When asking for help is difficult: Self-sufficiency.

Self-sufficiency, as the term itself indicates, proclaims that everything a person can do for himself is sufficient. This, if we conceive it broadly, includes people who can support or provide for themselves and also people with a degree of self-sufficiency in which they cannot or find it very difficult to ask for help, and pretend to do everything alone. . We will refer to these last cases in this article.

Self-sufficient people often experience pride and great self-demand, and try very hard to be able to do everything alone, to be independent, and to do without others.

Self-sufficiency can lead a person, for example, not to register their needs, convincing themselves that they have everything under control and that they do not need anyone else until the limit moment when reality imposes a brake. In general, this conviction of control and absolute independence is carried to the last instances.

One of the reasons for the development of an attitude of self-sufficiency is possibly the lack of parental emotional presence in childhood. The individual grows to feel that if it were not for himself, nothing happens. He needed to arm himself at the time, comfort himself and perhaps grow too fast to face the situations that were presented to him. These characteristics linked to over-adaptation often mark the journey prior to self-sufficiency in adulthood.

The person gradually becomes defensively convinced that he does not need anyone, because at the time when he expressed need he did not receive a sufficient response from the environment, and he erected in himself/herself the necessary protection so as not to feel vulnerability again.

In order to ask for help, you must accept your vulnerability. If we feel like we can do it all, we don't let go of control, and we stay in that over-adapted and demanding position. It is not possible to solve everything without help, we live in a community because we need to exchange with others. Self-sufficiency leads to isolation and difficulty in teamwork.

Who cannot ask for help cannot experience this mutual collaborationism that implies exchanging with other people. He associates asking for help with a sign of weakness that seeks to be avoided. In this way, he takes the pressure to the extreme in order to be able to fulfill everything.

Self-sufficiency can be considered a defense against the feeling of vulnerability and abandonment. If the person is convinced that help and emotional closeness do not matter to him, for example, it is much easier to sustain this defense, and it keeps him isolated from possible frustration.

It is important to be able to distinguish independence and autonomy from self-sufficiency. Being independent and autonomous implies having tools for your own development, without the need to constantly depend on others. As we grow older and then go through adolescence, we acquire, at best, a little more independence and autonomy. We can differentiate ourselves, forging our identity and directing goals and projects. The process of independence is long and complex, and in this coming and going it will always be necessary to depend on someone to be able to do it. You have to trust the other person initially, and receive response and support from them so that independence and autonomy are possible.

The self-sufficiency we are referring to here is a defensive mechanism, which, on the contrary, hinders true independence. It takes the concept of doing for oneself to the extreme, preventing them from being able to delegate or ask for help whenever necessary.

 

Thank You

GovtVacancy.Net