110. The psychology of hyperindependence

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast, New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in the world, it is great to have you here. Back for another episode. Today, we're covering a really valuable idea in psychology and one that has become increasingly i would say, more recognized. Maybe you've seen it on your TikTok on Instagram, in the news. It's this idea of hyper independence. I am so fascinated by this concept because I think is possibly one of the most celebrated traits in our society, particularly in Western cultures. We love the idea of people who are self made, who pay their own bills, who solo travel, who appear like they don't need anyone but themselves, And I think a healthy level of independence and self confidence is amazing. It's something that we should all strive for. But when it goes too far, we enter the territory of hyper independence. This is this extreme discomfort around allowing others to help us to step into our lives and maybe make it easier. We become so invested in our self reliance and our self sufficiency that we push others away and we self isolate. A lot of the research nowadays says that hyperindependence is actually a trauma response or a survival trait that a lot of us have adopted due to early childhood experiences feeling like we needed to grow up way too quickly, or being consistently let down by others, particularly our caregivers, but also romantic partners or friends. These experiences are so distressing that we turn to extreme independence to avoid having to rely on others or trust them out of that fear of being hurt or let down, and a lot of the time I think society somewhat encourages this behavior without realizing what it actually means. This has so many complex interactions with how we pursue relationships, how we approach our work. It may come as no surprise that people who are hyper independent are more likely to be seen as overachievers, but also how we experience love and trust. It's also really interesting because hyper independent people are actually more likely to seek out codependent partnerships, which if you listened to our episode on this you'll know is equally as complex and maladaptive. It really goes to show how much our attachment influences the people that we choose to be with, not just romantically, but the friends we choose to have our relationships with family. So today I want to talk about the role of hyperindependence as a trauma response and explore some of the origins of this behavior, from emotional neglect to parentification, abandonment, and early relationship experiences of course, but also the role of individualism and cultural expectations. We're also going to dive into how we can achieve a healthy level of independence through exposure, therapy and inner child healing, an all time favorite of mine. As we know, this is a jam packed episode, but I will admit some of the research and studies have definitely called me out and really made me pause and examine perhaps some of my own hyperindependent tendencies. I think you'll be surprised by how many of us actually fit this profile. So without further ado, we are going to explore the psychology of hyperindependence in our twenties and how we can recognize this behavior and heal. So let's get into it. We typically see independence as a great thing, a really admirable asset or personality trait, especially in our twenties, when I think independence is something we're all striving for, to be separate from our parents, to be creating our own identity, building our own unique path. A lot of the positive associations we see attached to this are really valid. To be independent is to be self sufficient, have a healthy sense of your identity. You pay your own bills, you take care of yourself, you don't rely on others for emotional reassurance. That's something that I think we can all get behind. However, too much of a good thing can sometimes be bad for us, and with anything that is excessive or unbalanced, when independence goes too far, perhaps due to a trauma response or early learning experiences, we have this hyperindependence, or what we also call counter dependency. When we are hyper independent, we have a drive to need no one and a fear of depending on people. At the heart of which is this inability to trust or a genuine fear of intimacy. Hyper independence. It's more than just self reliance. It's this unwavering insistence on autonomy. These kinds of people, they are unwilling to or maybe unable to depend on others. We want to do everything alone. We have been implicitly taught that we cannot trust others, so we push those close, vulnerable relationships away. We refuse help or assistance, both emotional and physical. Importantly, I think there's a crucial caveat here hyper independence. It's not a diagnosable mental health condition. It's a stress response, more often than not, triggered by exposure to ongoing or acute distress or some kind of emotionally charged situation. So how does that kind of show up in our behaviors in our everyday lives? Are There are five kear signs or indicators of hyper independence that I want to discuss. Firstly, it feels really uncomfortable or unnatural for you to ask for help, specifically due to this fear of being a burden. Hyperindependence creates this sense that anything we need we should be able to do for ourselves. If you're feeling sad and upset, we can take care of that. We can sell sooth, we can manage it. If we need help moving or building furniture, we can't ask for help because it may burden someone else. And what does that say about our own abilities and our ability to take care of ourselves, you know, for struggling financially. Even if we need extra assistance, we're not going to ask for that. We're going to get another job or budget excessively. Not only does asking for help feel entirely unnatural, it's actually really uncomfortable because it contradicts this identity that we've built on being entirely self reliant. Emotionally, we may have difficulty with vulnerability and trust, and therefore have limited emotionally close relationships. Vulnerability requires asking for help. Trust means believing that someone has your best interests at heart and will fulfill your needs, none of which aligns with our self image as an independent person. There's this voice in the back of our head saying I really don't need anyone. I can do this alone. And that voice comes from a fear of being hurt. And so we use hyperindependence to protect us from intimacy and vulnerability, and that's going to require us to open up to someone else. I think it's no surprise that, especially in romantic relationships, come from previous experiences with betrayal, maybe due to cheating or lying, even heartbreak. So after those experiences because they are so unpleasant, our brains go the complete opposite direction. If love and intimacy, if relying on someone else brings pain, well, then relying only on myself brings liberation. It brings peace. We know, though, that that's not always true. This links to the next indicator, which is that you naturally close yourself off to others and you're suspicious when people try and get close. That suspicion or hostility may actually be because you don't actually trust yourself. What if someone does provide you with something you can't give yourself. What if they do fulfill some unmet need and then they leave and you can no longer fulfill that need yourself. The whole system kind of falls apart, the whole self concept. You can no longer solely trust yourself, and so you make it impossible for anyone to ever get close enough to challenge that belief system. That emotional withdrawal is a massive indicator of hyperindependence. The fourth indicator is that you're an overachiever or a workaholic. Your performance and success works to further support the belief that your hyperindependence is a good thing because it correlates with productivity and output. It could also be that you struggle to delegate because you don't trust others, or maybe you focus on your career or academics because you're scared to let yourself have a life outside of those things. You keep yourself preoccupied because you want to have that excuse to cancel plants and a pretty socially admirable excuse as well, to not spend time with loved ones or to be by yourself for long periods of time, and academics and your careers they're a really great excuse because it's very socially acceptable. But what it's concealing is that you're actually avoiding situations that require dependence or asking for help and letting people in. And finally, if it's not already obvious, you prefer to do things alone and on your own schedule, and you find that other people slow you down. You don't want to wait for others. You're on the girl's trip, no one else wants to come with you to the museum or whatever. Not only does that not bother you, but you prefer it. It's like a sigh of relief. And I think sometimes this comes off as arrogance or even introversion, which it isn't. It's a trauma response to push others away and be self contained because you have learnt that you can only rely on yourself and you don't want to be dissipate pointed by those close to you. But when you isolate yourself, you're also repressing your emotions and neglecting your needs. You may believe that your hyperindependence is keeping you safe, but those close to you, those who care about you deeply, they want to be able to reach out. We understand that community is valuable, and when you create that distance, it really puts you in a place of solitude. We're going to discuss that in just a second, but if you relate to these signs, it may be indicative of hyperindependence. It's important to remember that it is a spectrum. Though independence is good, but when it comes at the expense of healthy, meaningful relationships, of trust, of asking for help, that is when it's in the territory of hyperindependence or counterdependency. This is in contrast to codependency, in which we see many people have this unhealthy need for approval and love and comfort of someone else to feel secure, while someone who is hyperindependent focuses on securing their own needs, sometimes at their jetriment and becoming entirely self sufficient. Someone who is codependent will consistently place the needs of others above their own in order to satisfy that deep desire to be attached to another person. We did a whole episode on this you know this kind of dynamic a little while back. But interestingly, something I didn't mention is that the independent behavior of hyperindependent people can actually be highly attractive to people who are codependent, because it provides a sense of security and structure and self sufficiency that they lack and are therefore craving. However, once in a relationship, if one was to form between a hyper dependent person and a codependent person, sometimes we see this actual this role reversal. No one quite knows why. There are a couple of theories out there that what these people are really looking for is the comfort of an opposite someone who can allow them to relinquish the control that either their codependence or hyperindependence has given them. The partner offers everything they cannot offer themselves, represents what they cannot offer themselves, and in order to kind of ignite a romance, they attempt to emulate that other person's behavior, leading to this kind of dynamic shift regardless. I think both hyperindependence and codependence are what we would call maladaptive. We're specifically focusing on hyper independence in this episode, and the reason psychologists and therapists see this behavioral pattern as particularly unhealthy is that we all still have some basic need for social connection and trust and vulnerability. That need does not disappear regardless of how much we try and actively suppress this instinct, and so there's this element of our emotional and mental wellbeing that is not fulfilled, a need that we're kind of subconsciously denying ourselves because we value independence and we value being able to detach from others and kind of burrow into our own thoughts and our own feelings. I think it's interesting because people who are hyper independent are often very attached to this aspect of their identity. What's also true, though, is that these people still experience really profound loneliness, They experience poor self esteem, and their relationships often lack that emotional intimacy. I think hyper independency really shares a lot of commonalities with emotional unavailability in this way, but not because these individuals don't want to be close to others. But because they cannot give up that self sufficiency. Studies have shown that this kind of behavior likely stems from a few core experiences, particularly childhood trauma that has taught us to trust ourselves and only ourselves to get through life. Often, that mistrust comes from a place of deep hurt that has taught us this fallacy that no one can be trusted with our happiness or welfare. There are three distinct types of trauma that it may be in response to, and that I want to focus on. The first is emotional neglect, parentification, and abandonment. As children, we have a lot of emotional needs, physical needs, social needs, mental needs that need to be fulfilled in order for our brains to develop and our social skills as well. When our caregivers, normally our parents don't sufficiently respond to those needs by shutting down our emotions by a failure to provide encouragement or emotional unavailability, being totally absent, being overly busy, or just not showing up for us when they said that they would. Children learn that people are unreliable. Studies have shown that when we experience this kind of neglect, there are reduced levels of oxytocin in the brain. This is incredibly valuable for organizing our neural circuits, especially in response to recognizing and being able to respond to emotions and social bonding. So as a result, children who are raised in an environment where their caregivers do not provide them with the right amount of emotional stimulation for oxytocin release, they are more at risk of emotional detachment and emotional impairment. Perhaps contributing to this hyper independency from a social learning perspective, this child also learns that their emotional needs will not be met unless they meet them themselves, and that others will inherently disappoint them, leading once again to hyperindependence. Similar to this is what we call parentification. So this occurs when the role of the parent and the child is almost reversed, such that a child takes on the role of parent. They provide their parents with an unnatural level of emotional support. Maybe they have to worry about money, they're responsible for taking care of their siblings, keeping the house clean, worrying how they'll get to school. All the child is forced to take on this role of mediator or a confidant for a parent. This is most often seen with the first born and in certain cultures, normally the firstborn daughter because they are the ones who are more conditioned to be the emotional anchor for the family. Sometimes parents don't realize that they have made their child their parents, and they're not realizing the burden that this places on their children. More often than not, it's generational. And actually we see this a lot with people whose parents have gone through a divorce, especially if the divorce was hostile. The children end up becoming the messengers for either party, and they're kind of exposed to a developmentally inappropriate level of emotional responsibility, and they feel like they have to give up their needs, particularly their need for emotional security and stability, for the sake of their parents' well being. That is so hard on our young brains, and we unconsciously adopt this parental level of responsibility. We grow up way too quickly, and as a response to that, in response to that environment, we become hyper independent as a coping mechanism, as a trauma response to our circumstances. To protect our young brains, to respond to our environment appropriately, to kind of keep the peace, you become the parent, You become the adult way too young. Finally, we have abandonment. When we are let down by the people who are meant to care for us, we learn to become self sufficient in order to survive, but be to not be disappointed. That's where this idea of hyperindependence as a trauma response really comes from. A trauma response in psychology, it's an emotional response to an event or a series of events that injure our sense of security. I think there's this conception that these have to be incredibly intense and catastrophic, like a war, a serious death or injury. That's not true. Things like emotional abuse, neglect, They leave just as permanent psychological scars. Also, our brains are all incredibly unique. I always say this, but it's worth a reminder. Trauma is subjective, and when we experience a traumatic event that is particularly triggering or damaging for us, our body and our mind responds by entering survival mode. This is also called our fight flight of freeze response. The mind is going to wait till after the danger has passed to try and find a way to explain that event and neatly tie all together or consolidate what you've experienced. When it cannot do that, when it cannot find an explanation or a place for that memory to be in our brains. We experience those lingering impacts and a sense of distress or impaired behavioral patterns such as this self sufficiency. It's also possible to have what we would call a delayed emotional response. Maybe in the years that have followed, perhaps your parents' divorce or the neglect, you didn't notice your hyperindependence. But then you enter into your first relationship, or you start dating and begin to recognize some of those signs that we talked about before. This is I think, especially the case if the relationship mimics the dynamic that you had with your parents. Perhaps this person never shows up for you, they're emotionally unavailable, or they do something that breaks your trust. This just reinforces all of that childhood learning, and it can result in delayed hyper independency. The opposite's also true. Someone showers you and love and affection. They consistently show up in your life. They celebrate you. They provide security that can be equally scary because you've learned to do things alone. You have adopted this mentality that you don't need anyone. So the love shown by this person causes you to really question everything, and it makes you scared because it's not the truth that you've accepted. It's not the reality that you know. I think it takes a lot from us to give up our hyperindependence because for so long it has protected us. But what does that kind of come at the expense of So I really want to discuss that next, specifically the long term consequences of hyperindependence, as well as some of the maintaining factors, specifically around the role of culture and social psychology. So all of that and more in just a second. So far, we've explored what causes hyperindependence to emerge, especially as it relates to a trauma response, but I also want to look at some of the maintaining factors as well as the psychology behind I guess, the healing work and the way that we can move forward. One of the biggest factors that exacerbates hyperindependency is culture and societal context. In psychology, we have this distinction between individualistic and collectivist cultures. In a collectivist society, the needs of the group are more important, and people, I guess, we're often asked to sacrifice individual benefits for the collective good. Their identity and the group identity are equally valuable. However, in individualistic societies, what matters most is individual success, is freedom and independence. Societies with this kind of individualistic culture, we kind of we treat people as autonomous and we prioritize personal gain and uniqueness. And in these types of societies, such as the US, the UK, Australia, many Western societies, hyperindependence is often overlooked and rarely challenged because people are allowed to exist as unique, self reliant humans without challenging kind of the group dynamic and the general good. We see this a lot, especially with the Western idea of exceptionalism, in which devoting every hour of our life to our career, neglecting personal relationships, not asking for help that is seen as admirable. But we also know so that that is very much maladaptive. Whilst this response or behavioral pattern may leave you feeling safe and secure because you're not challenged by vulnerability or close relationships, what drives this hyperindependency is an avoidance mindset, avoiding intimacy, avoiding trust, avoiding vulnerability, avoiding help, avoiding company. And whilst we may have kind of superficially positive relationships because we fundamentally do not trust others, that we are unable to form those long term, meaningful partnerships even in marriages. I saw this really interesting fact someone who is counterdependent or hyperindependent. They will continue to hide core aspects of their emotions. They will resist asking for assistance, and will be reluctant to open up even from someone that they've married. They're going to avoid situations requiring deep emotional connection because that requires the possibility of being hurt, That requires the possibility of challenging this belief that maybe they are not self sufficient, that maybe they can't do everything on their own. I think we can all see how this can create a pretty unfulfilling life, especially since we are social beings. We have evolved around this idea of community, around this idea of a social structure that helps others. You know, relationships, by nature are also interdependent. So to have successful long term relationships, some aspect of our hyperindependence is going to have to be relinquished. So let's discuss some of the ways that psychology and therapy might help us heal this tendency and restore a healthy level of independence or a healthy level of dependence on others. Yes, we're going to discuss three tips. Firstly, addressing trust issues and attachment style, the value of inner child healing and recognizing what triggers you and when you need help. Addressing trust issues and attachment style, it involves understanding that interplay between our past experiences and our current emotional patterns. Trust issues, simply put, are this persistent lack of confidence and faith in others. They are a fear response and they can't be challenged overnight, sadly, but they can be through a gradual process of exposure to situations that may trigger your hyperindependency, specifically emotionally vulnerable situations, times when you need to ask for help, combined with positive reward and calming techniques. Invention is actually mainly used in treating phobias. It's called exposure therapy and it involves a gradual exposure to an event that creates anxiety at small levels, and we increase the anxiety it creates over time whilst combining it with something positive, whilst combining it with calming exercises so that that stress response, so that hyperindependency is not triggered. So this could involve slowly sharing personal experiences, delegating responsibility or relying on someone for support. Every time these experiences go well, every time you learn that you can trust those around you that they will show up. That life is maybe easier if you let people in. You unloan those lessons and that trauma that has convinced you that self sufficiency is the only way to get through life. But it's also important that we don't go too far. Like we spoke of before, hyper independent people are often more attracted to people who are codependent because they like the responsibility of managing the relationship and feeling like they can be autonomous because the other person won't question them. That codependent person just wants to make you happy. We're working towards interdependency here, not codependence. So it's important to make sure that you recognize what your kind of boundaries are, that you can still say no, so that you don't swing in the opposite direction. I think emotional extremes are also a massive indicator of a trauma responsor of hyperindependency. So making sure that you're like, Okay, this relationship I might be going a little bit too far. Maybe I have just decided to attach myself to one person because I can trust them. That's like hyper independency, like spicy hyperindependency, almost like you're still hyperindependent plus one plus this one additional person. We also know that one of the root causes of hyperindependency is having to grow up too quickly. You've become an adult way before your time. So to heal the current version of ourselves, the hyperindependent version of ourselves, we also need to heal those previous versions that includes our younger childhood self. This is where inner child healing becomes really useful. The essential premise is that we have all experienced hurt in some way, and in order to heal our adult emotional scars and beliefs, we need to get back to those foundational experiences that we had as children, and we need to begin treating ourselves as if we are the parent, as if we are caring for that childhood version of us. It goes by another name, and that's called reparenting, and I think that's the crucial idea here. We have to be the parent that we always deserved or whether you had a healthy example of what that should look like or not, and by loving this version of us unconditionally, by deliberately and consciously healing them, giving them, perhaps what we did not have as children. We address the things that we most want to change about our adult selves. There are a few ways that we can do this that are specific to the emotional wounds most attached to hyperindependency, so emotional neglect and parentification, also abandonment. Firstly, engage in play. Give yourself the opportunity to be childlike, especially if that ability and that opportunity was taken away from from you when you were younger. Watch movies from your childhood, Go on the swings, make fairy bread, pull out a board game, some uno cards, Buy yourself something ridiculous and fluffy, a toy or chocolate Sunday, just because you want to let yourself have those innocent childhood experiences that maybe you were not allowed to have or when you were younger. Secondly, is to be messy and to be vulnerable. Allow yourself to cry openly, to not always check everything off your to do list. Make space for the mistakes that you weren't allowed to make in childhood. That is essentially saying I did not get the opportunity perhaps to make mistakes. I had to be on guard, I had to be self reliant, I had to look after others, and so all of that innocence, all of that freedom, all of that room to be messy and vulnerable. Those were experiences that perhaps I didn't have when I was younger, that I'm going to recreate and give myself as an adult. I think also, when you feel you're inner child seeking out love, especially when you feel loneliness or longing, give them what they crave. Not for your current self, not for that version of yourself that might be really scared, but for that inner child who needs you to have their best interests at heart. Reach out to a friend, even if it's difficult, ask for help, because that's what your inner child needs. It might not be what you think you need, but you're not the focus here. It's about what that inner version, that childhood version of yourself needs. And practice radical self compassion. We talk about this quite a bit on the show because it is so powerful when you find that you've failed, when you've been rejected, when you feel unhappy with yourself, of take note of your inner dialogue and self talk and imagine that your five year old self is sitting in front of you right now and you're saying those things to them. You would not yell at this five year old version of you. You wouldn't tell them that they're useless, that they're worthless, that they're stupid. So why would you say these things to yourself? Now? I think that when we become conscious of the fact that this version of us still exists, needs to be reparented, needs to be protected, our approach to our current versions of ourselves become a lot more fulfilling and a lot more peaceful and gentle. Finally, I would say, recognize what triggers your hyperindependency, and I think in those moments, those are the times you most need to ask for help. We have to remember hyperindependence is a traumorous so it's often going to be activated during times of excessive stress or emotional intensity, when our mind resorts to that deeply ingrained coping mechanism, because in the past it's proved that it worked, even if it's at the expense of your long term wellbeing. But it's your job to replace this behavior with a more positive one and recognize what kind of situations are catalysts for you shunning assistance, for you isolating yourself. Maybe that's an argument with a partner or a friend. Maybe it's when someone says they're really busy. Maybe it's when someone doesn't show up for you, when you know that you're going to isolate, go out instead, or ask others to join you whilst you're studying or you're busy at work, or when you know you're going to be maybe hostile towards others and you feel this urge to push them away, let them in, let them know what you're going through. When you need help, ask for it, even if it's not from someone in your life, maybe it's from a neighbor or even someone online. It's all about those small steps. As we always say, you've got to feel the fear and do it anyway. Your future self is going to thank you for breaking out of this pattern. I guess the final reminder for the day is that hyperindependence is going to convince you that being alone, doing things alone is better, is safe, is secure. But that is not always the case. And like I said, we evolved around this idea of interdependency and community. It's important to know that it's not your fault. I guess like this comes from traumatic experiences, it comes from emotional neglect or events that caused you to grow up way too quickly and learn that you could not trust others. But as we get older, it's also important to revisit some of those childhood or early patterns of behavior that have continued with us into adulthood and check in with ourselves to see if they're still doing what we need them to do, if they are still what is best for us in this current state of life. So I think that that is all we have time for today. I really hope that this episode kind of provide you with a better understanding of this. I love seeing tiktoks and Instagram videos and whatnot around psychological concepts, but I do often think that it ignores some of the deeper understanding that we need. So hopefully this provided you a little bit of that. And if you ask someone who is listening to this, being like, damn, this really called me out. I think that I am hyper independent. Well now you have some steps, Now you have some ideas of where to go from here. Definitely left me a bit shook. When I read some of the research specifically around the attraction to codependent people, I was like, wow, that describes every relationship I've ever had. So you're not in this boat alone. But I do really hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please feel free to share it with a friend, share it forward with someone who you think might need to hear this, who you think might enjoy it. 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