We Were Never Meant to Do This Alone

There is a particular kind of relief that comes from finally talking to someone who gets it. Nothing has necessarily changed. The problem is still there. The relationship is still complicated. The decision still needs to be made. Your life may be exactly as messy as it was an hour ago. But somehow, you feel different.

A recent Psychology Today article, “Your Brain Is a Social Butterfly,” describes some fascinating research about why this may be. Scientists studying people interacting in real time have found evidence of interpersonal neural synchrony—our brains can actually begin to coordinate with one another during conversation, shared attention, cooperation, and learning.

In other words, connection isn't just something that feels nice. We are built for it.

We Develop Through Connection

As a therapist, this feels both remarkable and completely unsurprising.

So much of our culture celebrates independence. We are supposed to know how we feel, know what we need, regulate ourselves, make good decisions, establish boundaries, soothe ourselves, and—ideally—need very little from anyone else while doing it.

But that isn't really how people work.

From the beginning of our lives, we understand ourselves through other people. Before we can regulate ourselves, someone regulates us. Before we have language for what we feel, someone notices our face, responds to our cries, delights in us, frustrates us, misunderstands us, and hopefully tries again.

Eventually, some of those experiences become internal. We get better at soothing ourselves. We develop an internal voice. We become more capable of being alone.

But becoming an adult doesn't mean becoming a closed system.

Sometimes We Need Another Mind

People often come to therapy believing they should already be able to figure something out.

They'll say, “I know this intellectually.”

They know the relationship isn't working. They know their anxiety isn't rational. They know they aren't responsible for everyone else's feelings. They know they are allowed to say no.

And yet knowing isn't always enough.

Sometimes something becomes thinkable only when we think about it with somebody else.

You tell a story you've told yourself a hundred times, and another person notices the moment you skimmed past. Someone becomes curious about the thing you've always assumed was obvious. They react differently than you expected. They aren't horrified by something you've been ashamed of. They take seriously something you've spent years minimizing.

And suddenly you can see yourself differently.

This is part of what makes psychotherapy difficult to describe. Therapy isn't simply the delivery of insight from one person to another. If information alone changed us, we could probably all read enough books and be done.

Something happens in the relationship.

We Regulate Each Other

We also tend to talk about emotional regulation as though it is an individual accomplishment.

And certainly, learning to regulate ourselves matters.

But human beings also co-regulate.

We know this intuitively. Think about the person you call when something terrible happens. Or the person whose presence makes you feel more like yourself. Think about how differently the same problem can feel depending on who is sitting beside you.

The opposite is true, too.

Some relationships leave us chronically activated. Around certain people, we become defensive before we consciously know why. We shrink. We perform. We become unusually irritable, anxious, helpless, or vigilant.

Our relationships don't simply exist alongside our internal lives. They become part of them.

This doesn't mean another person is responsible for regulating us all the time. Nor does it mean that every uncomfortable feeling in a relationship indicates that something is wrong.

It means that the fantasy of complete emotional self-sufficiency was probably never a particularly realistic goal.

Therapy is Not About Needing People Less

Sometimes people imagine successful therapy as a progression toward needing nobody.

You become secure enough, confident enough, boundaried enough, healed enough—and eventually other people's responses won't matter very much.

I don't think that's the goal.

Perhaps the goal is to become more able to recognize who you are with different people.

Which relationships allow you to expand? Where can you be uncertain without feeling stupid? Angry without fearing abandonment? Successful without worrying that someone will resent you? Sad without immediately needing to reassure the person comforting you?

And where do you find yourself disappearing?

Good therapy can help us become more internally sturdy. But ideally, it also helps us become more discerning about connection—not less interested in it.

We can tolerate being alone without convincing ourselves that we shouldn't need anyone.

We can soothe ourselves and still call a friend.

We can make our own decisions and still need someone who knows us well enough to say, “This doesn't sound like you.”

We can be independent and profoundly interdependent at the same time.

There is something deeply comforting about the idea that this isn't a failure of development.

It's part of being human.

We were never meant to do all of this alone.