Emotional self-reliance means that you can process your own emotions and do not require others to validate your experience and feelings for you. Learning to process feelings and emotions on your own means learning how to be introspective and look for less obvious reasons for feelings rather than taking things at face value.  This process can lead to insight about the root of your feelings and ways to you can begin to avoid negative feelings. Ways to learn how to be more introspective and thoughtful include professional therapy, self-help books, and certain religious teachings (e.g., buddhist teaching on identity and the ways that it can contribute to suffering). If you already feel emotionally self-reliant in your relationship, you should seek to keep that feeling, even in the face of a major change, such as expecting a new child. Often people respond to hurt feelings by engaging others to help them process the experience and to avoid talking with the person that hurt them directly.  The psychologist Murray Bowen calls these situations “triangles.” If there is something weighing on your relationship, express your anxieties and share experiences without allowing other people to heighten your anxiety, make your anxiety chronic, or trying to solve the problem for you.  Put another way, people should act as resources to one another, but should not make the situation worse, and should not replace an individual’s own thinking. When two or more people have a shared responsibility, individuals must be self-reliant by meeting their individual responsibilities in a fair way.   People must also be able to meet individual responsibilities without neglecting shared responsibilities. Each person in a relationship must remain confident of the loyalty and commitment of the other people, as well as their ability to meet their responsibilities. For example, if a couple has a baby, they will have shared responsibilities as parents and individual responsibilities as a worker or primary caregiver. If one person stays at home to care for the child, the person who goes back to work will have unique responsibilities and concerns. The person who stays at home will also have unique responsibilities and concerns. You should try to differentiate between anxieties/problems that you can process/solve on your own and those that you need help with.   If your threshold for going to someone else is too low, other people may feel burdened and become less receptive and willing to help. You may also become dependent on others. If your threshold is too high, you may become resentful and begin to see other people as selfish, uncaring, and unsupportive. You may also not get the support you need. Using others for help is healthy so long as the person does not develop a dependency on any one person for processing emotions, and the partner does not feel like loyalty and commitment have been lost. As relationships grow, there will continue to be issues and responsibilities that are specific to one person, as well as issues and responsibilities that are shared.   As these issues arise, one must recognize whether the issue/responsibility is their own or shared, and one must engage the other partner or other resources as needed. Like a President or other head of state discussing an issue with key advisors, the individual must be able to trust himself or herself, as well as the people being consulted to be self-reliant. He or she must also know when the decision should be shared and make sure that the other person feels trusted and involved. For example, as a couple’s child grows, both parents must develop their own relationship with the child and their own parenting style while also co-parenting, especially on larger issues that require both parents to work through (e.g., going to college). People must take care of their own responsibilities and feelings while also recognizing the right of the other parent to do things differently at times. To help you keep track of the emotional development within a relationship, consider keeping a journal. A journal is basically a day-to-day record of your activities, but it is different from a diary in that the focus of the writing is inward and the tone is reflective and musing. For example, instead of simply saying that you and your partner went to look at baby furniture, you focus on how you felt throughout the experience, using the events of the day to help organize your thoughts. Journal writing is self-directed and has no fixed rules or procedures, but here are some tips that may make it easier to get started:  Find a special spot that is clean, comfortable, and quiet. You should also be able to return to this spot often and, if privacy is important to you, this spot should be relatively private. Before you write, allow yourself time to relax and reflect. Use music to stimulate your emotions. When you are ready to go, just write. Do not worry about perfect grammar, spelling, or word choice. Do not worry about how others might read what you are writing or how it would affect their opinion of you. Think of your journal as a confidential and judgment-free space. If you have trouble writing, use one of these prompts using emotion. To decide which emotion either take the first emotion word that pops into your head or grab a dictionary, thesaurus, or any book and flip through until you find an emotion word. Don’t spend time selecting a word, just take the first one you find. Insert that emotion word wherever you see <emotion> below. If the emotion was particularly important to you, take a week to write with all six prompts and use the seventh day to read over what you have written:  Write <emotion> at the top of the page and free associate down/across the page until you feel at peace and no thoughts are coming to mind. What does it mean for you to feel <emotion>? When have you felt most <emotion>? Are you more or less connected to others when you feel <emotion>? When have you felt least <emotion>? Are you more or less connected to others when you do not feel <emotion>? How do you react to <emotion> in others? What is the source of this reaction? Reflect on a quote that includes <emotion> in it. (Use an online quote search engine, such as http://www.faganfinder.com/quotes/, to find a quote with your emotion word in it). As your journal grows, periodically review what you have written, focusing on the ways that your relationships have changed, and you have become more/less self-reliant. Where you see room for more self-reliance, think about ways to (1) assume responsibility, (2) be informed, (3) know where you are going, and (4) make your own decisions. While it may seem counter-intuitive, getting helped from a good therapist can make you feel more self-reliant.  Journaling can bring up emotions that can be difficult to deal with on your own, so be ready to ask for help if you begin to feel overly anxious or depressed.
تعلم أن تتعامل مع مشاعرك وعواطفك بنفسك. الحفاظ على مشاعر الاستقلال. تجنب التعرض لما يعرف بـ "المثلثات" العاطفية قدر الإمكان. عبّر عن مخاوفك بالشكل المناسب. مشاركة المسؤوليات بالتساوي. اطلب المساعدة عندما تحتاج لذلك. تقييم وتحديد ما إذا كانت الصعاب الجديدة نوع من المسؤولية الفردية أم مسؤولية مشتركة. التعامل مع المشاعر من خلال الكتابة. كن مثابرًا في كتابة مذكراتك. راجع محتوى مذكراتك اليومية. الجأ إلى العلاج النفسي إذا احتجت لذلك.