How to Avoid Psychological Dependencies

February 17, 2025

Introduction

When someone asks, “How to avoid psychological dependencies?”, there are five questions that immediately come to mind.

What are psychological dependencies?
Why are they unhealthy and dangerous?
How do they develop?
How do I avoid them?
How do I overcome them?

What are Psychological Dependencies?

The Webster’s Dictionary’s definition of psychological dependency is “the state of being mentally dependent on something or someone for support”.

The Free Dictionary’s definition is, “a habitual or compulsive involvement in an activity”.

A psychological or mental dependency can be anything we rely on to dull the emotional pain when we are unable to face our situation. It may be eating for comfort, excessive activities, such as reading fiction or watching movies, clinging to a special friend, substance abuse, pornography, gambling, emotional infatuations, or any other obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

Psychological or mental dependency can also be a situation were you return to old practices of religions before you became a believer, such as worshiping idols, witchcraft, black magic, fortune- telling or trying to contact dead relatives. These are very dangerous practices which come from Satan and are very evil because what you are really doing is worshipping demons. God hates theses traditions, and He will not tolerate you praying to anyone but Him.

Psychological dependencies can involve good activities for the wrong reasons. You may try to buy acceptance or love through giving gifts or compliments. You may try to win approval or praise by serving others, overextended work hours, excessive volunteering or too much involvement on committees, at the expense of your family.

When a dependency becomes an addiction, the victim cannot control how they use a substance or partake in an activity, and they become reliant on it to cope with daily life.

Addiction is the long-term inability to moderate or cease intake or activity. Someone with an addiction will continue to misuse the substance or activity despite the harmful effects. In many cases the addiction renders the users disabled and powerless to support themselves.

We were all created with a God shaped vacuum within our soul, longing to be filled with God Himself. God is what our hearts yearn for. Ecclesiastes 3:11 describes this craving. He has set eternity in the human heart.

In other words, When God created us, He put yearning or longing for fellowship with Him into our hearts. We were born with a built-in longing for relationship with God, which often shows itself in a deep feeling of loneliness or emptiness. You could call it, “homesickness”. Our spirits were first with God before they were placed in our bodies.

The problem is, we often don’t realize that God is what our hearts ache for, so we misunderstand what these longings are and try to satisfy them in other ways. It is much easier to develop a psychological dependency on someone or something which we can see than to learn to lean on God, whom we can’t see.

Co-Dependency Relies on People

Individuals raised in homes where one or both parents are not able to look after themselves, often develop a need to look after others. The parent’s disability may be caused by mental, or physical illness, or addictions. The child becomes co-dependent in that they carry the responsibility for the dependent parent.

When these children become adults, they choose their close friends and marriage partner according to how needy they are. A co-dependent person doesn’t know how to relate to people who are self-sufficient. They are out of their comfort zone when the other person doesn’t need them.

Two questions will help you determine if you are co-dependent–

Are you attracted to healthy, independent people who simply want friendship, or are you drawn to individuals who want you to take care of them?

Repeat

Do you feel confident that you can look after yourself, or are you attracted to people who want to take care of you?

So, we have discussed what psychological dependencies are. Our next question–

Why are psychological dependencies unhealthy and dangerous?

Psychological Dependencies are Unhealthy

Something happens when we try to satisfy our longings ourselves, through our own efforts. God designed us to be dependent on Him. He is to be our comfort, protector, and provider.

The things we depend on to calm our anxieties as an alternative to God are never satisfying for long. Psychological dependencies serve only to sink us deeper into the mire of loneliness, emptiness, depression, and bondage.

The difficulty with getting your comfort from something or someone is that it will eventually enslave you, mentally, emotionally, and physically if it is a drug.

You one day come to the realization that you can’t stop surrendering to the dependency. It has mastered you and becomes a necessity for your mental stability. The truth is, you are in bondage. As 2 Peter 2:19 so well describes it- “People are slaves to whatever has mastered them.”

How Do I Get Out of This Mess

Looking to any other source than to God for comfort or to fill the emptiness within us, is in fact turning away from God. When we put our hope in people or activities rather than God we are causing ourselves more pain. These verses say we are putting a curse on ourselves.

We will continually get hurt. Individuals will let us down every time.
We will learn to trust less and become more isolated with each emotional wound.
We will constantly feel lonely and empty.
We will develop more obsessions, dependencies, and mental health issues.
We will be prevented from maturing into what God intended for us to be.
We will never bear much fruit.
Worst of all, we lose out on what our hearts truly long for most, developing an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father.

When we turn to dependencies for comfort, we are essentially turning away from God, who is to be a life-giving spring of water bubbling up inside us.

The phrase, “digging their own cisterns” is like digging a water-tank in rock, which still needs to be filled from another source.

This phrase is referring to making gods, or useless idols with ones own hands, a sin that the children of Israel were notorious for doing. So turning to dependencies would be equivalent to idolatry.

The book of Hosea is entirely given to addressing Israel’s worship of idols or other gods. Through-out the Bible, God equates Israel’s worship of idols to prostitution.

As is common to prophets of that day God used a live illustration to send a message to his people.

As God’s people, we often pursue comfort, love, and our own means of escape from our anxiety instead of seeking God.

We don’t trust Him enough to help us through the hard times. Because God is jealous for our affections, He sometimes allows us to be trapped in our sin, so that we must cry out to Him for deliverance.

He will then lead us into a desert experience of a painful healing journey, through the valley of loneliness, depression, and fear. There God will speak tenderly to us; He will comfort us with His Word and surround us with His presence and wonderful love.

When we are suffering, we will be ready to listen to His voice. He will soothe us and demonstrate His love to us. Here in this place of pain and sorrow, we will learn to cling to God. Through this experience we will renew our devotion to Him and produce new fruit in our lives.

Through this agonizing experience, God’s people will receive new life, new hope, and new dreams. Our walk and our fellowship with God will be rejuvenated. He will widen our experience and broaden our ministry. He will make our “valley of trouble”, a door of hope.

After such an experience we will walk closely by their Lord’s side and enjoy sweet fellowship with Him. Our “valleys of trouble” will become a place where we will learn to rest in God throughout all the seasons of our life.

So, we have answered the first two questions–

What are psychological dependencies?
Why are they unhealthy and dangerous?

How are Psychological Dependencies Developed

Once you have been deeply wounded your natural strengths often become distorted. And anything good once distorted becomes brokenness:

Truth distorted- becomes deception

Love distorted- becomes co-dependency

Passion distorted- becomes obsession

Hard working- becomes workaholic

Strong leadership- becomes controlling

Rest and relaxation- becomes laziness

Excellence- becomes perfectionism

Moderation- becomes dependency

Any combination of these traits work havoc in relationships, marriages and in raising children. Hurting people run from job to job, relationship to relationship, and marriage to marriage.

Children learn the ways that parents deal with stress and disappointments. As a result, the next generation carries on the same dysfunctions.

From the time a person is a young child, each one learns how to comfort themselves in times of anxiety. The greater the child’s environmental instability, the greater the need for something to dull the emotional anxiety and pain.

During an extended time of crisis, escape techniques that have been your comfort for years become more habitual. Pesky little temptations that have plagued a person for a lifetime unexpectedly become persistent. Persistent temptations become obsessions, and before you know it, obsessions become bondage.

The Bondage Cycle

“Bondage”, the very word sends shivers down the spine of anyone who has fallen prey to the monster. The victim feels helpless to be able to change. Is there a greater feeling of hopelessness than being controlled by something or someone?

We tend to go around the bondage cycle in a pattern, each developing our own style. We go around it so often that we dig a rut that keeps us habitually going around and around and around.

Everything seems to be going well; our fellowship with our Heavenly Father is good. Then stress enters our lives, be it worry, fatigue, illness, resurfacing hurtful memories, or some other form of anxiety, and the cycle begins.

Stress → Escape Techniques → Resisting Temptation → Submitting to your Dependency → Guilt → Shame → Fear → Depression → Repentance → Joy → Peace → Prayer

Stress → Escape Techniques →Resisting Temptation → Submitting to your Dependency → Guilt → Shame→ Fear → Depression → Repentance → Joy → Peace → Prayer →Stress →… Around and around you go.

The good news is, you don’t need to keep going around and around the bondage cycle. You can choose to go directly to prayer when experiencing stress or anxiety.

Learn to pour out your heart to your Heavenly Father.

Pour out your heart! Pour out your emotions! Pour out your anxiety and stress!

If you take the time to tell God exactly what is happening in your life and how you feel about it, the anxiety and stress will be released. The need to turn to your obsessions will be diminished. And you will learn to trust God with your circumstances.

If you find you’re already several steps into the bondage cycle, you can take a shortcut to repentance, and then pour out your heart to your Heavenly Father. Your joy, peace, and fellowship will be restored.

With practice, much practice, the bondage cycle will be reduced to a few steps with quick repentance. The key is to catch yourself as soon as your mind begins to wander toward your obsession.

Replace the harmful thoughts with something glorifying to God, be it prayer, praise, worship, singing, or memorized Scripture.

So, how do you avoid falling into the trap of psychological dependencies?

To avoid psychological dependencies

Expand your knowledge of God’s name, or character, so that you can learn to trust Him. Those who know God intimately are more prepared to fight temptation.
Make note of triggers that lure you to your dependency such as stress, anxiety, fear, loneliness, exhaustion, or painful memories.
Practice self-control. Plan what you will do when you are tempted by your obsession or dependency.

1 Peter 1:13 New Living Translation

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control.

Train yourself to take every thought captive until it becomes a good habit. In time when one of your obsessions come into your mind, you will be able to cut it off by immediately quoting Scripture such as—

Ask God to strengthen you in your time of temptation.

Resist the desire. Tell the demon to leave, in Jesus name. Change your physical position. Get your mind busy doing something else.

Avoid areas of temptation. Don’t go where you know you are tempted. That might mean your internet, local bar, shopping centre or any other place where you are enticed. Stay far away from them.

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