Is Being Dependent A Weakness?

“The completely independent man would live in a cabin in the woods — free to come and go as he pleased, but he would have no power. “ — Robert Greene

As far as I’m concerned there is nothing worse in life than being dependent on other people.

Dependency makes you vulnerable in all kinds of ways. It makes you powerless. It gives people the power to betray you, disappoint you and frustrate you.

However, I had to think more deeply about dependency this past week because suddenly, I was confronted with the inevitable fact that not only are we all born dependent, but we will likely die dependent too.

At some point, most of us will require support either from family or healthcare professionals to do our daily activities because getting old is a part of life.

I find this idea unbearable because due to my past history of trauma, I have a huge problem depending on people and being vulnerable.

In a way, dependency is a weird topic for me to write about because for as long as I can remember, I’ve been all about independence, autonomy and self-sufficiency.

It is also uncomfortable to admit I used to have issues with dependency in the past.

Dependency doesn’t just come from abandonment anxiety.

It is the result of externalising — when you externalise, you rely on other people to regulate your inner world.

This meant that even though I didn’t fear abandonment in the past, people I was in a relationship with could still affect me powerfully.

For instance, if there was too much communication or I felt there was an invasion of my personal space, I used to feel a lot of anger and anxiety — more than normal people would.

I also hated feeling any emotion towards anyone. It was intolerable that anyone could ever affect my mood because this challenged my deeply held conviction that I was and must always be 100% independent.

In the end, I realised we all deal with dependency to varying degrees, but can reduce the severity.

When I started to understand people better, I noticed a massive reduction in my anxiety levels. I noticed that people could no longer have an intense and long-lasting effect on my mood like they did in the past because I wasn’t taking things personally anymore.

In other words, I stopped feeling like people had some sort of power over me, and this allowed me to, at the very least, attempt to get closer to them.

I remember when a friend of mine was seeing someone about two years ago, and she started to like him. After a month of seeing each other, she decided to be upfront about it and tell this person how she felt to see if there was a chance of things moving forward.

The guy was vague, implying he didn’t feel the same way. My friend’s response was, “Fair enough.” Then she stopped initiating contact with him, and that was that.

When she first told me about this, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe she would be so upfront with someone about having feelings for them.

“Why would you give someone that kind of power over you?” I thought.

And that was precisely what my problem was.

In the past, when I liked someone, they had a lot of power over me because they could seriously affect my day-to-day mood with their unpredictability. So in a way, I was dependent on them.

Yet, now, I can like people without feeling like they have this kind of power over me.

This got me thinking more about what dependency means.

Indeed, if you are very dependent on people, this means you can’t depend on them because their betrayal can hurt you very deeply and their unpredictability can make you extremely anxious.

But if you can tolerate uncertainty and know that you can handle whatever happens, if you can trust yourself, then suddenly, this allows you to trust others more as well.

The same friend I mentioned is in the process of buying a house with her current partner.

She recently said, “If he were to cheat on me, I’d be devastated, but I know I could walk away and recover from it.”

And this is why she can trust him. Not just because he is trustworthy — he is, and that certainly plays a huge part — but also because she trusts herself.

Then I started thinking about my friendships.

Even though I’m avoidant in intimate relationships, I am securely attached to my close friends.

And I do depend on them for many things — they listen to me if I have a problem, they give me good advice, they make me feel better if I fail at something, and we have no trust issues overall.

I feel accepted for who I am, and I can be open about myself without giving it a second thought.

When we had problems in the past, my avoidant tendencies would kick in, but we’ve always been able to resolve them regardless.

So it’s not the belief that we will have no arguments in the future, but rather my conviction that we will be able to get through these problems because we can communicate effectively that allows me to depend on these people.

I also know that if there was a problem and we couldn’t work things out and had to part ways, I would be disappointed but still be able to move on.

If a day were to come when I could no longer trust them, it would be okay. After all, I do not depend on them because I’m helpless and have no other choice — I’m choosing to depend on them.

And knowing these makes me feel safe to continue with the relationships.

I’ve been pondering about all this because, as I had mentioned earlier, I had to confront the idea that most of us will die dependent, and I had a bad reaction to it.

I have actually been seriously contemplating immigrating to Switzerland, where euthanasia is legal, during the past few days, which I think is quite an exaggerated response.

Even if I’m comfortable depending on my friends, I still feel like there is no way I could ever depend on anyone to the extent that I have to rely on them to help me with daily chores.

In other words, I cannot depend on people from a position of weakness.

And the question that I’m left with is this:

“Is not being able to depend on others a weakness or a disadvantage?”

Because if both me and a healthy person with no history of trauma were put in a position of dependency due to an unforeseen accident or an illness, I would find this much more intolerable. As a result, I would be more vulnerable to any mental health consequences that may arise from that situation.

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