Self-Reliance & Codependency: Reclaiming Sovereignty

Societal norms tend to teach us that life is something to be built and experienced within the framework of a normative couple and domestic codependency. We’re led to believe that adulthood – and a very confusing implied pressure of adulting - means finding someone to share the weight of living—a “better half” who will complete us and make it all manageable.

Layered on top of this are our primal wounds: experiences of neglect, abuse, not being seen or heard, being shamed or mocked for our sensitivities, our differences, neurodivergence, or our inability to cope in ways that the world deems “normal.” Normative rules around what it means to be an adult—along with ableist narratives—reinforce the idea that we need someone else in order to be whole.

At the same time, we’re bombarded with the glorified myth of the “self-made man”—a fantasy rooted in patriarchal individualism, one that dismisses privilege, assistance, and the web of support that truly enables any form of success. This contradiction leaves many of us stranded in a double-bind: told we must be independent to be worthy, yet incomplete if we are alone.

Between the pressure for professional success and the imperative of relational fulfilment, we are caught in a dance of confusion, self-devaluation, and an anxious existential quest to figure out how to live, and how to be loved.

But in the work of healing, one truth reveals itself time and again: love cannot truly flourish unless we are rooted in our own being. Seeking rescue—reaching outward to be saved from the void within—may feel like love, but it often echoes an older story. A story of abandonment, of fear, of unmet needs cast forward into the present, hoping someone else might fill what only self-reclamation can.

Many of us, understandably, have learned to outsource our sense of wellbeing. We look to those we love to steady our breath, soothe our ache, quiet the existential hum of loneliness. But in doing so, we risk placing the sacred weight of our healing onto shoulders never meant to carry it.

This is not an indictment of longing, nor of need. Interdependence is vital—it is deeply human. We are meant to be held, to be seen, to be mirrored. But there is a subtle, powerful difference between reaching for connection and collapsing into another. One nourishes; the other depletes.

Our wounded parts—especially the young ones—might experience self-rescue and self-reliance as a punishment, a fatality of lifelong abandonment. This can lead to all sorts of harmful and counterproductive resistances that push away the ones we want close, create false narratives justifying our struggles, projections that lead to unnecessary and painful dramas.

But the goal is not to abandon others—and certainly not to surrender to being abandoned by them. Quite the opposite: it is about not abandoning ourselves and subsequently allowing others to authentically embrace us in healthier ways. It’s to embrace self-rescue not as punishment, but as empowerment. Showing up for ourselves—becoming our own carer, our own anchor—is not about shutting others out. It’s about learning to trust that we can hold our own wounds and healing with support, rather than through dependency.

Stepping out of codependency is an act of healing, of reclamation. We reclaim our sovereignty—the ability to stand grounded in ourselves, no longer waiting to be completed by another, but choosing to co-create with others from a place of wholeness. Sovereignty doesn’t mean isolation; it means living in integrity with ourselves while embracing the beauty of mutuality.

Self-reliance, then, is not a retreat from connection. It is a return to our centre. It’s the remembering that we can be the ones to hold our own hearts. That we can meet ourselves in the dark with compassion. And in doing so, we create space in our relationships for freedom, reciprocity, and spaciousness.

This path is not easy. It asks us to confront the societal conditioning that told us life can only be lived through the codependency of a normative couple. It asks us to meet the wounded child within—the one who still longs to be scooped up, saved, reassured. It asks us to observe the places where we grasp, plead, or perform for love. It requires practicing gentle conversations with our resistances, narratives, and beliefs to resolve or ease those internal conflicts which act out in our relationships, against our own well-being, the ones we love, and those connections we wish to cherish and nurture rather than impair and drain.

That practice offers something profoundly liberating: the recognition that we can be here for ourselves, and that others will feel more at ease then to come to us, and create with us meaningful, nourishing connections.

To return to our own sovereignty is not to withdraw from intimacy, but to deepen it. Because the more anchored we are in ourselves, the more we are able to meet others with openness instead of demand, with presence instead of projection. This is the essence of interdependence—where sovereignty and connection are not opposites, but companions. We do not have to choose between self-reliance and closeness. We get to live both, in balance.

And so, we practice. Slowly. Gently. Not to become invulnerable, but to become whole with all our vulnerable parts.

We learn that self-rescue is freedom. That tending to our own needs—resting, nourishing, calming our nervous systems—is an act of deep love. A way of saying: I matter. I am enough. I choose to care for this life, this body, this being.

From that place, relationships shift. They no longer feel like battlegrounds or lifelines. They become sacred space—where love moves freely, not from urgency, but from truth.

This is not a destination. It’s a rhythm. A lifelong practice of returning to ourselves, of meeting the places within that long to be loved—and loving them. Not so we stop needing others, but so we can show up in love without losing ourselves.

Because when we stop seeking rescue, we make room for real intimacy.

When we release the grip, we open to receiving.

We are not too much.
We are not a burden.
We are the love we’ve been waiting for.
And from here, everything can grow.