Dependence: emotional and spiritual meaning

What dependence is

Dependence is the need for something outside yourself in order to feel all right: a substance, a behaviour, or a person. Alcohol, drugs, food, cigarettes, sex and work are common forms. Some are physically addictive and dangerous to stop without medical help. Emotional dependence on another person can be just as binding, without a substance at all.

The reading below does not tell you how to withdraw, and it does not replace treatment. It looks at the lack the dependence is trying to cover.

The emotional meaning of dependence

The source links dependence to a deep inner void, and to an outer attempt to fill, above all, a lack of love for yourself, or an emotional lack tied to one of your parents. Through the dependence you try to fill that void, that despair and that sadness. Life feels meaningless. It does not satisfy your deepest desires. There is revolt against the outer world, and difficulty preserving your sense of self. You cannot manage to love yourself as you are, and that temporary inability shows up as anger and resentment toward the universe.

A substitute world

You live in a psychological prison, enslaved to a substance or a behaviour. Dependence is a substitute that lets you live, for a while, in a world without problems. Alcohol may bring a kind of ecstasy and a numbness toward what you are living. Other drugs are read as a search for new sensations and unknown heights of consciousness. You feel safe and pleased, and sooner or later you meet your insecurities and your fears again.

Cigarettes, in this reading, wrap the emotions in smoke. That is the link with the respiratory system. Food fills a lack of tenderness and love. Dependence on sugar, in particular, is read as a void of human warmth and gentleness, and as a rejection of your own desires. That is the link with the digestive system. A sexual tendency that is hard to master is named as another form. That is the link with the reproductive system. Every dependence, the source says, brings reactions in the body. The fears that ride with a strong dependence can be severe.

The lack you are fleeing

The first step the source insists on is to become conscious of the situation. That takes love and courage, to face the slavery and break it. Identify the lack. That lack is what you flee by losing yourself in something else, or in someone. The desire to live is great, and you feel you are not succeeding. You feel like a loser. You do not have your place in your own life, or in society. You measure your happiness by other people's success. Failure follows failure, and confirms the feeling of incapacity.

Judging yourself, whipping yourself with the knowledge that you should change, only grows the anger and makes freedom harder. You fear failing. You fear your past. Shame and guilt are parts to set aside, not fuels to add.

A gentler way to hold it

The aim is not to moralise, and not to pretend a substance dependence is only a metaphor. Get medical help when the body is involved. The emotional perspective invites you to name the lack underneath the substitute.

• Identify the void. Love of yourself, or love that was missing from a parent, is where the source looks first.
• See the substitute for what it is. Food, smoke, sex, work or a person may be standing in for tenderness.
• Stop feeding the shame. Self-punishment, in this reading, strengthens the dependence.
• Take one real step. Ask, search, check, begin. The source treats unconditional love as the start, not the reward at the end.
• If a substance is involved, do not do this alone. Courage includes a doctor.