Independence vs. Interdependence

The stories we tell matter

The universe refuses the vows of the celibate. Preparing them instead with songs for marriage. Everything it knows was born of the great embrace. -David Whyte, from The Statue of Shiva.

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I worked with a man who got irritated whenever the conversation turned to his wife and children. He had made it obvious (to me anyway) that he was overwhelmed, and that his life was unmanageable. So I said, “I wonder what it would be like to let your wife know how stressed you’re feeling, and how unsustainable the current arrangement is.” Bristling, he replied, “Look. I don’t think that’s the issue. I’m here to work on myself. Once I have myself sorted out, I’ll be able to fix my relationships.”

Becoming aware of how much resistance we have to asking for help is a common experience in therapy, including my own. For some of us, it can feel unbearably vulnerable, a proclamation of weakness.

Yet this story—that we’ll “fix” our relationships by fixing ourselves—is too simple. It falsely assumes that we don’t depend on others. It also doesn’t do justice to our partners, friends, and other allies, since it implies their roles in our lives don’t matter as much as in fact they do.

In this note I offer a revision to the larger cultural story of individualism that drives many of us to the lonely place where my patient found himself, where all help has to be self-help. The gist of the revised story is that we live in an interdependent universe. This means we depend on others to survive and flourish. And by “others”, I mean not just other humans, but our microbiomes, families, communities, institutions, ecosystems, the earth, the sun, galactic clusters, and so on.

If we knew this in our bones, our default mindset wouldn’t be, ‘First I fix myself, then everything else will fall into place.’ Nor, by the way, would it be, ‘First everyone else needs to fix themselves, then I’ll be okay.’ Both stories are untenable and equally isolating: It’s as lonely being the neurotic who shoulders burdens that belong to others, as it is being the narcissist who projects onto others burdens they ought to be shouldering.

If we knew the interdependent story in our bones, we might wake up in the morning and ask ourselves not, How am I? but, How are we this morning?” For the answer, we might scan our our body, then call to mind our microbiome, our partners, friends, family, group affiliations, etc. Wholly alive to our interdependence, we might end our morning check-in with our selves as Buddhists end their loving-kindness practice, “May all beings be well, happy, and peaceful.” In a world where everything is connected, it makes sense that what’s good for others is likely to be good for us.

I know, the whole story is more complicated. There is of course a place for independence and competition and fighting. As Hegel might observe, these too are crucial moments of the whole process. But in the West we’re hardly in danger of neglecting these moments. Our predominant story has been of a competitive, dog-eat-dog world. In such a world, cooperating is at best a strategy, a moment in the larger zero-sum game that continually sorts the winners from the losers. With this as our default story, it’s no wonder we associate needing something—or feeling that something is needed of us—with vulnerability and weakness.

But if we let the interdependent story sink in, we begin to see our own need, and the need of others, in a different light. Our need is not a sign that something needs to be fixed, but a mark of our interdependent nature. In case we hadn't already noticed, research is showing that human development passes from dependence to independence, but doesn’t end there. It ends in interdependence. In earlier notes, on the interpersonal field and co-regulation, we saw how our limbic system invites (and needs) engagement with others. In future posts, we’ll dig further into the evidence.

Reviewing the science of limbic regulation, the authors of A General Theory of Love write, “People can’t be stable on their own—not should or shouldn’t be, but can’t be. This prospect is disconcerting to many, especially in a society that prizes individuality as ours does.”¹ The World Health Organization offers a more bureaucratic formulation of the same story: “Mental health is produced socially; the presence or absence of mental health is above all a social indicator and therefore requires social, as well as individual, solutions.”²

1. A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, MD, Fair Amini, MD, and Richard Lannon, MD. New York: Random House, 2000; p. 86.

2. WHO, 2011. Quoted in Lost Connections, Johann Hari. New York: Bloomsbury USA; p. 256.