Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Beyond Attachment Styles. Ep 2. The Child Who Stops Needing Anyone

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Beyond Attachment Styles. Ep 2. The Child Who Stops Needing Anyone · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back.
• 0:02
  I'm Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist, and this is the second episode in the second series on the psychology of attachment.
• 0:15
  And today I want to look at something called compulsive self-reliance.
• 0:20
  That is the child who stops needing anybody.
• 0:25
  Just imagine that there's a particular kind of child that adults rarely worry about because they don't make demands or ask for help or create problems.
• 0:36
  They seem mature, independent, capable, and self-sufficient.
• 0:41
  They're often admired, and sometimes teachers will talk glowingly about them.
• 0:47
  Parents might describe them as easy, and they are frequently overlooked.
• 0:54
  Because from the outside they seem to be coping just fine.
• 0:58
  And yet sometimes hidden beneath that appearance of strength is a very different story.
• 1:04
  We're talking about a child who learned something quite profound a long time ago, and probably something quite painful, and that is that needing people was dangerous.
• 1:16
  So they stopped.
• 1:17
  They stopped asking, reaching, depending, and expecting.
• 1:22
  Not because they no longer had needs, but because they no longer believed that those needs would be safely met.
• 1:32
  In the previous episode, we explored the hidden attachment strategies that often emerge during adolescence and continue into adulthood.
• 1:42
  So today we are perhaps the most socially rewarded of all attachment adaptations is the compulsive self-reliant.
• 1:54
  Because this isn't ordinary independence and it's not confidence and it's not healthy autonomy.
• 2:01
  It's something very different.
• 2:04
  It's a defensive organization of the self built around one central belief.
• 2:12
  If I need nobody, nobody can hurt me.
• 2:16
  So how does this begin?
• 2:19
  To understand this, we need to return to childhood.
• 2:23
  Now imagine a child who repeatedly seeks comfort or who expresses distress, who reaches for support, and who turns towards others when they're frightened.
• 2:36
  And that these are normal attachment behaviors.
• 2:39
  They're healthy attachment behaviors.
• 2:41
  But imagine that the response is inconsistent or absent or rejecting.
• 2:47
  And perhaps the adults are emotionally unavailable because they're preoccupied, depressed, overwhelmed, critical or dismissive.
• 2:58
  The child experiences something repeatedly, not necessarily trauma or abuse, but disappointment.
• 3:06
  So the attachment system begins learning a lesson.
• 3:10
  No one's coming.
• 3:11
  Or perhaps nobody is available, or perhaps I need too much and I'm a burden.
• 3:19
  So eventually something changes.
• 3:22
  The child stops expecting support.
• 3:25
  Now this is important.
• 3:27
  The child has not become secure.
• 3:30
  They've simply adapted.
• 3:32
  Because if dependency repeatedly results in disappointment, then dependency itself begins to feel dangerous.
• 3:41
  And so the attachment system develops a solution.
• 3:46
  I will look after myself.
• 3:48
  I will solve my own problems.
• 3:51
  I will never place myself in a position where somebody else's failure can hurt me.
• 3:58
  It's a remarkably intelligent adaptation at one level, and this is why it often survives for decades.
• 4:07
  But one of the tragedies of compulsive self-reliance is that these children rarely attract concern.
• 4:14
  They're not disruptive, they don't demand, they don't seek reassurances, they simply disappear psychologically, not physically, but certainly emotionally.
• 4:26
  They become self-contained, and because they appear competent, adults often assume they're thriving.
• 4:34
  But competence and security are not the same thing.
• 4:37
  Many of these children carry enormous loneliness and they simply learn not to show it.
• 4:44
  As the child enters adolescence, the strategy becomes more sophisticated.
• 4:49
  The young person may become intensely focused upon achievement, competence, mastery, performance, and independence.
• 5:01
  And then the message becomes, I will never need anybody, not emotionally, practically, not psychologically.
• 5:09
  And whilst this often creates highly capable adolescents, it also creates profound isolation because vulnerability itself has begun to feel unsafe.
• 5:23
  And now we arrive at the point where many listeners may recognize themselves.
• 5:29
  Compulsive self-reliance often looks like successful careers, professional competence, emotional control, reliability and responsibility, and others may describe them as strong, resilient, independent, and capable.
• 5:47
  And yet, internally there is often a hidden struggle.
• 5:52
  Many compulsively self-reliant adults find it extremely difficult to ask for help, express vulnerability, depend on others, receive support, or tolerate their own emotional need.
• 6:05
  Not because they don't want connection, but somehow connection is just far too risky.
• 6:10
  And these aren't thought reactions or responses, they are the felt responses.
• 6:18
  It's what they have learned.
• 6:20
  They don't even think about it.
• 6:22
  And this is this is where the cost becomes most visible because it finds expression in relationships.
• 6:30
  Because intimate relationships require dependency, not unhealthy dependency, but human dependency.
• 6:37
  The ability to say, I need you, I'm struggling, I can't do this alone.
• 6:43
  For the compulsively self-reliant person, these statements never heard, because they are profoundly uncomfortable, sometimes even shameful.
• 6:54
  And so relationships often become characterized by emotional distance, not because the other doesn't care, but because caring deeply creates vulnerability, and vulnerability activates the old attachment fears.
• 7:12
  People often assume that compulsively self-reliant individuals fear failure.
• 7:17
  But beneath the surface lies something much deeper.
• 7:21
  It's the fear of disappointment, the fear of dependency, the fear of trusting somebody who may not be there, the fear of needing, because needing wants hurt.
• 7:32
  And the nervous system remembers over time the strategy begins creating problems.
• 7:40
  Loneliness, isolation, difficulty with intimacy, emotional exhaustion, alcoholism, perfectionism, and burnout.
• 7:51
  So the person becomes trapped inside a paradox.
• 7:55
  They've become so good at surviving alone that they no longer know how to be supported.
• 8:02
  In therapy, these individuals are often some of the hardest people to reach.
• 8:07
  Not because they're resistant, but because self-reliance has become their psychological armor.
• 8:14
  Often they would arrive saying, I don't need anybody.
• 8:17
  But beneath that statement, we frequently find something else.
• 8:22
  Something like, I learned long ago that depending on people was dangerous.
• 8:28
  And the therapeutic task is not to dismantle the strategy immediately because it deserves respect, it protected the child.
• 8:38
  So what we do is we begin instead to help the person understand that this adaptation made sense.
• 8:46
  It was intelligent, it was necessary, but perhaps it's no longer necessary in quite the same way.
• 8:55
  So recovery doesn't mean switching to becoming dependent.
• 8:59
  It doesn't mean abandoning autonomy, it means developing flexibility.
• 9:04
  And also the ability to be independent where appropriate and dependent when necessary.
• 9:12
  The ability to give support and to receive support, the ability to remain strong without remaining emotionally isolated.
• 9:23
  Perhaps one of the saddest things about compulsive self-reliance is that many people spend their entire lives being admired for the very thing that is hurting them.
• 9:34
  Others praise their strength, their competence, their independence, whilst remaining completely unaware of the loneliness beneath it.
• 9:44
  Because the child who stopped needing anybody was not born self-sufficient.
• 9:50
  They became self-sufficient for a reason.
• 9:54
  And perhaps the healing begins when the adult finally discovers that needing people is not weakness.
• 10:01
  It never was.
• 10:04
  Because true security is not the absence of dependency, it's the freezing the freedom to depend upon others when needed without fearing that doing so will destroy you.
• 10:16
  And perhaps that's the difference between survival and genuine connection.
• 10:24
  In the next episode, we're going to look at compulsive care giving, the child who learns to look after everyone else.
• 10:32
  Thank you for listening.