We often admire people who can handle everything on their own. We all know the one independent friend who seems unshakable, or we’ve come across an unnaturally self-reliant partner or shared a cubicle with the colleague who never asks for help. And each time, we may have thought to ourselves, “How do they do it?”

Self-sufficiency feels like, and is often portrayed to be, a strength, but research suggests that overusing it might lead to diminishing returns. Relying on no one but yourself under all circumstances, especially in matters relating to your emotional or social life, can quietly erode your well-being, relationships, and mental health.

What might look like resilience from the outside may actually be a survival strategy with hidden costs. Additionally, when we overvalue and abuse our personal resource of independence, we underuse the renewable and shared resource of connection in our lives, slowly but surely inching towards an inevitable burnout.

Here are three major ways excessive self-sufficiency can be harmful, backed by peer-reviewed research.

Social support, be it emotional, practical, or relational, is a core human need that cannot be bargained with. A large 2022 meta-analysis, combining 177 studies involving more than 113,000 people, found a strong negative relationship........

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