“I can do it myself.”
That was my go-to response. Even though there were times when I didn’t actually know how I was going to do it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to concede to that idea. There were even times in my warped thinking when I had convinced myself that some people only offered help (usually in the form of money) because they assumed I needed it. And I often did. But I wasn’t going to cop to that, either. I’d figure it out, and once I did, I’d feel so much better about myself. Or so I thought.
I read a meme online that said, "Hyper-independence is a trauma response to not being taken care of well." And on that particular day, it resonated with me in a way I didn't quite expect.
What is hyper-independence and is it a trauma response?
GiphyThe American Psychological Association (APA) defines trauma as an emotional response to a terrible event. This can include the loss of a loved one, physical abuse, or being bullied. In some cases, being the witness to a life-threatening event such as an illness or natural disaster can also cause trauma.
Dr. Joanne Frederick, a licensed professional counselor and a professor at George Mason University agrees that hyper-independence can be a result of trauma and may show up in one or more of the following ways:
- Taking on too much
- Saying no to help
- Having trouble with delegating tasks
For me, agreeing to projects, giving my last, and working full-time while also going to school nearly full-time gave me what I now know to be a false narrative that my self-worth was tied to what I could do rather than simply who I was.
Because of this, I said yes when I should have (and sometimes wanted to) say no. And on many occasions, I declined help from people who could have easily lightened my load which caused me to overextend myself to the point of burnout, emotional bankruptcy, and physical exhaustion.
The thing is, my independence was connected to my pride. Being able to accomplish the things that I did was my way of saying, “Look what I was able to do. Me, a little Black girl who was supposed to be a statistic. I made it on my own.” I didn’t want to demonstrate/depict/portray an image of “not having it together” and for me, that meant doing it without help. Black women are often praised for what many have referred to as “supernatural strength'' and I, like many others before me, bought into this narrative.
At first glance, it seems like a positive attribute until you look in the mirror one day and don’t physically recognize your own reflection because while you were busy trying to be everything to everybody, you forgot to take care of yourself with food and water and sleep. And yes, that actually happened to me.
I didn’t want to admit to the people (at my church, at my school, or on my job) that I wasn’t the superwoman they thought I was. More than that, I didn’t want to admit it to myself. For so long, I felt like the people who knew me, expected me to look, act, and behave a certain way. The way I had done my whole life. And on some level, I feared that people would think less of me if I ever showed that I didn’t.
GiphyI’m learning that the difference between independence and hyper-independence is acknowledging your own limitations.
In the past, I never wanted to seem incapable or incompetent and unfortunately, I associated asking for help as a (weakness) character flaw instead of realizing that it actually takes strength to admit when you need advice, guidance, or a helping hand. It’s not a character flaw. It’s actually an honorable trait. It shows humility and vulnerability. It shows that you are human.
Personally, I think social media and social comparison have also influenced my ideas around “doing it on my own” with the “self-made” culture and all. As good as it sounds, the truth is no one and I do mean NO ONE ever made it all on their own and many great leaders in history have said the same.
How to work through your trauma
Journaling For Me GIF by The BacheloretteGiphyThe first thing you’ll need to do in order to work through your trauma is to recognize that you have experienced a traumatic event. This could look like expressing your thoughts through journaling, or talking to a trusted family member or friend. It may also require seeking professional help through counseling or therapy.
You may also benefit from the following tips:
- The next time you feel inclined to resist an offer of assistance, take a moment to examine why. Do you truly not need the help or could delegating some responsibility actually make the situation better?
- Consider what it would be like to let someone else handle the situation. Perhaps that could give you more time with your family or take some time for yourself.
- If you don’t need help on the specific task they offered help on, assess your other duties to see if there are other tasks you could use assistance on.
- Remember that dependence is not bad and that interdependence is the “secret” to getting it all done.
Youtube Reaction GIF by Lilly SinghGiphyAs I reflected on reasons why Black women may experience hyper-independence, I was reminded of a concept I learned in grad school. Relational dialectics is a communication theory that was born out of the philosophical belief of Dialectics, which is used to explain the relationship between opposing thoughts. Basically, Dialectics is the discourse between two different points of view, or in layman's terms, a contradiction. Think of it this way in terms of a Black woman versus a strong Black woman.
On one hand, the “Black woman” is a minority who is used to struggling. And on the other hand, there’s the “strong Black woman” who can do anything that comes her way. Now imagine that you have to prove one idea is true and refute the other.
The theory of Dialectics is a way to help us recognize that both ideas may exist, simultaneously. This "push and pull" ideology dates back to the classical era of Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Although called by a different name, the methodology/way of thinking was founded on the idea of two opposing/contrasting thoughts/ideas being so drastically different that they either: (1) determine one to be “true” over the other, (2) find neither to be true or (3) establish both to be true to some extent, resulting in further exploration of either or both sides. With this understanding, it’s easier to see how the two may be interconnected, perhaps even influencing one another.
Yvonne Orji Therapy GIF by Insecure on HBOGiphySimilar concepts exist in other cultures, for example, the dynamism of the Yin and Yang. Much like Dialectics, practitioners of the Yin and Yang concept believe “the balance of emotional values in a relationship is always in motion, and any value pushed to its extreme contains the seed of its opposite.” Thus, the study of Dialectics is really about how to have a conversation that leads to truth. This is different from the eristic method, which is when someone argues just to win, and from the didactic method, which is when one person teaches another. Essentially, Dialectics not only teaches us how people argue, but it can also demonstrate how we can learn from each other.
With this understanding in mind, I wanted to examine the relationship between dependence, independence, and hyper-independence. Maybe these states of being aren’t as compartmentalized as they seem. Maybe the act of being independent is having the ability to care for yourself enough to know when it's time to let someone else who also cares, care for you.
“I could really use your help on this.”
For so long, I was the person who said “no,” before I said, “yes.” But I’m learning to say, “This is actually hard but I’m so used to doing things all by myself. I really appreciate you for offering to help.”
And I actually feel stronger than ever.
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I’ve said this time and time again, and I’ll say it again: I hate condescending comments directed toward young adults. In regards to the search for romance, love, or a significant other, I particularly hate comments like, “you’re not old” or “you have so much time.” The reality is, you don’t have all the time in the world and deep down we all know this because we know that we can’t predict when our time on this earth is coming to an end. If nothing else, the pandemic should have taught us how unpredictable life is.
The other statement as it pertains to this topic, that I find to be both misleading and equally condescending is, “You’ll find someone, don’t rush it – don’t settle.” The second truth that we need to acknowledge is that not everyone finds this type of love!
Of course, there are other types of love that they likely do get to experience but no, not everyone gets someone…romantically speaking.
No, I’m not saying we shouldsettle but I’m not going to be so obtuse that I would dare to say I don’t understand. While it’s amazing that there are people in this world who maintain standards and boundaries while dating and looking for love, I think we have to have empathy for people who are still trying to figure this shit out. It’s not easy to find love in general and it’s definitely not easy when you’re working to unpack trauma while hearing the steady tick of a clock. Like it or not, we’re all subject to a biological clock but especially women, should you want children.
Sure, there have been so many advances in medicine amongst other options outside of conceiving the traditional route but each one of them is still classified as a privilege in that their cost makes it unattainable. Adoption, freezing eggs, IVF, and sperm donors are all very expensive, luxury procedures. Designer babies have designer costs, to say the least, and we won’t get into the insane trafficking ring that adoption has become. As feminist as I am, it requires a level of burying your head in your ass that I don’t have in me.
Biological clocks are sometimes used against us to sustain patriarchy, but it’s also not completely inaccurate. There is, in fact, a time clock for certain people and I think we need more empathy and less delusion for that reality so that people can make the best decisions for them with the information and resources at hand.
I say all of this to say, stop spreading a false sense of delusion to soothe people or yourself for that matter. I think sometimes people are fortunate enough to not know what it’s like to feel desperate and like your back is against a wall, and they want to understand so badly that they make up complete horse shit and spread that information (or misinformation) like wildfire.
We have to learn a different way to respond when we’re engaging in uncomfortable dialogue because the default can sometimes provide a false sense of hope or comes off as completely condescending, and out of touch with the bleak reality that lies in waiting for a patriarchal system to pull through as a woman in this world.
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Well, that’s further evidence of my belief that this world is out to get women, especially those who stray from social norms in any shape or form. However, our society has a long-standing history of holding women accountable for the sins or wrongdoing of men.
Time and time again, history has demonstrated that women are expected to not only be pure, holier than thou beings but that when men go astray it is because the woman in his life was a stray arrow. I first learned of this concept in regards to sexuality, but it’s clear like many other aspects of life, that it has a trickle-down impact. Twitter critics came out in droves to crucify Jada because it was speculated that she gave Will a look signaling him to defend her honor, then again because of previous clips of her speaking on their relationship dynamic.
People used this as an opportunity to support their previous arguments that Jada was toxic because she as a woman should’ve willed Will to sit his ass down. They used inaccurate clickbait to have the public believe she had actually spoken against her husband, when in fact, all quotes have been from previous dialogues. While I would love to make this a Black woman issue, this is a woman issue!
This does not negate the fact that this phenomenon may take different shapes when experienced by Black women or be more complicated to navigate. In conversation with xoNecole, Psycho-Historian Shannon Hannaway notes how “blame has historically been shifted to Black women even in instances where the power dynamic in no way reflects the verbiage – even in modern times it is used to describe the events of the past.”
She further highlights Thomas Jefferson and his abusive relationship with Sally Hemings, which has never actually been stated that way in history books. To Hannaways’s point Hemmings, who was a Black slave, is often described as the dead president's “mistress” rather than “a survivor of sexual assault and abuse.”
While purity culture started out as a concept relegated to WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants), I believe respectability politics played a role in Black women attempting to maintain these social constructs no matter how impossible it was due to the controlling images that continued to make a mockery of Black women’s attempts to successfully integrate amongst white women in this way (and many others).
Hannaway says, “Purity culture is very much so a WASP concept, although there are variations throughout the history of this idea, the version we know today in the United States is a direct result of the Cult of Domesticity – a movement that began between 1820 and 1860. To be pure and good was a status symbol for wealthy white women, absolute virtue was a sign of this status and women’s role in keeping the home, raising children, and acting in accordance with purity and goodness.”
“Traditional” womhanood is a farce. Because the femininity script folk speak of when they talk about feminity is a farce created to elevate white women. The purity, piety, domesticity and submissiveness. It is a script.
— Ava Anointing (@SoualiganAmazon) July 25, 2020
However, she pinpoints the tipping point and significant difference as it pertains to the racial piece of our intersectional identities being that “...at this same time slavery was still legal, and even after the Civil War, Black women experienced a shift from formal slavery to near-slavery in the homes of wealthy white women and in fact did a majority of home-keeping behind closed doors.”
Hannaway goes on to add, “White women were afforded the privilege to act in accordance with the Cult of Domesticity, whereas Black women and their families were expected and in fact still considered less than despite the end of slavery. Black women did not have the privilege of spending time with their own families, and [were] blamed for their inability to shift careers and be present in their families. Historically Black people have been treated in accordance with white colonial belief systems that commodify bodies and remove personhood, shifting moral righteousness to white people.”
This circles back to my initial point of Black women being held and expected to maintain the same standards as white women, as they are the pinnacle of purity and exemplify the behaviors that we Black women ought to mimic – yet constantly finding our best imitation to be unacceptable merely because of our Brown hues and the status attached to it.
Hannaway continues, “In the world we live in, men and women are socialized in a way that removes the blame from men and places a disproportionate amount of responsibility on women starting at an early age. Research reflects that as early as elementary school, the notion that boys are underachievers and girls are compliant and responsible begins. This is reinforced from then on every day, as children become teenagers and later adults, these roles within society become reinforced until they are locked in.”
We see it everywhere from the home to the boardroom, where Hannaway says women CEOs are held to more grave consequences than men if and when they fail. And even outside of the company, consumers are less likely to continue to allocate their money in the face of an error made by a woman CEO – further speaking to the collective socialization.
And of course, there are religious roots because aren’t there always?
“Women are even tasked with ‘changing’ men and this is a trope seen in even recent movies such as Failure to Launch, The Kissing Booth, Twilight, to name a few: of note, these are all films with a predominantly young, female audience," Hannaway adds.
I would argue that the sentiment of changing men and controlling, er, reining them in when their behavior is not in alignment with white colonial standards fall within the same vein. You see, apparently, it was more telling of Jada Pinkett Smith’s morality and virtue that she wasn’t able to predict her husband's next move and use some type of X-Men-like superpower to shift his mood for the greater good of humanity.
I am exhausted by this narrative that @jadapsmith is the reason for #Willsmith behavior. She’s not responsible for his behavior or his actions.All the stupid videos on YouTube should the taken down. Jada should sue 4 the toxic & misogynistic things being said about her.
— Ase (@MelaninKemet) April 22, 2022
When I asked Hannaway to further explain the origin of holding women accountable for the actions of men, she shared an interesting finding. “These belief systems and accepted mythologies gave men the ability to blame women for lustful thoughts by association with the paranormal. When a woman was not Christian and white, this belief was even more likely to be acted upon in accordance with the idea that people of color without a Christian God worked with the Devil, and by causing sinful thoughts were surely to blame.”
Even more eye-opening and disheartening was the reality that Hannaway spoke on:
“The oppression of women has historically been a way for men to maintain power and control. It’s worth noting, that because of this societal structure present in the church and in governments, women’s voices have largely been silenced and erased in history. Additionally, women have been the target of violence in the name of assimilation. One argument that makes the most sense, is that women are human beings with the ability to create life and are necessary to the continuity of humanity. To control women is to control life itself. In matriarchal societies, this oppression does not occur in the way it does in patriarchal societies. In patriarchal societies like modern western civilization, women are commodified and objectified.”
Needless to say, there’s so much more to be said on this matter – all of which is interesting because it holds so much truth. Though we can’t possibly get into it all in this one piece, I hope that this raises the consciousness of people everywhere who have managed to perpetuate these acts of misogyny. If change begins with us, I think it’s critical that we as a culture begin to evaluate on an individual basis the way that we interact with patriarchal scripts.
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Now that I am pregnant, I know without a doubt I manifested my (unborn) baby and the circumstances attached. Surely, it doesn’t take much to manifest a pregnancy but as someone who was perpetually single and celibate leading up to my pregnancy (irony at its finest), I did have to manifest the man and so many of the other details. On the off chance that I would not be able to find a worthy partner, it had been written into my five-year plan to use a sperm donor. The idea was appealing but it required far more patience than I could muster.
In this new world, why would I wait for a man to do anything? Coming from a space of hyper-independence, it just seemed counterintuitive.
And suddenly, my eighth-grade sweetheart came back into my life (an everlasting on-again, off-again relationship). I had little to no idea about the kind of father he was, yet I plotted, planned, and penned. I wrote his name and our child’s name in a manifestation journal when circumstances separated him and I yet again – even created a manifestation playlist to bring him back into my life.
Equally determined and naive, I said in the worst-case scenario I would get a sperm donor for free – not realizing the emotional attachment that would immediately be present. My baby was far from unplanned. I told my boyfriend from the moment that we reconnected that he should take precautions if he didn’t want another child because I had no intention of practicing birth control.
GiphyTo share my success in doing any of this, allow me to offer you this perspective: I’m five months pregnant and I’ve been celibate for the past two months.
Prior to us rekindling our friendship and subsequently our fling, I encountered many red flags that I ultimately chose to ignore regarding my partner. However, it required getting pregnant for me to acknowledge and then honor the part of me that knew I had to be done with the romantic aspect of our relationship. Upon finding out I was pregnant, I immediately felt so responsible for this little baby who wasn’t even a full fetus yet.
He deserved a full family but he also deserved parents who were going to protect him from unnecessary trauma – only one of us, me, even had the wherewithal to recognize trauma, so naturally, the duty had fallen squarely on me. And while some days were good, others looked like doors slamming and me being cussed out for purchasing the wrong blunt wrappers.
Despite the fact that I had been less inclined to have sex with my boyfriend, had been sleeping on the couch, and had even begun seeing other people – I spent the first three months of my pregnancy attempting to envision us as a family.
Well aware that a baby doesn’t make any relationship easier, I took to deep prayer and delusion, hoping that the instances of verbal and emotional abuse were one-offs. That his temper was a result of my wrongdoing rather than his inability to seek out help for his own trauma. Ultimately, the maternal instinct to keep my child safe by all means eventually outweighed my desire for my baby boy to know what it was to be a family.
Behavior that I had previously tolerated quickly became intolerable.
Now wearing my new bulging belly as a metaphorical scarlet letter, I’m obviously on ice until my little seed comes into this world and then some. But most of all, I’ve come to realize that as much as I already love my baby, he was the result of manifesting with unhealed trauma. I had to acknowledge that my hyper-independence is both a superpower and debilitating kryptonite at best and a trauma response at worst.
As a Black young woman who has seen so many Black women before me do it – no matter the hardship – I knew it was more than possible because I had already seen the impossible be done. I knew I had, at the very least, positioned myself slightly better than the women of past years with their unplanned pregnancies. In hindsight, I see how so many of the decisions I made were selfish but I’ve done my best to make peace with that for now. As some wise person once said, “Worrying only means you’ll suffer twice.”
One thing that I know to be true is that one day, and sooner than I imagine, I will have to answer to my son about why I chose so sorely wrong when it came to his father – in one way or another – this topic will come up. Unfortunately, that is also a trauma that is familiar to me.
Though nothing can prepare me for that day, I’ve already begun the process of accountability while also giving myself grace because I know I will one day have to answer to my little boy and maybe even again when he’s a grown man. I hope, if nothing else, my son will show me grace for leaving when I did as opposed to staying for a lifetime as penance for my initial decision to bring life into this world with such a waste-of-space man in the face of all the signs.
As for now, I recognize how powerful words and thoughts are more than ever before. With that knowledge, I’m determined to manifest the lifestyle that both my baby boy and I truly deserve.
I'm determined to manifest the world.
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In fact, it’s become so normalized that I have found myself feeling bad that I can’t get down with the get down. Not really. I’m that girl and have come to live with the fact that I always will be – casual sex isn’t for me, not penetrative anyways. In other words, I will get some head and head out. But casual penetrative sex always proves to be far too intimate for me to do without some type of romantic connection.
Dick Wolf Kiss GIF by Wolf EntertainmentGiphyThat being said, it has always been thought that women just don’t have what it takes to fully immerse themselves in hookup culture without eventually attaching strings. However, per this misogynistic TikToker, research alleges that hookups are impacting everyone as a whole and it’s not for the reasons we once thought it to be. In fact, what this research suggests, is like every other mammal in this world, we eventually learn to evolve with the circumstances instead of being written off as extinct. Hookup culture, be damned.
Giphy
Over time, the human brain adapts and rewires itself so that the new pattern doesn’t come with strings attached, and hooking up feels like less of an emotional chore. Though this might seem good at the moment, the same research suggests that if you are someone who eventually desires a romantic connection, your brain then has a difficult time remembering how to thrive under those lovey-dovey circumstances as it now requires itself to readapt and remember how to do so.
I’ve never been opposed to the protest against hookup culture backed by more reasoning than a societal “because I said so.” But, I have been opposed to how it is always framed as "the burden of women." It’s never a nuanced discussion and always a gendered discussion about how women are far "too emotional" to be able to tolerate hookups. Not only is it a problematic statement, but it is also false. Men are just as emotional as women, the difference lies in their inability to express emotion as anything in between anger and contentment (because I'm not even sure they know how to express joy).
Though I’m not deep into the research aspect of this, I truly do believe in "kill or be killed." I believe in evolution. This makes it difficult for me to ignore the likelihood that eventually a generation of brains would come to adapt to a new way of life, after all, it is a defense mechanism, yes? If we know human emotion doesn’t allow for us to instinctively hook up without the hurt and the attachment – wouldn’t it also be true that there would be far less hurt and difficulty exploring this new cultural norm if you shut all of it off? (Slight The Vampire Diaries reference there – the girls that get it.)
I do think we should be careful not to use this argument as a means to tear down other relationship structures that may fall into the consensual non-monogamy category. Why? Well,because I believe a hookup relationship stands alone in how it’s structured (by today’s unfortunate circumstances) in that they haven’t been conditioned to receive the care and candor that those in the non-monogamy community have poured into that category of relationships – though it absolutely should be receiving that level of devotion.
Much like the structure of non-monogamy, and despite what much of society thinks, the healthiest way to execute hookup dynamics is through strong, healthy, and ongoing dialogue. As it is innate for us to crave more, I think it is unrealistic and dangerous for there to be one sole discussion around the stipulations of a hookup without any aftercare/check-ins that allow for boundaries to be reset. If we were to treat hookups in a more healthy manner, I don’t know that it would hold the same emotional weight emotionally…mentally.
Nevertheless, I’m no scientist nor do I claim to be. And though promises of the future can seem far off, especially when you turn 23 and realize everything doesn’t magically fall into place by 25 as you once naively thought it might, we must be cognizant of our own emotional capabilities and observant of the shift we experience when making ourselves flexible to new cultural adaptations.
Though we all crave different types of relationships, my hope is that we do all crave the ability to intimately connect when it counts.
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