The Curse of Hyper Independence

 The other day, a friend called me to ask for the medical reimbursement form pdf. I asked if everything was okay, almost as a reflex, and she replied just as casually, “Yeah, I just had to get a breast ultrasound done.” There are sentences that quietly rearrange something inside you. That was one of them. My heart sank in a way I didn’t immediately show. “Everything is okay, right?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. She reassured me...her gynecologist only wanted to rule things out, nothing serious. Relief came, but it didn’t settle fully. I found myself asking when she went, why she didn’t tell me. I would have gone with her. She said she had gone earlier that day. Alone. And that stayed with me.

The hospital is far...at one end of the city, while we live nowhere near even its edges. I kept thinking about that journey. Not just the physical distance, but the mental one. The quiet waiting. The what-ifs. The possibility, however small, of something being wrong. I couldn’t help but wonder what must have gone through her mind during all of it. And then, almost instinctively, I turned the question inward. If I were in her place, would I have asked someone to come along? The answer came too easily, no. Not because I don’t have people. Not because I don’t trust them. But because somewhere along the way, I’ve learned not to reach out for things I can technically handle on my own.

I’ve done it before. I’ve been through medical situations, not as serious, but still uncomfortable, entirely by myself. I remember once having severe immunity issues, rashes spreading across my face, needing IV injections twice a day for a week. And yet, I treated it like a routine, walking to the campus hospital morning and evening, as if it were just another part of my day. I told my family only after it was over. Not out of secrecy. Not out of distance. But because it felt unnecessary to involve them. Things were manageable. The next day after my cannula was removed, I even played Holi like nothing had happened.

Perhaps that is what hyper independence looks like...not dramatic resilience, not heroic strength, but a quiet, practiced habit of managing everything alone. You get so used to handling things by yourself that even sharing begins to feel like a burden you are placing on someone else. You start measuring your struggles not by how heavy they feel, but by whether they are serious enough to be shared. And most of the time, you decide they are not. 

Maybe that conditioning doesn’t come from nowhere. Sometimes, it is shaped by the absence of people who were supposed to show up but didn’t. Sometimes, it’s because accountability never came from the places it should have. And so, you quietly learn a lesson you never consciously chose, if the ones who were meant to be there weren’t, why expect anyone else to be?

There’s this “Eldest Daughter Effect,” though it has evolved beyond birth order, and is now known as “Mighty Girl Effect.” It describes a certain kind of woman, the one who would rather walk across fire, ice, thorns and what not, than asking for help. The one who can juggle everything, hold everything together, and still manage to dance gracefully to the tunes of life. You’ll find many of us moving through life like it’s an unspoken competition, who can handle more, who can break less, who can keep going without needing anyone. And from the outside, it looks like strength. But what people and often we ourselves fail to realize is… hyper independence is not strength. It is a wall. A well-built, carefully maintained wall that keeps us, safe.

We don’t avoid trusting people because we don’t want to. We avoid situations that might test that trust. As they say in Urdu, “bas aazmaish nahi karni hai” we don’t want to invite the kind of moment where life forces us to find out whether someone will truly show up or not. In a strange way, it’s not just self-protection. It’s also a kind of protection for others. Because if we never ask, they never have the chance to fail us. And that feels easier than dealing with the possibility that they might.

I don’t fear walking down a street where dogs are barking and fighting. I don’t flinch at injections. I can deal with lizards, cockroaches, chaos, and crowds. I can cross the busiest roads without hesitation. But I fear people. Not in the obvious ways, but in the subtle ones. Their intentions, their carefully chosen words, their self-declared promises. I fear the ways in which people misunderstand their own emotions, and the quiet devastation of their absence when it matters most. And yet, to the world, I am energetic and resilient. Always moving, always doing, always managing. And for a long time, I took pride in that. I still do, in some ways.

But I am beginning to question it. Because maybe strength is not about never needing anyone. Maybe it is not about how much you can endure in silence. Maybe it is not about how well you can carry your own weight, every single time. Maybe strength is in allowing yourself to not be okay. In admitting that something scares you. In letting someone sit beside you in a waiting room. In making that one call that says, “Can you come with me?”

I see people sometimes, people who get a mild fever and suddenly, they are surrounded. Friends take turns accompanying them to the hospital, making sure they eat, sending updates to their families. It becomes less of a crisis and more of a shared moment. And a part of me used to look at that and think it’s too much. Now, I look at it differently. It will take time, I think, to unlearn this instinct to minimize everything. To understand that even a small deviation from normal, no matter how insignificant it seems, is still a sign that something is off. That rest is not a reward for collapse. That no one is giving out medals for pushing through when you don’t have to.

If you couldn’t relate to this, I hope you never have to. I hope you always have people who show up before you even think to ask, who sit beside you before the silence gets too loud. I hope you know how deeply lucky and held you are. And if you could relate to even a part of this, know that you are not alone. There is a quiet strength in you that has carried you through more than most people will ever see. And there is something deeply admirable about that. But also, something deeply human that deserves to be reclaimed.  And maybe, someday, strength will no longer mean doing everything alone. Maybe it will mean knowing that you don’t have to.

Maybe it begins smaller than that. Maybe it begins with telling one person, “Hey, I have a doctor’s appointment today.” Or allowing someone to check in without brushing it off. Or not saying “it’s fine” when it really isn’t. Maybe it begins with choosing, slowly and intentionally, to lower the wall...not all at once, but brick by brick.

Maybe it comes from small permissions. To tell someone where you’re going. To let someone stay. To not carry everything alone, every single time. To slowly believe that there are people who will show up...not perfectly, not always, but enough. And that maybe, just maybe, you are allowed to be someone who is held too. To believe that there are people who won’t see your vulnerability as a burden, but as an invitation to care. To believe that being held, even briefly, does not make you weak...it makes you human.