The Hidden Cost of Being The Strong One
The compulsively self-reliant person is the reliable one. People come to you with their troubles.
You listen. You support. You know what to say and do.
When your own life causes stress or feels heavy, you handle it yourself.
You research. You reflect. You adjust
A friend asks, “How are you — really?”
You smile. “I’m fine. Busy.”
There’s a small pause. A moment where you could say more.
You don’t.
The conversation moves on. You are the capable one.
But later, on your own, something flickers — not quite sadness, not quite anger. Or perhaps a bit of both.
Something unshared.
You carry it yourself.
Self-reliance is not a problem in its own right, it depends on the motivations and context. Reading the sketch above, does it feel like strength, or does it feel like distress? This question is worth asking — even if it is leading.
If the person in the above example was protecting their friend because their friend doesn’t have the capacity at that time to deal with the struggles of others, then that would be an empathic and generous response. But this sketch doesn’t feel like that. It feels more like a default response in situations of potential vulnerability, when a trusted friend actually could be of support. No, something else is going on.
Why might the person in this example not say more? What prevents a simple “Thanks for asking, I’m struggling a bit with…”?
They shy away from that. They might explain it away as ‘not wanting to be a burden’, which has an undertone of not feeling worth someone else’s time. They are really attempting to become relationally self-contained. Hermetically sealed off from others when risk of vulnerability arises. Mustn’t feel reliant or dependent.
Fun, laughter and success are usually ok to share — they are safe. No threat there. Uncertainty, fear, vulnerability and shame — these are much harder to be with. They are hard for anyone to share, but for the compulsively self-reliant person they feel like a threat to their very sense of self.
In my view, there are two entwined phenomena at play here — the first psychological and the second ontological.
The first is a psychological defence born of personal experience. Compulsive self-reliance is an adaptation in response to relational threat. A key relationship in developmental years was insecure to the extent that intersubjective vulnerability became a real threat on some level.
Perhaps a young person had to care for an incapacitated parent and feared that showing their fatigue, stress and anxiety might worry their ill parent or perhaps lead to them being taken into care and separated from their parent. Or an adolescent may have become a consistent target of bullying after a vulnerable secret was shared with a friend who betrayed their confidence, told their school mates and they were subsequently ridiculed. Another young person might have had parents unable to emotionally support their needs for whatever reason, and their sadnesses, failures, fears and insecurities were a source of exasperation and impatience to their parents.
The picture is of a person who learned that their emotions are allowable when they are kept to themselves, and shareable when they are positive and don’t impose on anyone. It may progress further to the point that they feel that their emotions are not allowable, even to themselves. This becomes shame. It is shameful to have these feelings — and certainly to express them to others. You should just get on with things and deal with it yourself. In the English tradition — ‘Keep Calm and Carry On.”
The second phenomenon is ontological — about what it is to be human.
The ground of human life is as material beings in a relational field, or what I call relational-materialism. Substance, the ‘stuff’ of materialism, is core to who and what we are and how we make sense of ourselves. Science and medical treatments deal with this every day. Brains, bodies, possessions, sex, hugs… they are all the physical stuff of materialism.
They are also the stuff of relationship, and this is too often overlooked in western culture. Your brain is the relational process of interlocking and firing neurons. Our possessions are important by dint of how we relate to them. Sex can be casual or loving — both define our relationship with the sexual partner in that moment. The nature of the sex reflects the nature of the relationship between the people.
How we ultimately explain reality may differ — whether religious, secular, other or undecided. But whatever one’s metaphysical commitments, we still live as embodied beings in relationship. That is the ontological claim being made here.
The compulsively self-reliant person tries to control the relational dimension of themselves. They try to selectively detach certain experiences from relationships — which is impossible in the ontological reality of relational-materialism. Nevertheless, the attempt is in keeping with prevailing Western cultural conditions that prioritise individuality, efficiency and productivity — and sharing experiences such as shame, insecurity and fear do not lend themselves to this.
Essentially such a person is trying to sustain their individuality by grounding it in their individuality. But something cannot be self-grounding if we are constituted in relational-materialism. We cannot detach from the relational field. What someone experiences as self-reliant separation actually becomes their way of inhabiting relationship: protective, constrictive and guarded.
So, what happens over time if compulsive self-reliance is an uninterrupted way of life?
Let’s return to the person at the beginning of this article. How long does their friend keep asking “Are you really ok?”. If the answer is always “I’m fine”, even in the face of visible strain, the question begins to feel futile, and, eventually, is asked less often.
And what of reciprocity? How does it feel to share your fears and vulnerabilities with someone who never shares theirs? The imbalance becomes palpable. A subtle caution develops. Perhaps it is not that the friend feels untrusted, but that the relationship begins to feel uneven as exposure flows one way.
Gradually something shifts. The self-reliant person remains dependable, steady and capable yet others begin to hold back. They share less, offer less of themselves and assume less relational closeness is possible.
From the inside this can feel confusing and unfair. For some, bitterness evolves. They might think ‘I am always there for everyone else.’ And that may be true. But a fulfilling and equitable relational life depends as much on mutual risk as it does on strength. Without that mutuality, distance develops.
For others there is a deep loneliness. A sense of feeling unknown and unseen.
Often there is both loneliness and resentment, alongside a yearning for connection. But the more distance is felt, the more that vulnerability feels dangerous and withdrawal feels safer. And a reinforcing cycle emerges.
From an ontological perspective, the compulsively self-reliant individual attempts to stabilise themselves as if relational interdependence were optional. But because relationality is constitutive rather than elective, attempting this impossible feat generates tension — a tension that is experienced psychologically as distress.
So how might this pattern be interrupted?
Not everyone begins in the same place. For some, change begins behaviourally, by risking a sentence that would previously have remained unspoken. For others, it begins with recognising the shame or fear that forbids the expression or sharing of certain feelings. For others, it begins by questioning the very idea that individuality must mean self-contained sufficiency
But however it begins, this shift is lived concretely in relationship. It appears in the pause before “I’m fine”. In the decision to share something imperfect. In the willingness to hear the other person’s response.
Over time, it emerges as a gradual adjustment to a new sense of self — a growing confidence in interdependence rather than isolation.
Compulsive self-reliance is not released by abandoning strength, but by discovering that strength and vulnerability are not mutually opposed, but are actually interdependent themselves.
If you recognise yourself here, that pause before “I’m fine” might be where something new begins.