Do you feel like you are driving people away? In your most important relationships do you, without meaning to, keep on hurting other people? If so, the result may be that you feel, “no one understands me” and you may be concerned that you will end up sad and lonely. Marcia has experience helping clients who describe themselves as high maintenance.
If you feel that when you get into a relationship you are too intense and ruin your chance for friendship or love, then it may be time to reach out for help. If you have felt “people always leave me”, this may extend to your marriage as well.
Why intensity can doom a relationship
For many people, the harder you strive for connection, the more your spouse or friends may pull back. This, in turn, makes you even more intense… and so the cycle perpetuates itself. Intensity breeds distance. And growing distance makes your need for the relationship ever greater.
In this vicious cycle, you will become desperate and needy. For your spouse or your friends, neediness is the very opposite of attraction. Neediness is the magic ingredient to destroy friendships and even marriages.
Why do you feel so needy?
We all want love and respect. However, if your need for this is so great that it drives away the people who are most important to you, it’s time to consider why you have an overwhelming need for affirmation, affection or reassurance from others.
You may be driven by low self-esteem or self-limiting beliefs. By requiring constant approval from others, you have put your feelings of self-worth outside of your control. When you define yourself by your relationship to other people, you will always be needy.
Reach out for help
In therapy with Marcia, you’ll learn to understand and control the feelings that power your high-intensity demands on your spouse or friends and learn to modulate your demands. Instead of depending on validation from your spouse or your friends, you will learn to gain independent feelings of self-worth.
Therapy in Brooklyn and Manhattan, New York
Dr. Marcia Kesner is a frum therapist in Brooklyn and the Upper West Side of Manhattan. If you would like to get started on your path of hope and healing, you are welcome to call now or just fill out the contact form and press Send.
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