Feeling Special
The more I kept learning about our psychology, the more I started becoming convinced that the biggest human flaw is the need to feel special. This topic is important enough to be brought to light on a greater scale in our society.
What is Adult Emotional Dependency?
An accomplished hypnotist and mind coach, Luca Bosurgi, after 30 years of his experience with clients, suggests that we (as a society, or as therapists) have been focusing on the wrong causes of mental illness and distress, causes such as traumas and bad habits. In fact, it is something else that is probably the biggest problem affecting people’s mental health.
That which is responsible for much of anxiety, fear, and addiction, which dramatically affect our society, lies in a condition still largely unexplored. That condition is Adult Emotional Dependency, an adult version of what Bosurgi defines as “an instinctual behavior, hard coded in our minds to protect and stimulate our emotional development during childhood. Its main function is to compel children to gain parental protection, guidance, and emotional fulfillment.”¹
Those more prone to being emotionally dependent will seek out other people’s validation of their value, or safety. This idea is similar to the more popular study of attachment styles in relationships, and it all simply points to the weight that childhood parenting quality has on our adult life.
Our Need To Belong
Belongingness is another major human need, right next to the need to satisfy hunger, according to the findings of Abraham Maslow, a famous social psychologist.² Do you know in what type of situations you may be driven by this need for belongingness? Could it be your desire to be included in social gatherings, and feel rejected if you’re overlooked by some groups such as co-workers, or a friend circle? Could it be your habitual eagerness to be in group settings, teams, classes, or squads, rather than small private meetings? It can even be as simple as specifically wearing shirts of your favorite music, or political party so that others who share that same interest can easily salute you. Simply learning about this natural psychological need, I am personally now better at recognizing what this need looks like in my daily behavior, and attempting to consciously balance it out.
Here is what’s interesting, this desire for emotional gain, in some cases, can be stronger than the desire for material gain! Some people stay in the same boring job for years because they feel like they belong to a “family” of co-workers, and maybe they don’t have a crowd that would play that role outside of work.
Sarcastically speaking, even people who consider themselves anti-social satisfy their need for belongingness by being part of the “anti-social club,” and chatting with other anti-social people on social media (pun kind of intended).
Emotions Are Not Just A Female Thing
The need for belongingness is an emotion, often happening on the unconscious level unless you make it conscious and then gain the ability to control it. That particular mastery can put you within 5% of society.
Emotional behavior is often wrongfully attributed just to women, but men also act out of emotions; it just appears in different ways. According to Harvard Business School professor, Gerald Zaltman, “95 percent of our purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind.”³ mentions that people’s shopping choices are guided mostly by their emotions. This is so powerful that many big companies invest in research about how to make their product or service more attractive to consumers.
Zaltman mentions that “the basic idea of connection is central to the product’s value proposition and becomes a more profound basis for developing marketing strategy than, say, technical superiority or long-lasting benefits.” When you are aware of why you are making the choice you are making, then you can save yourself from making mistakes, which can slow down your progress and put you off track.
(c) NikaDomi.com
¹ https://lucabosurgi.com/adult-emotional-dependency-aed/
² 9Maslow, A. H. (1998, first published in 1962). Toward a psychology of being. (3rd ed.). Wiley.
³ https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-subconscious-mind-of-the-consumer-and-how-to-reach-it