There’s a myth many of us inherit early.
Not always spoken aloud. Often simply breathed in.
It moves through our culture like weather—so constant we forget it has a name. It lives in the stories we’re told, the praise we receive, the roles we’re rewarded for playing. It pulses through media—movies, television, the endless stream of images that teach us what’s admirable… what’s desirable… what’s valued.
The myth sounds like this:
Don’t need anyone.
Be strong.
Handle it.
Be responsible for your own needs.
And if you can do that—if you can live untouched, unentangled, un-needing—then you have arrived. Then you are “whole.” Then you are safe.
But what if that story is not the path to wholeness? What if it’s the path to a quiet kind of exile?
Exile as punishment
In older cultures, one of the worst punishments you could receive wasn’t imprisonment. It was banishment.
To be cast out of the village.
To be cut off from the circle.
To lose the firelight, the shared food, the watchful eyes, the helping hands, the known traditions and stories.
To be named “not one of us.”
In many places and times, banishment was a near-certain physical death sentence. You needed the group to survive. You needed hands to help build shelter, bodies to stand guard, stories to map the land, relationships to barter and belong.
But banishment was more than logistical. It was emotional death. Spiritual death.
A tearing away from the human web that made life feel meaningful.
Even now, long after most of us have central heat and grocery stores; when social media “likes” and “followers” usurp connection, the nervous system remembers what the culture forgets: Disconnection is danger. Not because we are weak. But because we are human.
The nervous system doesn’t speak in slogans
Attachment theory—when you strip away the academic language—is simply a description of something ancient: We are wired for connection and security in close relationships.
As infants, our survival depends on it. But as adults, our thriving still does. The core premise of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT )—a form of therapy based on attachment theory, developed by Dr. Sue Johnson—holds that adult love is built on attachment needs. We don’t outgrow our need to feel seen, safe, and held in the heart of another; we just carry those needs into our closest bonds. From this view, the goal isn’t to become detached or totally self-sufficient, but to cultivate a secure connection where both people can lean on each other and stand as distinct, autonomous selves.
We don’t just want relationship—we regulate inside of it. We learn safety through being met. We discover ourselves through being seen. We find our footing through the lived experience of rupture… and repair. And when connection is threatened, something primal wakes up.
The body doesn’t debate nor negotiate. It mobilizes.
Sometimes it reaches: Come closer. Please don’t leave.
Sometimes it hardens: I don’t need you anyway.
Sometimes it vanishes: I’ll leave you before you can leave me.
These are not character flaws. They are strategies—often brilliant ones—born from a deep intelligence: Stay connected. Stay safe. So when our culture celebrates radical self-sufficiency as the highest good, we’re asking people to override their biology and call it virtue.
No wonder so many feel lonely… and ashamed… at the same time.
The story of the lone hero
Look at the stories we’re offered. So often we’re given the same archetype: the lone hero.
He* rides in.
He saves the day.
And then he rides off alone, silhouetted against the horizon.
It’s clean. It’s compelling. It’s cinematic.
It’s also… bullshit.
Even the most “independent” hero is never truly independent. Someone taught him. Someone patched him up. Someone gave him a name, a tool, a blessing, a reason. There is almost always a hidden village behind the legend—yet the story edits the village out so we can worship the image of the solitary one.
And many of us internalize that edit.
We learn to hide our needs or convince ourselves that we alone are responsible for meeting them. We learn to present competence as lovability. We learn to call loneliness “freedom.” We learn to ride off alone—then wonder why we feel so damn cold.
Independence as armor
Here’s the tender truth: A lot of what gets called “independence” is actually protection. It’s a way of trying to avoid or minimize the disappointment… the fear…the hurt.
Because if I don’t need you, you can’t disappoint me.
If I don’t rely on you, you can’t leave me stranded.
If I don’t let you matter, you can’t break my heart.
This is not something to judge in ourselves. It’s something to honor.
Many of us learned early—through rupture, neglect, betrayal, or simple overwhelm—that depending on someone was unsafe. So we adapted. We became capable. We became self-contained. We became the one who “holds it” for others. And maybe that adaptation saved us. But the same adaptation that saves us in one season can starve us in another. Because armor keeps out harm… and it also keeps out the very thing we’re longing for.
Autonomy isn’t the absence of relationship
One of the great confusions in modern American life is that we mistake autonomy for aloneness. We imagine that becoming an individual means keeping people at arm’s length. That maturity means not depending on. That self-actualization means self-sufficiency.
But real autonomy is not the absence of relationship. It’s the capacity to stay connected while staying yourself.
It’s being able to say:
- This is what I feel.
- This is what I need.
- This is where I end and you begin.
- This is what I choose—freely.
And paradoxically, we usually learn that capacity in relationship, not outside of it. We learn our edges through contact. We discover our voice by being heard. We find our inner steadiness by being met—and met again. Healing comes through vulnerability shared with the people we are closest to—partners, trusted friends, family—where we begin to risk saying, “I’m scared,” “I feel alone,” or “I worry I’m too much for you,” instead of attacking, defending, or disappearing. When those softer truths are met and validated with responsiveness and care, over time the nervous system learns that closeness is safer than it once felt.
Yes—sometimes we must step back. Sometimes we must untangle. Sometimes we get hurt. Sometimes we must reclaim our center. But reclaiming the center is not the same as exiling the heart.
Independence vs. interdependence
Independence says: I can do it alone.
Interdependence says: I can do it with you… and I can also stand on my when needed.
Independence often carries a subtle contempt for need.
Interdependence carries reverence for reality.
Because reality is this:
We are not separate beings.
We are a living network—of nervous systems, histories, longings, and hopes. We impact one another constantly. Even when we pretend we don’t. Interdependence doesn’t mean collapsing into the Other. It doesn’t mean losing yourself in someone else’s world.
It means choosing connection without surrendering discernment.
It means letting support be mutual.
It means honoring both the self and the connection.
And for many of us, that’s the vulnerable edge: Not just needing… but allowing the Other to matter.
Healthy dependency is not a weakness but a foundation for real freedom. When we know we have a secure emotional home base—people who are generally accessible, responsive, and engaged—we tend to feel more independent, not less. We can explore, create, and take risks in the world because we’re not silently fighting panic about being enmeshed or rejected. A secure attachment doesn’t erase our individuality; it strengthens it. In this sense, the work is not to extinguish attachment, but to transform it—moving from fear-driven cycles of clinging and withdrawal into a bond where connection and autonomy coexist, and where turning toward each other with honest emotion becomes the path to growth.
Carl Jung offers a surprisingly grounded perspective—shown through a deeper, mythic lens that speaks the language of soul.
Jung, individuation, and the return to the human circle
Jung is often remembered for a single shining phrase: individuation—the slow becoming of a whole human being. It’s easy to misunderstand that word. To imagine individuation as solitary heroism. As the spiritual version of “I don’t need anyone.” As a noble separation from the mess of human attachment.
But Jung’s vision is more paradoxical than that.
At one point he offers a line that feels like a direct antidote to the myth of independence: “Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself.” Jungian Center
Not withdrawal.
Not exile.
A widening.
And he’s even more explicit about what healthy individuation should produce: “the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation.” Carl Jung Depth Psychology
So the work is not to become free from the need of others. The work is to honor and acknowledge our sometimes frail humanness. Individuation, in its truest sense, is an inner re-ordering—the gradual movement from living out of persona, adaptation, and fear… into living from the center. And that shift doesn’t make relationship irrelevant. It makes relationship truer.
Because the psyche doesn’t ripen only in contemplation. It ripens in encounter. It ripens where we are touched, challenged, mirrored, and sometimes undone. The Other becomes a threshold—a mirror—where what is unconscious rises to the surface: our projections, our shadow, our hunger, our strategies for control and safety.
The unrelated human being lacks wholeness, for he can achieve wholeness only through the soul, and the soul cannot exist without its other side, which is always found in a “You.” Wholeness is a combination of I and You, and these show themselves to be parts of a transcendent unity.
~ James Hollis
Jung might say: the very friction we resist is part of the work. Not so we become dependent upon or collapse into the Other. But so we withdraw the projections. So we stop asking the Other to carry our unlived life. So we learn to love without using. So we can stand in the dignity of a differentiated self—and remain in connection.
Because the opposite of individuation isn’t dependence. It’s unconsciousness.
And the Other—when we let the Other matter—has a mysterious way of waking us up.
The vulnerability of letting the Other matter
There is a particular kind of tenderness in admitting:
You affect me.
Your absence matters.
Your tone matters.
Your care matters.
Your seeing me matters.
And that admission can feel dangerous if we’ve been hurt in relationship (and who hasn’t been hurt in relationship). Because once the Other matters, the stakes are real and high. You can’t pretend you’re untouched. You can’t hide behind competence. You can’t call it “nothing” when it’s something.
To let the Other matter is to step into the realm where life is actually lived. It is to take the risk of intimacy—whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. That’s what we’re here for. Not to be unbreakable, but to live fully human.
An invitation
Don’t get me wrong… independence is a valid quality of maturity. But it must be held in balance. If you’ve lived under the myth of independence, you’re not wrong for it. You were likely adapting… surviving… learning how to function in a culture that often rewards disconnection and calls it success.
But you might gently ask: Where has independence become exile? Where has “I’ve got it” become a wall? Where has competence replaced intimacy? Where has autonomy drifted into isolation?
And you might experiment—slowly, kindly—with a new possibility:
Not dependence.
Not collapse.
Not losing yourself.
But interdependence.
Letting one safe person in a little closer.
Letting one truth be spoken.
Letting one need be named.
Letting the Other matter—without giving the Other the steering wheel of your life.
Just one small movement back toward the circle.
Because we were never meant to do this alone.
Not the healing.
Not the growing.
Not the becoming.
And perhaps the deepest freedom isn’t riding off into the horizon by yourself.
Perhaps it’s discovering that you can belong—without losing yourself or disappearing.
Peace, Blessings, & Joy.
* NOTE: While the hero has typically been represented as a “he” in mainstream media, the hero can be a “she” as well. For example: Rey (Star Wars), Black Widow/Natasha (MCU), Lisbeth Salander (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Ellen Ripley (Aliens), Clarice Starling (The Silence of the Lambs).
Additionally, it is becoming increasingly common to include elements of the hero’s backstory which does not edit out the Others who helped shape him/her.