into the value of self: You let people violate your boundaries, and you violate your own boundaries, because of a lack of self-respect. If you loved yourself as you are, or if you respected your right to be happy and whole, you wouldn’t allow yourself to live so outside of your values and your happiness.
Remember, boundaries are just as much about keeping the bad things out as they are about keeping you “in check”. Boundaries apply to you too. What do you share? What do you keep to yourself? What do you ask from others vs. what do expect from yourself? It’s a fine line and one that can only be determined and enforced by you.
3. Seeking support
Quite frankly, setting the groundwork for emotional independence is a big ask. There’s emotional regulation involved, which requires a lot of emotional intelligence and self-awareness. There’s a higher level of understanding that has to be reached so you can actively create that emotional independence you seek.
For many, that requires the support of someone who knows what they’re doing. That could look like a psychotherapist, a local counselor. Someone with a professional background in human behavior, trauma, relationships, and mental health.
That’s a wide intersection, but the help is invaluable. There is no shame in having someone walk this journey with you, even if for only a little while. Never underestimate professional help and what that type of support may do for your future happiness and mental well-being.
4. Self-love in action
So, you’ve acknowledged the past. You’ve set boundaries. You’ve found support and now you’re looking forward to really launching into your new age of emotional independence. You are so close, but there’s one more step that has to be embraced. Self-love. Not just in practice, but in action too.
Your well-being is the foundation upon which emotional independence is built. Learn how self-care rituals can help mend a battered soul and rejuvenate a weary heart.
Take time to nourish your mind and your body. Give yourself the space to rest and recharge your emotional battery. Self-care will look like all kinds of things, but no matter what shape it takes (massages, taking medication, speaking to friends, travel, etc.) it equates to self-love. Loving yourself enough to break free means taking care of your mind, body, and spirit.
Building emotional independence
Once you’ve set the groundwork, you’ll find yourself sliding easily into a new sense of emotional independence. It will happen gradually at first, then as your awareness grows the pace will quicken. Your self-esteem will blosson. Healthier coping mechanisms will become central. Embrace the discovery that awaits during this flow and your perspective will shift for the better.
Building self-awareness and self-esteem
Without self-awareness, there can be no emotional independence. The more aware you become of your feelings and their roots, the easier it becomes to predict and manage triggers, as well as your responses to the world around you. To know thyself is to be able to regulate thyself, and the better you become at that, the more your self-esteem will increase.
This adds fire to the system. You’ll become proud of your responses, proud of the person you’re becoming. As your self-esteem increases, so will your behaviors improves (which comes around as a self-esteem boost again and again). You will be less erliant on others for emotional regulation the more proud of yourself you are.
Creating healthy coping mechanisms
Most of our unhealthy coping mechanisms come from a desire to outrun or to numb. Rather than dealing with big emotions, we might reach for substances. Or, we might bury our feelings in other people (like my mother did). We make them responsible for making us feel good and picking up the pieces of our lives.
Emotional independence helps you to move away from these unhealthy coping mechanisms.
As you develop better ways of dealing with your emotions, you will find yourself escaping that desire to numb yoursel. When you can face your emotions on your own, you can process them and find clear pathways to resolution and improvement. Your need to run, to numb, to bury, will give way to a knowledge that you can handle whatever comes your way.
Embracing personal growth and discovery
Becoming emotionally independent is akin to a metamorphosis. Remember that courage we talked about all the way back in the beginning? That sense of being able to leap into the unknown, in the face of your truth and your values? Well, emotional independence is a key part of that courage. Knowing yourself is empowering, in more ways than one.
Seeing yourself navigate challenges and handle the tough feelings will give you the courage to take new paths. You will see yourself differently, and you will see what you’re capable of differently, too. Embracing this personal growth will enable you to discover strengths and desires within yourself you didn’t know existed.
Where to go from here…
Remember, emotional independence isn't a destination but a continuous, fulfilling journey. It’s another piece of the puzzle, a path that complements that marathon of self-improvement or wholeness that you may be on.
If you feel like it all keeps circling the drain, that you keep ending up unfulfilled and getting it all wrong, you may be getting stuck in a cycle of codependency. Instead of chasing what you need, you chase what others want. But that doesn’t get you far.
Becoming independent from the inside out, being just as able to rely on yourself as others, is where true bliss and love are found. It’s not about reaching out. It’s about finding the balance between the two and never making others responsible for the emotional states that we alone can resolve in ourselves.
"It is confidence in our bodies, minds, and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures." – Oprah Winfrey.
Deep dive into the process of cultivating a profound relationship with yourself—one rooted in respect and understanding. I encourage you to keep walking the path of self-improvement, one step at a time.
© E.B. Johnson 2024
I am a writer, artist, NLPMP, and podcaster who helps people build creative lives after trauma. In my free time, I have a passion for fresh bread, history, and all things watercolor. Learn more about me here. Join my mailing list. Or support my writing by subscribing below.