Overcoming Psychological Dependencies
We were all created with a God shaped vacuum within our soul, longing to be filled with God Himself. If we do not fill this void with God’s love we will fill it with something else; dependencies which cannot satisfy. Psychological dependencies serve only to sink us deeper into the mire of loneliness, emptiness, and depression. A dependency can be anything we rely on to dull the pain when we are unable to face our situation. It may be eating for comfort, excessive shopping or TV, clinging to a special friend, substance abuse, pornography, or any other obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Overcoming psychological dependencies must first begin with recognizing the problem.
Psychological dependencies can involve good activities for the wrong reasons. You may try to buy approval or acceptance through serving others, overextended work hours, excessive volunteering or too much involvement on committees, at the expense of your family. The difficulty with getting your sense of worth from something or someone is that it will eventually enslave you. 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. As 2 Peter 2:19 so well describes it- “People are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” The question now facing the victim is, “How do I get out of this mess?”
Recovery from psychological dependencies does not take place on its own. There are no instant fixes beyond a miracle. It takes a plan of action. It takes purpose, determination, perseverance, commitment, hard work and time. Healing brokenness requires deliberate steps toward restoration.
Break out of Denial
Denial is the refusal to see something as it is. You insist you’re not dependent; that you can stop your habit at any time you choose to. One way to determine if you are “hooked” is to stop the activity and see how it affects you.
Denial refuses to see how your activity is negatively affecting your life and family. Often the recovery process is set in place as a result of a crisis. Coming to understanding of the pain you are causing yourself and your loved ones is usually the first step toward overcoming psychological dependencies. An individual will not change until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the fear of change.
Own your Brokenness
You can’t begin your walk to freedom until you own your brokenness. For example, an alcoholic will not get help until he or she takes ownership of his or her alcoholism. As long as the person denies the dependency or blames someone else, he or she will never heal. It is essential to the healing journey that you take responsibility for your dependency or addiction and how it is destroying your life. Support groups and counselling can be especially useful in helping you sort through the complex issues at the root of the dependency.
Replace the Lies with Truth
Individuals with wounded hearts have immense difficultly grasping the concept of “God loving them as a unique person”. They are broken; therefore, they feel worthless. They may consider, “if my parents who should have loved me most, did not demonstrate unconditional love, how can ‘The Creator of the universe’ love someone as insignificant as me?” Or they may believe that they have gone past the point of no return and think God is done with them.
The only way to bring healing to this kind of thinking is to replace the old messages (which are lies) with new messages (which are truth). The best method of doing this is to read aloud Scriptures of God’s love with your name inserted and meditate on the meaning of the words. With time set aside for daily reflection, the lies will slowly be replaced with truth. God does not quit pursuing His prodigals. As long as there is breath in your lungs, God is not done with you!
Take Charge of Your Thoughts
If you will practice dismissing every negative self-message or thought of your obsession as soon as it enters your mind, recuperation from your dependencies will be realized much sooner. Immediately quoting, “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), will discharge deception and prevent replacement dependencies. In addition, listening to praise music while you are trying to sleep will help keep your mind from wandering into harmful areas.
Press Through the Wall
Overcoming psychological dependencies is like swimming upstream against the current. You swim frantically for awhile and make progress, but then you tire and the current carries you back to where you began. You try again and again and again, but each time you become exhausted and end up being carried back to where you started. You’re weighed down with shame, fear, and depression.
The only way through the barrier is to acknowledge your helplessness to yourself, and your Heavenly Father. Then with persistent prayer, fight with every ounce of energy you possess and rely on His strength to press through the wall. Slowly, very slowly, you will make progress. You will begin to have more good days than bad ones. Finally, one day you will realize your dependency is much weaker or perhaps doesn’t exist at all. It will take prayer, determination, perseverance, commitment, hard work and time, but you can overcome your psychological dependency.
Now you may be wondering, “what’s wrong with going shopping when you’re stressed, or eating a bucket of ice-cream when you’re lonely”. These things never give you lasting comfort. In fact, when you get your next visa bill or step onto the scales, you may be kicking yourself for your lack of self-control. But besides that, the Bible gives a good reason why we should not depend on things or people for comfort, as an alternative to God.
Lessons from Scripture
Jeremiah 17:5-6 give us a warning. This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
What does this passage tell us will happen if we depend on other means instead of God for comfort and strength? Looking to any other source than to God to fill our longings or the emptiness within us, is in fact turning away from God. If we put our hope in people or things rather than God, 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 develop more obsessions, dependencies, and mental health issues.
Trying to get our needs or longings met through people or things as an alternative to God will prevent us from maturing into what God intended for us to be. We will constantly feel lonely and empty. As a result, we will never bear much fruit. Worst of all, we lose out on developing an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father.
Jeremiah 17:7-8 gives us a promise when we turn to God for our comfort.
“But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
What does this passage tell us will happen if we put our faith in God? We will have stability, endurance, peace, fruitfulness, and prosperity. We will mature spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. Our relationship with God will become deep and rewarding.
Jesus has all the answers for your situation. Draw your acceptance, affirmation, and value from the One who created you, and gave His life, to redeem your life from the pit. Overcoming psychological dependencies gives you freedom from slavery to your obsession. It builds your self-esteem and confidence. More than that, it opens a whole new world of exciting adventures. No pit is so deep that the grace of God is not deeper.
Excerpts From Book Six of the “Healing Emotional Wounds” series, Subtitle “Filling the Void”, by Grace Gayle
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