Hyper Independence.

On the outside, hyper-independence looks like someone who has it all together– but the other side can look like:

• Saying “I’m fine” before anyone even finishes asking
• Delegating feels more stressful than just doing it yourself
• Feeling guilty when you're not being productive
• Asking for, or accepting help makes you feel like a failure
• “I can handle it” became your mantra

Somewhere along the way, you learned that asking for help, or even admitting that you needed it, made you a disappointment. Maybe because the adults in your life weren’t reliable, or because they applied pressure to be the best at everything, no matter how. So you learned that “doing it all despite the cost” was the thing that earned love and safety.

The problem is that hyper-independence came along with you into adulthood, and ultimately, motherhood. It followed you into your marriage, your parenting and your friendships. It’s driving your decisions to say yes to one more thing when you know you’re already completely overwhelmed. At the end of the day, you need relief and you cope however you can- wine, doom scrolling, bingeing trashy tv, staying busy despite the exhaustion. Anything to keep from admitting that you need help and you don’t know how to ask.

You need a break but you don’t know how to take one. You’ve set up your life so that everyone expects you to keep performing. Even if you didn’t have the external pressure, you know yourself & you know you’re the biggest driver in your list of to-do’s.

In therapy we’ll figure out why. We’ll figure out what to do about it. We’ll figure out what a break looks like & dammit, you’ll take one.

“I’m not bad enough to need therapy. I just need to manage my time better”

That thought right there is the hyper-independence talking. The idea that the solution to doing too much alone is to get more efficient at doing too much alone.

I hope you can hear this- you don’t need better systems. You don’t need a cute new planner and fancy gel pens (yes, they’re fun, I get it!). You need to give yourself permission to stop carrying so much. And you need someone to help you figure out how to actually do that without everything falling apart.

You’re not failing, you never were. But reaching out is hard because that is exactly what it feels like. Let’s make this as easy as we can- I offer free 15 minute consultation calls to make sure we’re a good fit to work together. No commitment, no pressure.