How To Overcome Dependent Personality Disorder

Life can be challenging and insecure for somebody with DPD. Being unable to rely on oneself, for example, causes a great deal of anxiety and tension. When therapy and medication aren’t an option for some people, self-help for dependent personality disorder could be just what they need. We’ll go over self-help tips, methods, and exercises step by step for managing dependent personality disorder.

This self-help section is for individuals who are experiencing DPD symptoms or who have been identified with moderate DPD. If you have serious DPD, we strongly advise that you get counseling from a mental health expert.

Think about your childhood.

How and why did I get DPD? Why do I require so much reinforcement and have such low self-esteem? What impact did my early childhood experiences have on my adult behavior?

Because the right answers can disclose some of your deepest anxieties, they can help you learn a lot more about DPD. The underlying causes of your DPD-behavior are these worries (– for example, fear of rejection; fear of losing someone’s support). There will be no reason to act the way you do if you didn’t have these worries.

Self-help Tip. Talk about how you developed your self-esteem as a child and early adolescent years, how your family raised you, and the times you were truly abandoned/rejected. Analyze each issue and try to see things from many angles.

You will gain new perspectives this way, and you might even discover that certain choices had nothing to do with you. For instance, just because your parents are overly protective does not imply you can’t accomplish anything on your own. It actually indicates that your family was too cautious about your safety to let you play and explore, and thus it says so much more about your parents than it does about you.

Discuss your childhood with your parents to see how they view their actions and whether they could have acted differently. This can sometimes give you a lot more insight into their intentions for raising you the way they did, as well as more solutions than you could give yourself.

Create a plan of action.

Now that you realize what your greatest fears are, it’s time to face them. The greatest method to overcome a phobia is to confront it in a calm and secure situation. This teaches you that your stress and anxiety will fade away in about 10 mins and that (most probably) nothing terrible has happened to you. However, first things first.

You should work on becoming more self-sufficient and requiring less reinforcement from others. And to do so, you’ll need to devise a short-term action plan. An action plan establishes defined objectives and outlines how to attain them.

Self-help Tip:

• Make a list of the things you’re afraid of doing or that require a lot of certainties before you can accomplish them.
• Sort your worries into categories: fears at home, at work, with friends, and during activities.
• Write down how you’ll deal with each fear by having a target for each one: what would you like to accomplish?
• Write down a few activities to practice with for each aim. You’ll notice that practice makes perfect!
• Plan your workouts so that you feel as little strain or stress as possible. For example, arrive at work early, before everybody else, to practice some jobs.

Practice and assess your improvement.

It’s time to start training immediately. This implies you should choose 1 or 2 exercises to practice each day. Remember, you’re practicing, so make mistakes. All you have to do now is track your progress. Have you made any progress? If that’s the case, congratulations on a job well done! If you feel you haven’t made any progress, analyze your situation to identify where you can improve.

It’s likely that your feelings are so strong that you believe you didn’t execute the exercise properly, irrespective of how it went. Emotions have a way of interfering with our judgment. In this scenario, make a note of when and how you advance with an activity.

Expressing opinions and emotions

People with DPD may find it challenging to express their feelings and thoughts. The anxiety of being rejected, abandoned, or losing support can be so great that being silent and agreeing with the other is simpler. The ability to express feelings and opinions is a desire for the majority of people with DPD. The greatest approach to do this is to speak with someone you have a lot of faith in.

This could be your mom or your best friend, depending on your upbringing. You establish a safe atmosphere to practice in by discussing your circumstance and the notion that you need to practice sticking up for yourself and articulating your emotions. Your parent/friend knows the goal and can provide helpful comments. Every time you achieve, it encourages good habits.

If you get the impression you can’t trust someone enough to practice with, a mental health expert might be an excellent place to start.