شناسایی عوامل روانی مؤثر بر وابستگی عاطفی افراطی در نوجوانان

ایمان مرادیان

Authors

Iman Moradian Department of Family Counseling, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

Keywords:

Emotional dependence, adolescents, insecure attachment, emotion regulation, thematic analysis, interpersonal relationships

Abstract

study aimed to identify the psychological factors affecting excessive emotional dependence among adolescents. This qualitative study was conducted using thematic analysis. The participants were 18 adolescents aged 15 to 18 years living in Tehran, Iran, who were selected through purposive sampling because they reported intense emotional dependence in close friendships, romantic experiences, or emotionally significant interpersonal relationships. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and continued until theoretical saturation was reached. The average interview duration was 52 minutes. Ethical considerations included parental informed consent, adolescent assent, confidentiality, voluntary participation, and the right to withdraw at any stage. After verbatim transcription, the interviews were analyzed using NVivo software. The analytic process followed the stages of familiarization with the data, initial coding, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the final report. Data analysis led to the identification of five main themes: attachment insecurity and fear of abandonment, self-worth dependent on external validation, emotion regulation difficulties and relational rumination, weak psychological boundaries and limited autonomy, and family and interpersonal patterns reinforcing dependence. The findings indicated that excessive emotional dependence in adolescents is not merely an intense need for closeness; rather, it emerges from the interaction of rejection sensitivity, perceived inadequacy, hypervigilance to signs of relational distance, inability to tolerate loneliness, and insecure relational learning within family and peer contexts. Emotionally dependent adolescents tended to experience close relationships as their primary source of emotional soothing, self-worth, and relief from separation anxiety. Excessive emotional dependence in adolescents is a multidimensional phenomenon associated with insecure attachment, impaired emotion regulation, unstable identity formation, and fragile interpersonal boundaries. School-based and family-based interventions should focus on strengthening self-worth, teaching emotion regulation skills, promoting healthy relational boundaries, and modifying controlling or insecure family communication patterns.

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