“Many individuals learn how to take care of themselves physically, earn a living, build a business or profession, manage a family and otherwise conduct themselves with much success in public and private affairs. Yet they many fail in their human relationships, become alcoholic, tyrannical, depressed, psychotic, neurotic and be an emotional burden on all those around them - simply because they have not learned emotional self-reliance.
The indications of emotional dependence are easily evident at all stages our lives. We cannot hide them from anyone but ourselves, for they are obvious in almost everything we do. We are what we do! And what we do is the real answer to what we mean and intend. What we say is neither here nor there, unless it is in agreement with our actions.
If we have trained ourselves to be alert to indications of emotional dependence, we quickly see them in what we do as well as what others around us are doing. If we are not alert to such indications, we may be defeated by the most obvious habits of our daily life. We may be oblivious to the obvious, our grasping dependency. We want to be loved and accepted by everyone and we can be deeply hurt if they resist, or are indifferent to, our expectation.
It is estimated that only about 10 percent of the population has developed emotional self-reliance. Every employed and school teacher is aware that most of the people they direct learn to do fairly well so long as someone keeps an eye anthem and acts as a kindly pacemaker parent on whom they can lean for advice. Whey they are told what to do and taught how to do it, they follow along reasonably well until something happens that demands personal initiative. At this point, they dissolve into feelings of insecurity and fall apart until someone rescues them from their dilemma. They have never solved the problem of emotional self-reliance and do not know how to stand alone!
Each year that passes, more and more children are being sent to school before they have even a minimum degree emotional or physical self-reliance. It has become a habit inner culture to do more and more for children and to expect less and less of them. Even the toothpaste commercial mother is not considered normal when she gives up expecting a child to brush his teeth without her riding on his back. Physical weaning is certainly more than teaching a child to give up the breast for solid food! It should include the idea that he learn to ‘be a help and not a burden’ to those around him. He should have been weaned of demanding special help and special consideration from his family, so that when he goes to school he will not feel shocked at the impersonal atmosphere he meets with. If he has been overprotected at home, he expects personal help and attention from others outside the family. He wants most of his demands and needs granted without any effort on his part. And if he is let down, he lacks the self-reliance to do things for himself, so that he immediately begins to fall behind those who are more self-reliant and adequate to life’s demands.
More and more children are labeled mentally retarded as they fall behind in school. They are not necessarily mentally retarded. It is useless to expect a child lacking in physical self-reliance will be able o meet the demands of school work that requires him to work independently. No teacher or mother can do our learning or us. They can hold up our pants for us in other ways, but intellectual development demands that the child show some willingness to pay attention and make an effort for himself. They more a cild is deprived o this physical, and especially of his emotional, self-sufficiency, the greater the chance of his failing from the beginning of his school career.
The ability to think and act independently is an inherent capacity. There is no excuse for it being defective in about 90 percent of us; it is something everyone needs and everyone can have if he will train himself. No one is born with self-reliance, but nothing can stop us from achieving it if that is what we want. It begins when we are determined to do everything we can possibly do for ourselves, emotionally and physically, in preference to seeking someone to do for us. Thus we get rid of our craving for special privilege and special exemptions. With this attitude, our physical self-sufficiency grows rapidly.
Our basic temperament is directly related other than this factor of physical and emotional self-reliance. Someone has said that the world is made up of two kinds of people - those who love and those who hate. This isn’t far from wrong. The fortunate 10 percent who are prepared to meet life on an independent basis show it in everything they do. They seem to pour themselves out on things as if they were pouring water on parched earth. They seem to have limitless resources and no fear of running dry. They live as if they feel that the world is a good place to be, and they do not feel disturbed if they find things less than perfect. When blocked none direction they merely take another and have fun either way.
The person lacking in self-reliance, physically and emotionally, has to count his pennies all the way. Nothing comes easy to him, and he complains bitterly about almost everything. He resists the demands of life and is envious of those around him. His main effort is to evade demands and to withhold himself as much as possible. He blames everyone and everything and is always seeking causes of his defeats. He is the spoil-sport and the Monday-morning quarterback. What he gains is not joy to him because he feels that it is so much less than what is due to him. He is a grudge collector and usually has a lawsuit against God waiting in the courts.
It is evident that the self-reliant person habitually minimizes the dangers ahead of him, whereas the one lacking in self-sufficiency habitually exaggerates them. This factor on individual temperament is most important to an individual, as it sets all the over-all climate in which he plays out his whole life. The self-reliant person regards life as an interesting game that is fun to play, and he feels that life has very few irremediable mistakes and difficulties. But the emotionally dependent person lives as if he were the major figure in a Greek tragedy; or, as someone has said, ‘like an accident going somewhere to happen.’ He acts as if threatened on all sides.
Self-reliance, then, is the greatest gift any parent can give a child, for it is a habit of mind that follows him all his life and levels the mountains before him as he goes. No less fortunate, however, is the person who later in life has discovered that his difficulties arise from a lack of self-reliance. His awareness of this basic fact releases the trap in which he has found himself, and he gives up his juvenile dependence!” p. 122-127
Reference
Beecher, W. and Beecher, M. (1966). Beyond success and failure: Ways to self-reliance and maturity. Marina del Ray, CA: DeVorss and Company.