Relationships Sundays

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” ― Coco Chanel

Independence refers to being self-sufficient or taking care of yourself. It is often necessary to function independently as an adult, such as making and keeping your appointments, completing assignments for work, or maintaining a healthy and safe living environment.

However, like any trait, independence can be dangerous when taken to an extreme. Everyone encounters challenges they cannot tackle on their own, and everyone has needs they cannot meet without support.

What Does Hyper-Independence Look Like?

Hyper-independence describes an individual's attempt to remain fully independent in everything, even when it isn't beneficial or when help from others is genuinely needed.

When the need for independence reaches an unhealthy level, hyper-independence results. A hyper-independent person tends to avoid asking for help or support, even to their detriment. This behavior can be a response to trauma.

Signs of Hyper-Independence

Signs of hyper-independence can include:

• Over-achieving: Hyper-independent individuals might overcommit to work or personal projects, taking on more than they can manage by themselves.
• Refusing to delegate or ask for help: They often struggle with seeking help when overwhelmed and are unable to delegate tasks.
• Guardedness in relationships: Hyper-independent people may find it difficult to lower their defenses and allow closeness, which is essential in interdependent relationships.
• Secretiveness: They may keep personal information to themselves, wary of it being used against them.
• Mistrust of others: Concerns that others might let them down or betray their trust can drive hyper-independence.
• Few close or long-term relationships: Difficulty in opening up can hinder forming and maintaining deep friendships and romantic relationships.
• Stress or burnout: Taking on too much without seeking help can lead to stress or burnout.
• Dislike of “neediness”: They may resist others depending on them, mirroring their reluctance to rely on others.

Betrayal Trauma—The Impact of Being Betrayed

What Causes a Trauma Response?

A traumatic event is one that is disturbing, distressing, or life-threatening, and creates challenges for healthy coping. Traumatic experiences can be single events, such as a car accident or natural disaster, or they can be ongoing, like neglect or abuse.

Some ongoing stressful experiences during childhood that might lead to trauma symptoms later in life are known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). These are associated with physical illnesses, depression, anxiety, and even earlier death in adulthood.1

Other Reasons for Trauma Responses

• Sign of weakness. Children who were raised to believe that asking for help was a sign of weakness. This belief may be especially prominent in competitive families and kids who are gifted/talented.
• Parentification. Children who were parentified and experienced role reversal in the family. They literally had no help and are not used to having support. Their sense of self is often tied to what they can do for themselves and others.
• Messaging. Children who had their basic needs met would not necessarily see themselves as neglected; however, they may have received a constant message that they needed to do things on their own. There were no adults present to help them figure things out—whether that was in school, socially, in activities, or interests. They developed the sense that they were on their own.

The Mind and Body's Response to Trauma

When someone experiences something traumatic, the brain automatically activates the body's defense mechanism, also known as the survival response.

This built-in defense mechanism means that the body chooses behaviors based on what will keep it safest at the moment. Because our brains are wired to keep us safe and alive, we tend to hold onto survival mode long after the traumatic event has passed if we do not process it, even if it is no longer adaptive or helpful to do so.2

In fact, we are so good at surviving traumatic events that our genetic expression can change in response to trauma, passing the trauma response down to our offspring through intergenerational trauma.3

Unfortunately, although this can help survive the trauma, a trauma response is often harmful outside of the context of the traumatic event. Hyper-independence is one trauma response that can be maladaptive.

What Is the Fight-or-Flight Response?

Why Is Hyper-Independence a Trauma Response?

Hyper-independence can develop in response to trauma for various reasons. Not everyone who experiences a trauma will have the same trauma responses. In fact, some people begin to believe that they are incapable of independence as a result of their trauma.4

Feeling Undeserving of Social Support

Trauma survivors who experience hyper-independence may believe that they do not deserve support or help from other people. They might have been told that needing help or receiving support is unacceptable, so they become hyper-independent to avoid having that need.

Past Neglect

Some people’s trauma includes going through periods when their needs were not met, so they can develop hyper-independent tendencies to survive. The neglect they experienced taught them that they could only rely on themselves. They might believe that others cannot or will not help them, so there is no point in seeking help or support from others.

Mistrust of Others

Hyper-independence can also emerge from reluctance to trust others. The trauma survivor might have experienced abuse by their caregivers. This can lead to feeling unsafe asking for help, as they could pair the concept of relying on another person with that person abusing them.

Coping Mechanism

Sometimes, hyper-independence can be a way of coping with uncertainty. Many trauma survivors experience a loss of control as part of their trauma, and hyper-independence might be a way that they seek to regain a sense of control over their environment.

Treatment for Hyper-Independence

Hyper-independence is an extreme form of independence that can lead to personal and relational issues. The hyper-independent person can run into trouble when they are unable to meet a need without help and feel unable to seek support. They also often struggle with interpersonal relationships due to their mistrust of others.

Know that support is available. Therapy can go at a pace that you are comfortable with, and there is no deadline by which you have to get better. Take your time finding a provider who is a good fit, and know that you can let go of the maladaptive coping patterns that helped you survive your past.

Although hyper-independence is not a formal diagnosis, it is a trauma and stress response. People with posttraumatic stress disorder or another mental health issue triggered by a trauma history might experience hyper-independence.

A person experiencing hyper-independence can work on healthy relationships, trust, and honoring their own limitations in therapy. Because hyper-independence is a trauma response, trauma-informed care is an important component of this treatment.

What Is Trauma-Informed Therapy?

Examples of Healing Work

The work for everyone is different because the reasons that led to hyper-independence were different.

• Letting go of perfectionism
• Exploring your identity outside of doing things for others
• Understanding the cost of not asking for help
• Realizing that there is help available now as adults, even if it wasn't as children
• Normalizing asking for help and not seeing it as a sign of weakness
• Doing an inventory of what it is costing you to not ask for help
• Learning how to delegate

Coping With Hyper-Independence

An important thing to remember about any trauma response is that it is a way to survive and cope in a stressful and unfair situation. While hyper-independence can cause problems, it likely helped you survive a traumatic situation if you developed this response. You can acknowledge how this response helped you at the time while working to let go of behavior that no longer serves you.

Interdependence & Independence

What is one thing you’ve been struggling to do alone that you could ask for help with today?