It's time to end the myth of emotional self-sufficiency
There’s something much more dangerous out there than the next big flu. It’s a virus, and it will shorten your life. But it’s not a tiny microbe; it’s a meme. It’s the prevailing myth of emotional self-sufficiency.
You know this myth—it proclaims that people who need people are pathological, that a deep longing for relationship is sick, and that caring for and about others is co-dependent. It says you should be able to meet all your own needs, and that if you loved yourself enough you wouldn’t need anyone else—so if you’re wanting love, there’s something deficient about you. It’s the myth that shames you for feeling lonely. It’s the myth that has people in my therapy office whispering, “I really want a partner. But I know that’s wrong.”
I am so tired of battling this myth alone. I need you with me on this. And here’s why. Humans did not evolve to live alone. It’s not our natural state. We evolved in closely knit bands of about 30 to 40 people. Out there on the plains, or in the forest, or wherever we were, we depended on each other. We hunted and gathered in groups, we sat together around communal fires, we shared food and stories, we slept snuggled up against the cold. It was safer to be part of the pack. You couldn’t survive long alone. Some of the unpleasantness of loneliness is that millions of years of evolution triggers a trace of ancient fear when we’re alone— the outliers are the ones that get picked off by leopards and lions.
So, I need you. And you need me. We need each other. It’s in our DNA.
We are relational beings
We were born to be relational. Day-old deer can run and jump, but humans are helpless when we’re born. For the first months of our lives, we rely so totally on our mothers that attachment researchers say it makes no sense to talk about two separate people. The baby is entirely regulated by the mother. Good attunement by mother to baby builds trust and love. Enough trust and love creates what’s called secure attachment—the inner confidence that you are loved and will be responded to. Secure attachment creates confidence in exploring the world. Securely attached toddlers run off to explore, and then look back at mother, checking that she’s still there. Sometimes they run back, for ‘emotional refueling’ in the form of a loving glance or a kind word. Then they run off again, feeling safe and happy in the world.
The myth is that somewhere along the line we grow out of this. But in fact we continue to be regulated by each other. Holding the hand of the one you love calms your heart rate and reduces your cortisol. Research shows that men live longer if they’re married, and women live longer if they have a network of close friends. Think about that—our need for relationship is literally a life and death issue.
Our need for touch is another. Loving, caring physical touch causes us to secrete oxytocin, often called the bonding hormone—it makes us feel calm, safe, and happy. Just 40 seconds of being hugged by someone you like causes oxytocin release. But you can’t hug yourself, at least, not very successfully. You need to get it from someone else. Try it. Hug someone and count—you’ll feel the relaxation response switch in. That feeling of closeness with someone else will literally lengthen your life if you get enough of it. Far from being self-sufficient, we physically need each other.
It’s a mammal thing
In his book, ‘Outliers’, Malcolm Gladwell describes the town of Roseto, in Pennsylvania, which was settled by immigrants from Italy, and which has an extremely low rate of heart disease. It’s not because of diet, and it’s not because of exercise, or genes, or any of the other obvious potential causes. It turns out that the people of Roseto are abnormally healthy because they live together in extended families, and spend a lot of time socializing with each other and visiting with their neighbors. It’s the human contact that makes the difference. Human contact is literally essential for the health of your heart.
Is that surprising? Only if you’re infected by a meme that tells you to deny your fundamental nature as a mammal. Ethologists are producing more and more data now that shows that all mammals are programmed for altruism and love. Our previous view of the world as a jungle full of selfish creatures fighting for survival is giving way to one of the world as a tightly knit tapestry of reciprocal relationships.
In the early part of the twentieth century we were told that since aggressive chimps dominated by alpha males and their chest-beating ways were our closest relatives, their behavior proved that humans too were wired for aggression and domination. Then, as society shifted, and we became capable of seeing something other than aggression and domination ourselves, we ‘found’ the bonobos—pygmy chimps who live peacefully in matrilineal groups, happily spending their time sharing food and sex. So now we know that at least some of our closest relatives exist in polyamorous, sensual bliss!
Lately even rats have been found to be capable of altruism. An experiment showed that a free rat will take the time to free a trapped one, and even save that other rat some of its food. I’d bet if those scientists went one stage further, they’d find that both the freed rat and the one that tripped the latch feel pretty damn good about it. It’s ridiculous to think we don’t need each other. In fact, the opposite is true—the more you give and take love, care, attention and contact with others, the happier and healthier you will be. So humans are naturally relational why has this meme taken such a hold? How did a meme based on avoidance become such a fervently held belief?
This meme is all about fear
We become avoidant because of fear. Sometimes people have been mean to us in the past and we carry the scars of that trauma—which makes us turn away from love because it has become twinned with the fear of betrayal. The far end of that avoidance response is the supreme isolation of schizoid personality disorder, or the lonely fearfulness of avoidant personality disorder. The near end is believing in the desirability of ‘meeting all of one’s own needs’. All of us have been betrayed at some point. So all of us harbor a little fear connected to the vulnerability of opening ourselves to love, and therefore this meme is seductive. But there’s another reason why it has taken hold, even though it’s one that goes against what makes us most healthy and happy.
Primates live in bands, and those bands have hierarchies. The alphas get the girls (or the guy) and the best food. The betas are less highly ranked, but still ‘in’. Further down the scale the pickings are thinner, and you may not get to breed. Further down than that and you’re on the edge, glancing behind you for leopards while you scavenge for what you can get. The fear of being out on the edge leaves you dangerously open to infection by a toxic meme that’s gone viral, like the one I’m talking about. Here’s why.
There are two ways to get to the top, depending on what type of society you live in. One is to be more aggressive than everyone else—that used to work, and still does in societies run by war lords (or chimps), for example. The other way is by affiliation—being appealing and friendly, and getting everyone to like you. In the modern Western dating world, affiliation is essential in bagging you a coveted position in the pack. And you don’t succeed in that venture by standing up against a major myth —particularly one about relationships—and saying, “nope, I don’t agree”. That would mark you as weird, wrong, dangerous to be associated with. Unless a significant proportion of your group is secretly thinking the same thing. And I think you are. Because at the deep level of feeling, you know this meme is wrong.
Don’t isolate, inoculate.
The solution is not to open less to other people. The solution is to open more. The idea that we can—and should—provide for ourselves in every area of our lives, is one that has been sold to us. It’s part of the ideology of the consumer society. We are increasingly reduced--reduced, not empowered—to buying as services the things that used to unfold from natural human relationships: home health care, baby-sitting, massage therapy, spiritual counseling, sexual fulfillment, entertainment, and so on. All these things used to be available to us for free, because we lived with and among other people. Community gatherings met layered sets of needs, in a rich texture of transactions.
Markets, barn raisings, harvest times, village dances, and weekly church services, for example, provided opportunities for sharing information, trading, making friends, getting help, courtship, and entertainment. Now we’ve lost that collectivity, and most transactions have become one-dimensional. Even cafes and bars are no longer meeting places—they’re full of isolated individuals staring down at screens, updating their status on Facebook. But god forbid anyone talk to their neighbor—it’s become a weird thing to do, an impingement, something that creates unease.
Fight the meme, my friends. We don’t need more self-reliance. Or more narcissistic focusing on ourselves. What we’re blocked in is our relationality: our readiness to receive and our willingness to give. We’ve become so infected with the values of the consumer society that we think we should only give if we’re going to get, and that we should try to get the most return for the least investment. God forbid we love someone more than they love us. Or give our love for free. We think we should provide for ourselves, because otherwise we’d be relying on someone else. And that means taking a risk without any guarantee. We’d rather hoard our own resources, and be all right, Jack. This is the attitude to life that has people in my office feeling both lonely as hell, and ashamed of it—they’ve been told it’s wrong to need people, and they’re scared that their normal attachment instincts are sick.
Instead of going inward and trying to meet your own needs, go outward and build yourself a robust network of relationships, a community of like-minded souls that you can laugh with, cry with, listen to, care for and love—the type of network that makes people in Roseto live longer. Then when the inevitable betrayals, bereavements and disappointments happen, you won’t be alone. You’ll have support. Because the truth is, no-one makes it alone. And no-one—unless they’re the sole survivor of a plane crash in a jungle—should even try.
Innoculate yourself from the virus by smiling at people, saying hello, getting involved, keeping in contact, leaning into differences, sticking with a friend who’s in hard times, offering to help, forgiving your lover, sending a card, giving a hug, picking up the crying kid, calling your mother. People need people. You’re perfectly normal.
You know this myth—it proclaims that people who need people are pathological, that a deep longing for relationship is sick, and that caring for and about others is co-dependent. It says you should be able to meet all your own needs, and that if you loved yourself enough you wouldn’t need anyone else—so if you’re wanting love, there’s something deficient about you. It’s the myth that shames you for feeling lonely. It’s the myth that has people in my therapy office whispering, “I really want a partner. But I know that’s wrong.”
I am so tired of battling this myth alone. I need you with me on this. And here’s why. Humans did not evolve to live alone. It’s not our natural state. We evolved in closely knit bands of about 30 to 40 people. Out there on the plains, or in the forest, or wherever we were, we depended on each other. We hunted and gathered in groups, we sat together around communal fires, we shared food and stories, we slept snuggled up against the cold. It was safer to be part of the pack. You couldn’t survive long alone. Some of the unpleasantness of loneliness is that millions of years of evolution triggers a trace of ancient fear when we’re alone— the outliers are the ones that get picked off by leopards and lions.
So, I need you. And you need me. We need each other. It’s in our DNA.
We are relational beings
We were born to be relational. Day-old deer can run and jump, but humans are helpless when we’re born. For the first months of our lives, we rely so totally on our mothers that attachment researchers say it makes no sense to talk about two separate people. The baby is entirely regulated by the mother. Good attunement by mother to baby builds trust and love. Enough trust and love creates what’s called secure attachment—the inner confidence that you are loved and will be responded to. Secure attachment creates confidence in exploring the world. Securely attached toddlers run off to explore, and then look back at mother, checking that she’s still there. Sometimes they run back, for ‘emotional refueling’ in the form of a loving glance or a kind word. Then they run off again, feeling safe and happy in the world.
The myth is that somewhere along the line we grow out of this. But in fact we continue to be regulated by each other. Holding the hand of the one you love calms your heart rate and reduces your cortisol. Research shows that men live longer if they’re married, and women live longer if they have a network of close friends. Think about that—our need for relationship is literally a life and death issue.
Our need for touch is another. Loving, caring physical touch causes us to secrete oxytocin, often called the bonding hormone—it makes us feel calm, safe, and happy. Just 40 seconds of being hugged by someone you like causes oxytocin release. But you can’t hug yourself, at least, not very successfully. You need to get it from someone else. Try it. Hug someone and count—you’ll feel the relaxation response switch in. That feeling of closeness with someone else will literally lengthen your life if you get enough of it. Far from being self-sufficient, we physically need each other.
It’s a mammal thing
In his book, ‘Outliers’, Malcolm Gladwell describes the town of Roseto, in Pennsylvania, which was settled by immigrants from Italy, and which has an extremely low rate of heart disease. It’s not because of diet, and it’s not because of exercise, or genes, or any of the other obvious potential causes. It turns out that the people of Roseto are abnormally healthy because they live together in extended families, and spend a lot of time socializing with each other and visiting with their neighbors. It’s the human contact that makes the difference. Human contact is literally essential for the health of your heart.
Is that surprising? Only if you’re infected by a meme that tells you to deny your fundamental nature as a mammal. Ethologists are producing more and more data now that shows that all mammals are programmed for altruism and love. Our previous view of the world as a jungle full of selfish creatures fighting for survival is giving way to one of the world as a tightly knit tapestry of reciprocal relationships.
In the early part of the twentieth century we were told that since aggressive chimps dominated by alpha males and their chest-beating ways were our closest relatives, their behavior proved that humans too were wired for aggression and domination. Then, as society shifted, and we became capable of seeing something other than aggression and domination ourselves, we ‘found’ the bonobos—pygmy chimps who live peacefully in matrilineal groups, happily spending their time sharing food and sex. So now we know that at least some of our closest relatives exist in polyamorous, sensual bliss!
Lately even rats have been found to be capable of altruism. An experiment showed that a free rat will take the time to free a trapped one, and even save that other rat some of its food. I’d bet if those scientists went one stage further, they’d find that both the freed rat and the one that tripped the latch feel pretty damn good about it. It’s ridiculous to think we don’t need each other. In fact, the opposite is true—the more you give and take love, care, attention and contact with others, the happier and healthier you will be. So humans are naturally relational why has this meme taken such a hold? How did a meme based on avoidance become such a fervently held belief?
This meme is all about fear
We become avoidant because of fear. Sometimes people have been mean to us in the past and we carry the scars of that trauma—which makes us turn away from love because it has become twinned with the fear of betrayal. The far end of that avoidance response is the supreme isolation of schizoid personality disorder, or the lonely fearfulness of avoidant personality disorder. The near end is believing in the desirability of ‘meeting all of one’s own needs’. All of us have been betrayed at some point. So all of us harbor a little fear connected to the vulnerability of opening ourselves to love, and therefore this meme is seductive. But there’s another reason why it has taken hold, even though it’s one that goes against what makes us most healthy and happy.
Primates live in bands, and those bands have hierarchies. The alphas get the girls (or the guy) and the best food. The betas are less highly ranked, but still ‘in’. Further down the scale the pickings are thinner, and you may not get to breed. Further down than that and you’re on the edge, glancing behind you for leopards while you scavenge for what you can get. The fear of being out on the edge leaves you dangerously open to infection by a toxic meme that’s gone viral, like the one I’m talking about. Here’s why.
There are two ways to get to the top, depending on what type of society you live in. One is to be more aggressive than everyone else—that used to work, and still does in societies run by war lords (or chimps), for example. The other way is by affiliation—being appealing and friendly, and getting everyone to like you. In the modern Western dating world, affiliation is essential in bagging you a coveted position in the pack. And you don’t succeed in that venture by standing up against a major myth —particularly one about relationships—and saying, “nope, I don’t agree”. That would mark you as weird, wrong, dangerous to be associated with. Unless a significant proportion of your group is secretly thinking the same thing. And I think you are. Because at the deep level of feeling, you know this meme is wrong.
Don’t isolate, inoculate.
The solution is not to open less to other people. The solution is to open more. The idea that we can—and should—provide for ourselves in every area of our lives, is one that has been sold to us. It’s part of the ideology of the consumer society. We are increasingly reduced--reduced, not empowered—to buying as services the things that used to unfold from natural human relationships: home health care, baby-sitting, massage therapy, spiritual counseling, sexual fulfillment, entertainment, and so on. All these things used to be available to us for free, because we lived with and among other people. Community gatherings met layered sets of needs, in a rich texture of transactions.
Markets, barn raisings, harvest times, village dances, and weekly church services, for example, provided opportunities for sharing information, trading, making friends, getting help, courtship, and entertainment. Now we’ve lost that collectivity, and most transactions have become one-dimensional. Even cafes and bars are no longer meeting places—they’re full of isolated individuals staring down at screens, updating their status on Facebook. But god forbid anyone talk to their neighbor—it’s become a weird thing to do, an impingement, something that creates unease.
Fight the meme, my friends. We don’t need more self-reliance. Or more narcissistic focusing on ourselves. What we’re blocked in is our relationality: our readiness to receive and our willingness to give. We’ve become so infected with the values of the consumer society that we think we should only give if we’re going to get, and that we should try to get the most return for the least investment. God forbid we love someone more than they love us. Or give our love for free. We think we should provide for ourselves, because otherwise we’d be relying on someone else. And that means taking a risk without any guarantee. We’d rather hoard our own resources, and be all right, Jack. This is the attitude to life that has people in my office feeling both lonely as hell, and ashamed of it—they’ve been told it’s wrong to need people, and they’re scared that their normal attachment instincts are sick.
Instead of going inward and trying to meet your own needs, go outward and build yourself a robust network of relationships, a community of like-minded souls that you can laugh with, cry with, listen to, care for and love—the type of network that makes people in Roseto live longer. Then when the inevitable betrayals, bereavements and disappointments happen, you won’t be alone. You’ll have support. Because the truth is, no-one makes it alone. And no-one—unless they’re the sole survivor of a plane crash in a jungle—should even try.
Innoculate yourself from the virus by smiling at people, saying hello, getting involved, keeping in contact, leaning into differences, sticking with a friend who’s in hard times, offering to help, forgiving your lover, sending a card, giving a hug, picking up the crying kid, calling your mother. People need people. You’re perfectly normal.