Toxic Dependency

This is an un-antagonistic response article to Kate Strong.

(As mentioned in your comment section, I enjoyed your article and agreed with some of what you said).

With that said, let us begin.

“You can’t do everything in life by yourself; that is true. But damn it, there are many things in life YOU HAVE TO DO BY YOURSELF.”

I just read a very interesting article titled “Toxic Self-Reliance and How It Can Affect Your Mental Health,” written by Kate Strong.

(Link above, I highly recommend that you give it a read).

I must admit, I am a person who fights DESPERATELY to be as self-reliant as he can. She (Kate Strong) made some excellent points that I couldn’t argue against.

I am an unapologetic introvert. A proud lone wolf. A master of my fate and captain of my vessel; or at least that is what I tell myself.

I absolutely love Ralph Waldo’s Emerson “Self-Reliance” essay. I’ve read it so much that I am getting to the point that I can recite it verbatim.

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Often, most people never discover what they are capable of in life because someone has always given them a hand up or have “helped them out” — when at certain times, NOT helping a person would have taken them much further than actually helping them.

As babies, we learn how to stand on our own. We fall down, but we keep getting back up.

Parents may buy their kids a walker so that their kids can get used to standing up by themselves for some time, but they don't let the baby use the walker into their toddler stage of life.

They allow the baby to learn how to stand up by THEMSELVES. They allow the kid to go potty by THEMSELVES. They let their kids learn how to eat by THEMSELVES.

We teach our kids how to do things by THEMSELVES because any good parent and person will know that our lives are not infinite.

We can go any day — and if we have not taught our kids how to stand alone, fend for themselves, and survive on their own, then we have done them a great injustice.

The Issues I Had With The Essay & Argument

One of the significant issues with her essay, and this is NOT an attack, was the constant attribution of stress resulting from self-reliance.

This is a very poor argument that I had a hard time agreeing with.

Yes, we can be stressed out by doing too much on our own.

But you can also be stressed out by working with people who try their very best but are not good enough.

It would be much better to work alone than to work with incompetent people in times like that.

I think most people would agree with this.

Working alone can be very tiring and, yes, stressful, but not in a negative way.

When you work out at a gym and push your body beyond its limits, your muscles tear. The stress of pushing past your limit helps you become stronger in the end.

Where lifting 100 pounds could be initially heavy, pushing beyond your limit makes you stronger in the end.

If you have a spotter helping you lift the 100 pounds, you will not be as strong as you can if you just lifted it yourself.

Now, I use this analogy to elucidate better my point about being dependent on others for help and learning how to push yourself to get stronger.

I understand that you cannot do everything yourself, but the truly great men and women (people) in life often had NO ONE help them or pick them up.

Because they had to climb that much higher on their own, their persistence, diligence, inner resolve, and the conviction of NOT GIVING UP have made them achieve things in their life that most people never imagined could be done.

See, what separates great people from the LEGION of ordinary people is that great people are willing to work the extra hours that ordinary people don’t.

Great people are not afraid to take on more work, more stress, more frustration because they have built that inner resolve to handle it.

And they built that inner resolve because they had NO ONE HELP THEM.

We Must All Depend On Others

“We are all meant to depend on one another in life and the sooner we start accepting this responsibility, the more fulfilled and healthily independent we will be.” — Kate Strong

Responsibility!

This part right here, I WHOLLY disagree with.

I am NOT responsible for anyone’s life but my own and my family.

I agree that “No man is an ISLAND unto himself.”

We are a “UNIVERSE OF POSSIBILITIES,” and it is OUR responsibility to ourselves to try to unravel those possibilities.

NO ONE CAN DO THAT FOR US BUT OURSELVES.

And this may very well sound harsh, but what Tom does with his life two blocks down is NONE OF MY BUSINESS.

I am not on that “It takes a village to raise a child” NONSENSE.

My life and my family’s life are ALL my responsibility (when I get a family).

The world’s life is of no concern to me unless we are doing business.

Now, I know what you are going to say,

“But you are depending on others for business.”

No, stop that.

Do you hear me? Quiet down now and listen, please.

I AM WORKING WITH, not depending on.

There is a MAJOR difference here.

I work with people, and when things are no longer amicable between each other, I can easily cut them out of my life because, in the end, they are NOT NEEDED; their work just makes things a bit less time-consuming.

Being dependent is not always a good thing.

Hurts A Relationship

“We often find people with a toxic self-reliance attitude usually hurts their relationships. They focus on themselves and refuse to put in any effort for a relationship because they believe that they deserve the best of everything and if they don’t get it, then there is something wrong with them or the other person.” — Kate Strong

Now, this part right here is where I 1000% disagreed with. This is not a description of someone who is self-reliant but someone who is a narcissist.

Narcissistic people think this way.

They are self-absorbed, NOT self-reliant, and this is evident in how needy they are for SUPPLY.

A self-reliant person would not enter into a relationship with someone if they DID NOT LIKE THAT PERSON.

I think this was perhaps the poorest argument she made in the essay (I still very much enjoyed the essay, as evident in the comment section).

We Must Try Cultivating Self-Reliance (Healthy Of Course 😉)

Just as thinking you can do everything by yourself can, and I AGREE, be bad for you at times, it is equally true that thinking you need help from others is a bad thing.

Sometimes the greatest help you can ever receive in life is having no one help you but yourself.

Self-reliance can be toxic, but so too is being dependant on others.

A table with four legs holding it up and having one leg removed will never stand up strong; it will wobble!

But a table that has one firm leg based in its center will always be able to stand alone.

In all things in life, self-reliance can absolutely be bad, but self-reliance is a trait we must all try and cultivate in most things in life.

Thank you, Kate Strong, for inspiring this article.

I much respect your viewpoint and appreciate your thoughts.

Warm Regards

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