You may also relate to other common struggles of people who feel insecure and overly dependent. They often have an underlying sense that they are inadequate, unworthy of love, and essentially flawed. They have strong fears of rejection and often feel jealous as they scan for evidence of their spouse finding someone better than them. Because they feel emotionally weak or oversensitive, they frequently become overwhelmed by emotion and look to their partner to help comfort them.

As an insecure person, you probably also have a sense that you need to earn your spouse’s acceptance and love. You might place your spouse on a pedestal and work overtime to meet their needs. Unfortunately, this reinforces your sense that you are below them, inherently unworthy of their love or appreciation—except as a reward for the things you do. It increases your self-doubt and motivates you to keep your opinions to yourself. As a result, you might rely very much on your spouse to make most decisions for you—from picking a restaurant to choosing the best career path for you.

It can be helpful to assess how your partner’s personal style affects your marriage. Your spouse may be basically secure and comfortable with looking for support from you. They are likely to be reassuring and encourage you to feel secure in the relationship. If this describes your marriage, choose to take in the positive and allow yourself to grow from the experience.

However, like many insecure people, you might have chosen a partner who tends to be highly self-sufficient and avoids vulnerable emotions in themselves and their spouse. These marriages are fraught with conflict. You might cry out for attention, only to have your spouse withdraw; prompting you to press for attention again, perpetuating a never-ending cycle of pursuit-withdrawal.

Though marital patterns related to insecurity and overdependence can become entrenched, the good news is that they can also be changed. The key is for you and your spouse to be willing to work on improving your relationship.

Nurture your own personal growth

You must be willing to challenge yourself to grow as a person. By nurturing a sense that you have value as you are—that you don’t have to overcome some basic inadequacy—you can begin to engage more fully in your marriage. You can share more of your thoughts, feelings and opinions. And you can feel free to explore your interests independent of your spouse.

You might grow through psychotherapy or through efforts at finding personal validation in work, pursued interests, and other personal relationships. You might also look into books, online resources and workshops to help nurture personal growth.

In the end, by strengthening your sense of self, you will become a different partner. This can lead to a stronger marriage. But be forewarned, if your partner prefers a more dependent partner, they may resist your change and your marriage may become turbulent. It might interest you to know that I’ve never worked with anyone in therapy who has regretted their growth, even when it resulted in this kind of difficulty.

Encourage personal growth in your spouse

If your spouse is secure and emotionally mature, they might simply need to be extra supportive and encouraging, letting you know without question that you are loved and respected. Then it’s up to you to take in that acceptance and love, allowing you to develop a strong, more independent sense of yourself.

However, if your spouse tends to avoid emotions, they may need to grow personally in order to fully value and appreciate you. You will probably need to express your needs strongly, prompting this kind of growth. You might even look to couples therapy for help to express yourself and to open your spouse to responding in a more positive, connected way to you.

Make your marriage a safe haven

It’s essential that you and your spouse feel that you are supportive of each other—that you feel safe in turning to each other for support during difficult times. Even when you disagree, you want to feel safe with, and loved by, each other. This kind of safe haven is created when you can consistently act in a way that communicates that you care about and respect one another. When people feel safe with each other, they also trust one another and feel freer to be fully themselves.

Make your marriage a secure base from which you can explore personal interests

For a marriage to be successful, both people need to pursue their individual interests and live life according to their values. When you live as less than a whole person—as you do when you ignore self-care and self-interest to attend to your spouse—you cannot connect in a fully intimate way because you aren’t fully there.

Asserting your thoughts, feelings and desires might feel very intimidating. You may fear being rejected or abandoned if you divert energy away from attending to your spouse; or if you express any differences of opinion. The reality is that when you have a spouse who truly loves and respects you, they want you to be fully yourself.

Be emotionally available for each other

To enjoy a happy marriage, both people need to truly be there for each other. You cannot have an intimate relationship if you don’t interact very much, or if you are simply clocking time and not really sharing from your heart. So, make sure that you and your spouse are warm and affectionate with each other, spend quality time together, and show each other genuine caring.

By doing all you can to nurture personal growth and feel your spouse’s support, you will find that you develop a stronger sense of self. You will be less fearful of rejection. And you will grow, becoming increasingly true to your genuine self. With time, you will have less of a need to depend on your spouse. And eventually, you will change from being dependent upon your spouse to having a relationship in which you are both interdependent. That is, you will feel that you and your spouse can act independently but also choose to rely or depend upon each other for support, encouragement, and maintaining a shared life. Once you reach this level of interdependent connection, you find happiness and fulfillment in yourself and in your marriage.

The post Are You the Overdependent One in Your Marriage? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Those who swear by the benefits of being self-critical often don’t realise the long-term negative effects of it. On the other hand, there are many who grow and even thrive on having a critical eye that’s focussed inward—but in a self-compassionate rather than self-critical way. The difference between these two kinds of people is in how they approach themselves and their performance.

How do you assess yourself?

For some people, introspection is a kind of self-autopsy in which they cut open their psyches and look for abnormalities. They inevitably find their flaws or weaknesses because everyone has them. Then they study these human failings under a microscope—and work tirelessly to get rid of them. Of course, this is a process that has no end and can be very demoralising.

Other people approach introspection in a gentler manner. They are curious and accepting as they consider their inner world and how it affects their performance in the outer world. As they endeavour to discern their inner selves more, they are empathetic rather than critical toward their own distress and failings. This compassion naturally motivates them to find their way out of their emotional pain or discomfort while also spurring them on to achieve their goals and to find happiness.

Why self-compassion is better than self-criticism?

Those high in self-compassion ultimately do better than those who are self-critical. Although the search-and-destroy missions of self-critical people are an expedient way to address problems and advance toward goals, they can also be extremely stressful and demoralising. Self-critical people are, in essence, attacking themselves. And when they feel the pain of their self-victimisation, they often respond by further criticising themselves for being weak.

The picture is much more positive for self-compassionate people. They comfort, support and encourage themselves as they acknowledge their imperfections and failures. They are particularly adept at accepting negative feedback and responding in a constructive way by inwardly maintaining a positive sense of themselves while also making corrective changes in their performance.

Which type are you?

Most people fall in the category midway between self-compassion and self-attack. They are sometimes angry and unforgiving about their actions. At other times, they consider their pain with tenderness. But the more they can look perceptively into themselves with a compassionate eye, what I call compassionate self-awareness [I have explained the concept in a 3-minute video embedded below], the stronger they feel about facing their tribulations and the more resilient they are toward self-improvement.

Learn how to look inward with care

Another way to practise self-compassion is to bring your attention and critical thinking to how you respond to particular circumstances. It can help to be conscious of your thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Consider the following example of someone working through a situation:

Situation: After beating me in tennis, Lisa kept talking about how she’s better than me, just as she always does.

Self-critical thoughts: She’s right, I’m a loser. I’m no good at tennis or anything else for that matter.

Emotions: Angry with self, angry with Lisa, sad, dejected, frustrated.

Source of thoughts/feelings: I’m really upset about this incident, but I also know that I have a history of feeling like a loser. When I was a kid, I had an undiagnosed learning disability that made attending school really hard. No matter how hard I tried, I never seemed to do well. So I ended up feeling like a failure all the time. The voice I hear in my head now is the same voice I heard as a child.

After identifying all of these parts of your experience, choose to respond to yourself with compassion. This will probably be difficult for you. In this example, you might say, “Okay, I know now why I think I’m a loser, but I should just get over it.”

If this is where you get stuck, I suggest that you consider the following three-step approach to responding gently to your self-criticisms. These steps are:

1. Understanding your thoughts
2. Validating your emotions
3. Providing a sympathetic alternative thought to the emotions you are experiencing.

In the above example of losing the tennis match, this could turn out at follows:

1 Understand your thinking

“Given my childhood experiences, I can understand why I think of myself as a failure. These thoughts and feelings happened so frequently that they become ingrained in me, so it makes sense that I still think this way.”

2 Validate your emotions

“Given my childhood experiences, of course I felt angry with myself, sad and despairing as a child. And, I understand why those same feelings would get triggered when I’m in similar situations now.”

3 Compassionate alternative

“The truth is that I wasn’t a failure as a child—I struggled because of my learning disability. Once I got the help I needed, I did better in school and at a lot of other things, too. Just as I wasn’t a loser back then even though I felt that way, I’m also not a loser now—even when I feel that way.

“As for this situation with Lisa, I need to remember that she was on a team when she was younger and she’s never stopped playing. And I only started playing about a year ago. So, of course she’s better than me at this. But, again, that doesn’t make me a loser. Even if I never get really good at tennis, I have other strengths. I’m really creative, and I know I’m a loyal friend—which is more important to me, anyway.”

After disseminating your thoughts, if you still struggle with finding a considerate response, think about how you would advise a friend. For instance, you could spend some time thinking about people you know who are struggling in some way and allowing yourself to be open to their pain, while wishing them well in your heart. Then you can simply bring your awareness to your own pain or difficulties and practise responding to yourself in the same compassionate manner.

Learning to assess yourself in this compassionate way can be very difficult. So, be patient. Give yourself a chance to work through this process as many times as you need to. It can help to remember the many years that you’ve been self-critical—it’s a well learned way of relating to yourself that will take time and practice to unlearn. But as your self-compassion increases, you will find that you feel better about yourself even as you continue to improve and grow in different areas of your life.

Watch this video on compassionate self-awareness by Dr. Leslie Becker-Phelps

The post Stop attacking yourself with self-criticism appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.