When "I've got it" becomes "I can't let go"

Somewhere between building careers and building boundaries, many of us stopped asking for help entirely. We learned to carry everything, answer to no one, need nothing from anyone. Independence became identity, and needing people started feeling like failure.

But what if the version of strength we've been sold is actually just loneliness with better branding?

Hyper-independence looks productive from the outside: the friend who never asks for a lift, the colleague who stays late instead of delegating, the partner who'd rather struggle than say "I need you." It feels like control and proof that you're capable…Until it doesn't.

You realise you're exhausted. The people who want to show up for you stop trying because you've made it clear there's no space for them.

The question nobody's asking

We talk a lot about toxic relationships, about people who take too much. But what about when we're the ones who won't take anything at all? When we've built walls so high that love, support, collaboration can't get through?

Connection isn't just about having people around. It's about letting them in, letting them help, letting them see you when things aren't perfectly handled. And that's terrifying when you've learned that depending on people means getting hurt.

Where does it come from?

For most of us, hyper-independence isn't a personality trait, it's a survival strategy. Maybe the people who were supposed to show up didn't. Maybe you learned early that asking for help meant being a burden. Maybe vulnerability got weaponised, so you decided never to be vulnerable again.

It's not weakness. It's protection. But protection from what? From disappointment, yes. From abandonment, maybe? But also from intimacy, from being truly known, from the kind of relationships that only exist when both people are willing to need each other sometimes.

What we're actually losing

When you refuse all help, you're not just refusing tasks off your plate. You're refusing someone's care, their desire to show up for you the way you show up for them. You're making every relationship one-directional.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead said the first sign of civilisation wasn't tools or pottery, it was a healed femur bone. Because a healed bone means someone was cared for long enough to recover. Humanity didn't advance through solo survival. We advanced through interdependence, through people showing up for each other.

We evolved to need each other. So why are we trying so hard to prove we don't?

The shift

Asking for help doesn't mean you couldn't do it yourself. You probably could. But strength isn't "I can do it alone." Strength is "I don't have to."

The most magnetic, fulfilled version of you doesn't operate like an island. She builds circles. She leans. She receives as generously as she gives. She knows that letting people in isn't weakness, it's how connection actually works.

So where are you right now? Still white-knuckling through everything solo, or learning to let people show up? What would it feel like to stop proving you don't need anyone and start building the kind of connections where needing each other is the whole point?