When I was first diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes my body felt like a hired assassin just waiting to take a kill shot on itself. Going to sleep felt like the ultimate test of wits. Had I outplayed this disease well enough that I would wake up in the morning? Diabetes is so often treated as a joke that people don’t realise if you get your calculations a little bit wrong, dose a little too heavily on the insulin or underestimate the carb count of that bowl of pasta, you can find yourself in a whole heap of trouble. Today I wear a little sensor that wakes me up in the night if my levels are going too low but back then (just two years ago, which in medical tech terms is a lifetime), you simply went to sleep and took your chances.
If you’re a woman of a certain age, you will almost certainly have acquired the fear of dying alone and being eaten by Alsatians - thanks Bridget Jones. At the beginning of 2022 those damn dogs were my final thought every night. I live alone. As a bit of an introvert I don’t tend to send daily chatty texts to my friends and family, so if no-one heard from me for a few days they wouldn’t be surprised. No-one would know if I’d made it through the night.
Because confessing your fear of dying is what therapists are for, I told mine about the Alsatians.
“Perhaps,” she suggested gently, “you could ask a friend if you could text them each morning and just let them know you’re ok. And if they don’t hear from you they can check in and make sure?”
This was the maddest thing I’d ever heard. Who on earth would want to receive a daily “still alive!” text message from me? What would happen when I inevitably forgot to do it one day, went out without my phone and sent them into a state of panic that ended with ambulances being called and firefighters knocking my door down? Who would want that responsibility? And how would I ever repay them? I’d be in eternal debt to this person and I couldn’t have that.
But I took the idea away with me and sat with it for a bit. What was it about the idea of simply sending someone a thumbs up each morning that I found so repulsive? Why did being reliant on someone in this way feel so scary to me? The answer came from TikTok.
I don’t know if you’re on TikTok or if you are on it, what the algorithm is serving you but mine sends me a daily dose of bit-size cod-psychology. Not long after I had firmly rejected this ridiculous suggestion from my therapist, TikTok introduced me to the term “hyper-independent.” And while I am dubious about a lot of social media psychology, this rang a very large alarm bell for me.
To be hyper-independent is to be someone for whom the idea of relying on others is unthinkable. Like everything in psychology, it’s formed in childhood. The theory goes like this: we have needs as a child and we are largely reliant on the adults around us to meet these needs. If the adults don’t meet these needs we start to believe that the only person who can is us. We stop looking to others for help and often become actively distrustful of others when they offer help - we assume they won’t do it right or that they want something in return.
You don’t have to have come from an uncaring or heartless family to become a hyper-independent. Often our childhood needs go unmet for very simple reasons; perhaps you came from a huge family and your parents simply didn’t have the time or resources to meet everyone’s needs. Maybe there was an illness or tragedy in your family when you were young and attention was diverted away from you and onto this instead. You might just have had incredibly loving parents who were so convinced they knew what was best for you that they never actually checked that they were giving you what you needed rather than what they wanted. Any of these and a hundred other reasons could have convinced you that you were better off looking after yourself rather than relying on others to do it for you.
And, if you are me, this hyper-independence could be so hard-wired into you that it seems easier to just will yourself to wake-up each day and hope you don’t die, than to admit that you might have to rely on someone else to check in on you.
Of course, knowing the thing and doing the thing are two very different beasts. I could see that my reluctance to ask for help wasn’t logical, I knew it wasn’t in my best interests and I understood that it came from a child’s belief rather than an adult’s reason. And yet nearly a year passed and I couldn’t ask anyone. I would think about it. I would mull over in my mind who would be the right person - someone who wouldn’t panic if I forgot, who I wouldn’t feel beholden to. I can’t claim that I couldn’t think of anyone because I could, I was just paralysed by the fear of asking. And then last week, things changed.
An old colleague asked me to come on her podcast and I happily accepted. We’d got on really well back when we worked together but we’d lost contact and I was really looking forward to having a good catch up with her. The podcast was about courage. During the interview I admitted that asking someone to be my “living accountability” buddy was one thing I struggled with, something I couldn’t work up the courage to do.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll check in with you each day. Maybe I’ll forget some days but I think we can work it out.”
The podcast isn’t out yet so I haven’t listened back to my answer but I’m sure there would be some obfuscating from me. I know I will have been searching my mind for a way out, worrying about what this now meant for our relationship, panicking about the closeness this seemed to entail. But I couldn’t think of a reason to say no, so I stopped trying to find one and just said,
“Ok then.”
We’ve got into a little routine now. Sometimes we chat about what we’re up to that day, sometimes we just check in. For the first few days I found it scary. I kept looking for signs that she regretted this commitment and wanted a way out. I worried that I was asking too much. But we’ve kept going and slowly my fear has lessened. It’s become normal.
When I look at this interaction I see a lot of bravery here. She was brave to offer, to put herself out there and take on a level of responsibility that she didn’t need to. And I was brave to accept. I often hear parents tell their children that it’s brave to admit that you need help but I think we forget that it can also require courage to receive it. To let go of the belief that you only have only yourself to rely on, to trust others to do their best to support you with no further agenda. It’s not enough to ask for help, if we can’t really receive it.
And so while I might not have made the ask myself, I am proud that I have allowed myself to receive the gift and be grateful for it. It feels like the first step towards letting go of hyper-independence and moving towards something a bit healthier. At the very least I can now go back to admiring Alsatians rather than fearing them.
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Oh Harriet, this is so me and it’s actually refreshing to hear of your bravery and courage in admitting to this — your words felt as if you were reading my mind and to see it in print made absolute sense to me and I see you clearly and it’s made me think how I can now and should accept offers of help (even if it’s the small things when I feel overworked or overwhelmed ) when sometimes it’s what I need but I can’t quite accept. Thank you for this article. :-)