The Healthy Value in Learning to “Need” Other People
Key points
Being human means we need a healthy balance between "needing" and "not needing" others.
People managing complex post-traumatic stress disorder may have learned not to need anything or anyone to survive.
Strategies people use to stay in connection without needing including "fawning" and being a people-pleaser.
“If it’s not paradoxical, it’s not true.” –Shunryu Suzuki
Being human, we must accept that we need others. Paradoxically, we must also learn not to need others. With healthy parent-child attachments, there is room for both dynamics to exist and exist simultaneously. The child can reach out for and receive comfort from an important other when needed. And the child is supported in her natural impulses to find ways to meet her own needs competently. It can be a fairly seamless dance between the two polarities when parents are tuned in to the child.
