Emotional Dependency Quotes

“We have only one real shot at "liberation", and that is to emancipate ourselves from within. It is the thesis of this book that personal, psychological dependency - the deep wish to be taken care of by others - is the chief force holding women down today. I call this "The Cinderella Complex" - a network of largely repressed attitudes and fears that keeps women in a kind of half-light, retreating from the full use of their minds and creativity. Like Cinderella, women today are still waiting for something external to transform their lives.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“The psychological need to avoid independence - the "wish to be saved" - seemed to me an important issue, quite probably the most important issue facing women today. We were brought up to depend on a man and to feel naked and frightened without one. We were taught to believe that as women we cannot stand alone, that we are too fragile, too delicate, needful of protection. So that now, in these enlightened days, when our intellects tell us to stand on our own two feet, unresolved emotional issues drag us down.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Women (...) have been encouraged since they were children to be dependent to an unhealthy degree. Any woman who looks within knows that she was never trained to be comfortable with the idea of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, asserting herself. At best she may have played the game of independence, inwardly envying the boys (and later the men) because they seemed so naturally self-sufficient.

It is not nature that bestows this self-sufficiency on men; it's training. Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. Just as systematically, women are taught that they have an out - that someday, in some way, they are going to be saved. That is the fairy tale, the life-message (...) We may venture out on our own for a while. We may go away to school, work, travel; we may even make good money, but underneath it all there is a finite quality to our feelings about independence. Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living. (The only savior the boy learns about is himself.)”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“(...) psychiatrists today recognize the contortionist's act that was required of women in an age when they were expected to stifle their own healthiest impulses. (...) "To be able to renounce your own achievements without feeling that you were sacrificing requires constant effort. To be lovely and unaggressive, a woman spends a lifetime keeping hostile or resentful impulses down. Even healthy self-assertion is often sacrificed since it may be mistaken by hostility. Therefore, [women] often repress their initiative, give up their aspirations, and unfortunately end up excessively dependent with a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty about their abilities and their worth.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Women need to do more. We need to find out what it is we're afraid of, and go beyond.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“Why are women so fearful? The answer to that question lies at the root of The Cinderella Complex. (...) Many women achieve a certain amount of success in their careers and professions and still remain inwardly insecure. In fact (...), it's remarkable how many women these days retain a hidden core of self doubt while performing on the outside as if they were towers of confidence. (...)
Lack of confidence seems to follow us from childhood (...) No matter how fiercely we try to live like adults - flexible, powerful and free - that girl-child hangs on (...). The effects of such insecurity are widespread, and they result in a disturbing social phenomenon: women in general tend to function well below the level of their native abilities. For reasons that are both cultural and psychological - a system that doesn't really expect a great deal from us, in combination with our own personal fears of standing up and facing the world - women are keeping themselves down.”
― Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence

“If he threw a brick at her head she would only wince and bleed and then come to him for comfort. He wondered idly how many times he had wounded her with words and she had put her arms about him.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Julius

“When your partner overreacts 1st try to understand their “hot spot” before overreacting; otherwise you lose your ability to think clearly, communicate effectively and the cycle continues.”
― Dr. Deborah Hecker

“You cannot embrace happiness when your thoughts cling to nothingness trying to overcome an emotional dependency.
- Araliza Arias”
― Linda Greyman, Soul Works - The Minds Journal Collection