#hyper-independence

[wisterianwoman]

From an early age, I knew I had to work for the things I wanted, and life showed me that I couldn't rely on other people, so I learned to do it all myself. It wasn't long before I completely burned out. Today, I am healing and finding balance, and learning to ask for help when I need it. Let's talk about it.

HEALING FROM HYPER-INDEPENDENCE

[nammythings]

The Rise of Emotionally Fatigued, Hyper-Independent Women

She pays her bills. She makes decisions. She’s dependable, decisive, and often drained. You’ve probably met her. You may even be her. She’s the hyper-independent woman, one who’s learned to rely on no one but herself. But behind the strength, there’s a quieter reality playing out. Burnout. Emotional fatigue. Disconnection. It’s not a phase. It’s a pattern. And it’s quietly reshaping the…

[shericonaway]

No Feels Left to Give

Taking Back My Feels Life goes on. People with whom you once engaged no longer elicit an emotional response. New ones come into your life and fill the holes left by those with whom you’ve parted ways; not as replacements, but as portals to new adventures. It does surprise me to encounter someone whose attention and opinion once mattered so much, only to find myself devoid of any feeling…

[feral-ballad]

Zehra Naqvi, from The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose; “Grocery Shopping”

[Text ID: “You don’t want anyone to ask you if you need help, to ask if you are okay, to feel sorry for you, no one, no one gets to have this, no one gets to make you into a body they think they know how to read.”]

[sakuravalenp]

A dream land - DP X DC Prompt

Okay, so I was thinking about that episode "Perchance to dream" where Bruce is trapped in a dream world and this, even thought really different, came to my mind.

Danny is king or prince of the infinite realms. He's been working on personalizing/decorating his castle in the infinite realms. When he feels someone walking just outside the castles walls. The thing is, that someone isn't a denizen, they aren't in a corporeal body, but he can feel that they are very much alive and feel distinctly human. He approaches the person to ask why and how they are in the infinite realms, but they fade away before he gets the opportunity.

Clockwork, who was with him at the moment, tells him that the visitor from the living, was just the soul projection of someone that was sleeping, and then refuses to elaborate further. Since it's something that was to do with sleeping, Danny decides to go and ask Nocturn, it seemed like a reasonable assumption that he was the one at fault for the soul projection.

Contrary to what he thought, Nocturn informed Danny that Sleeping soul projection was a natural phenomenon that he didn't control. The land of dreams, ("My domain" - Nocturn reminds him), was in the infinite realm after all, and those who have been close to death sometimes slipped they're whole soul instead of just their mind, and ended up all over the infinite realms.

It isn't too different from a lucid dream for them, the body gets all the benefit of the sleep, the mind feels rested if they had a good time in the realms. Except, if they hurt their soul too bad during their little trip, it would have real consequences. Loosing memories, abilities regression, migraine, pain that reflects the soul damage, all either temporary until the soul healed, or permanent and deteriorating, and in some occasions finishing in the persons death. In the latter, the soul is usually too damaged and cease it's existence, or have enough ectoplasm and emotion to form into ghosts with crack cores whose existence is instantly in danger.

Danny clearly didn't like the image that was painted to him, so he asked Nocturn if there was really nothing that he could do. It took a lot of talking and convincing, but eventually Nocturn admitted he could be able to direct the soul projecting to appear on a certain place, but he refused to babysit anyone. Which was enough for Danny, all he needed to do was make another expansion in his castle.

He decided to make a garden to receive their soul projecting guests. The garden was enormous, with all kinds of spaced within it. Playgrounds, picnic spaces, soft benches, tables with ghost and space teamed board games, fountains, and of course, the beautiful flowers that surrounded and decorated the place. Once he got ghosts with gardening, protection and caring obsessions on the place to look out for the souls, he was ready to receive them. It took him by surprise the amount of people that came, the garden was never crowded, but was never empty either, and souls of all ages and places were visiting at all times.

He kept expanding the garden as he heard of new things their guests wished for. He enjoyed spending time in the middle of the garden where souls passed by but rarely appeared, it was calm, but not completly quite with the background noice of the soul enjoying their dreams, and he could do the more mundane king/prince work. Until, he starts getting a regular visitor on his little space of the garden.

Choose the DC character you prefer, my idea is for people who hasn't died in the past but has been in the doors of death (so died and came back would be disqualified but you do as you prefer), but I'm going with Tim.

The soul of a boy around his age appears just in front of him, as usual when he greets new arriving soul, he welcomes him with a gentle smile and tells him he is free to explore the garden. A ghost taker is assign to him. The soul, as usual, seems confused and like he wished to asks questions, but seems content to ask them to his tour guide, and Danny continues with his own duties.

But then, the same soul continues to appear in the same place every two or three days, they exchange greetings and every time talk for a bit longer before the boy leaves to explore once more. It's rear to have multiple visits from one soul, even more so for said soul to appear in the same place every time. By the four time, Danny decides to take a break on his royal duties and accompany his new friend.

~ They get close, and have cute scenes, Tim asks a lot of questions and Danny answers and not-answers a lot of questions ~

One day, Tim shows up as usual, but he is in full Red Robin costume, and well, Danny wasn't expecting an identity reveal.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

On the Bats side:

There's an attack of some villain that's able to put Red Robin (or character of your choice) on a sleeping beauty type of sleep while carrying a serious injury, were he stays sleep until teammates or backup gets him out of it. The event affects his soul, making him disconnect partially from the land of dreams and making his soul sleep project almost every time he sleeps.

Tim starts sleeping more often. It's worrying at first, Bruce being paranoid does every test in the book, despite Tim saying he's just finding sleep easier now. But, he was just affected by sleeping magic and suddenly his sleeping easier? Seems like a side effect, and that makes it worrying.

Tim's health in general improve, just like he's concentration and productivity. Who would have thought that working rested actually was more productive than working on less than three hours of sleep and missing obvious details and clues due to how tired you are.

With everything not only being okay, but better than before, paranoia about Tim's new sleeping schedule soon dies, and instead is replaced with teasing about how he used to refuse to rest kicking and screaming, and now he may sleep more than any of them.

On Tim's side, he's loving being able to soul project so often. He knew from the start he was in a different dimension, and he just wanted to know the hows, whys, and everything else. So far, he seems to do it at least once every three days, and he's even gone two times in a row a couple of times.

The garden had a lot of things to do, but Tim doesn't care about that, he's more interested in all the information he's getting. The first 3 times he was given different ghost nanny's, who were more focus on entertaining him and didn't really answer direct question. But then king/prince Phantom decided to accompany him personally, and everything went smoother. He was going back to get to know more about this new world, and maybe to know more about the cute prince/king too. He might also have gotten some better looking pajamas.

Now, he has a mission that takes more than a couple days with some people in his team that hasn't yet sen his face. He didn't realize how difficult it would be to do all nighters after getting used to a sleep schedule. He would usually try to go as long as possible without sleeping, but he decides that he should take advantage of the safety of where they're staying and sleep a bit too. He ended up soul projecting in full Red Robin costume. He tried to play it cool, maybe Phantom wouldn't know it was him.

"Red Robin, even if you didn't appear on the same spot as always, I can feel your soul. I know who you are."

[eldestdaughtersyndromeforreal]

There are two devils in me .

[gojonanami]

why is this screenshot enough to make me cry lmao

[resignedseraph]

Hyper-independence is absolutely a trauma response of mine historically, but I didn’t realize exactly how ingrained it used to be in my life until I remembered a weird rule from the cult-school I grew up in: when switching classes, if you forgot something, you could not go back and get it. No exceptions. Ever.

Which is a bizarre rule to have! Practically it makes no sense, and the logical conclusions you’d come to would only harm the students. But that’s kind of the point, you know?

This was called “taking responsibility for your own actions” and “encouraging self reliance” and “teaching high respect for authority figures,” but it ended up meaning that if you happened to forget a pencil and you had an exam, you would then fail the exam with no opportunity for a retake simply because of that missing pencil. Pretty much your only hope was that someone next to you would hand you a pencil without anyone noticing or pointing this out, which itself was also against the rules because it mean you were “enabling someone to avoid taking responsibility for their actions”

Not to even mention the social punishment of this example here; everyone in the class would know, and you would just have to sit there and take the shame and embarrassment for the entire class period, and possibly after via snickering and sidelong sneers

Over a pencil.

Personally this only taught me these lessons: that there are never second chances, that unfairness is guaranteed if I slip up, that it is my fault no matter what happens, and that I need to be hyper vigilant and hyper independent if I want to get by

Thankfully these are not lessons that the real world operates on. There are almost always second chances, that unfairness is possible but not guaranteed, that sometimes it’s not anyone’s fault, and that there will be people to support me to help me get by

I’m really glad that I got out so I could learn these lessons and become the me that I am today

[honeekyuu]

just told @mr-honee that “i feel like being spoiled today and not paying for things — paying is a boy job”

and from the echoing, haunting distance of the other room, all i hear is

“👹👹YYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS👹👹”

[writtenroses1813]

It’s crazy that being the gifted kid and having childhood trauma means you’ve been like 18 since you were 6 so on one half everyone leaves you to your own devices and expects a ton from you and you’re hyper independent and stuff and then on the other hand you’re the youngest sibling with medical trauma so you HAVE to be dependent to some extent so they baby you and treat you like a 5 year old when you’re 16

[physalian]

One thing about hyper-independence and having “I don’t trust you to keep your word” trust issues is that these two feedback on each other and only get worse.

Like, if you have friends who you’ll do many things for, but who you won’t ask their help for—and this can be emotional help, activity help, errand help, hobby help—if you don’t invite people into your world to share the little things, they won’t want to help you with the big things.

I’m somebody who grew up surrounded by people who just couldn’t be bothered. Not everyone, but enough to where they tipped the scales. So I just wouldn’t let people in (and still don’t) because what’s the point? They won’t show up when I need them the most.

Problem is that we cannot do absolutely everything alone. So if you don’t rely on your friend and make little complaints and vents to them, suddenly you can’t rely on them when something huge happens, because you haven’t built any of those foundations. Which makes you even more isolated, which makes you trust people less, etc.

And on the flip side, when you do try and ask those friends for the big help, they’re so used not being needed that it really is too big an ask, and when you need other people the most, when something cannot be done alone, they won’t be there.

Like I have no advice here because I am in this boat, a complete Giving Tree myself, but the first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is one.

[eddith]

every time nami refers to sanji as "sanji-kun" and he refers to her as "nami-swan" my heart jumps around full with happiness

[unwelcome-ozian]

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

Never in my adult life had I had someone looking out for me. Everything that I have wanted or needed doing, I have done myself. And why not? I have never needed rescuing before. I suppose I always assumed that if I ever did, I would have two options: rescue myself or perish.

Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

[could-they-be-a-pro-wrestler]

How successful would The Goose…

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[thesoftestmess]

this might not be canon, but personally i need furina to struggle a whole lot longer and harder with post-prophecy depression and mental illness. She's played the same tiring and painful act for five centuries, was constantly in a life or death scenario and had to hide her true self from the world the entire time and she won't just recover in a few years from that.

There's parts of her that will never ever be compatible with a simple human lifestyle, and parts of her that are irreparably broken. She isn't sure of her personality after everything that happened and the lie she had to live. She slips between personas and her archon temperament comes through like a defensive mechanism at any sign of conflict or trouble.

She's plagued by nightmares. Of the flood, of the trial, of the people closest to her conspiring against her behind her back, and of being found out in a million terrible ways. Of saying the wrong thing, making a wrong decision. Of being found out, of being found out, of being found out.

Lying or keeping a secret feels existential still. Being honest still feels life threatening sometimes. Putting herself first feels like putting both hands on a hot stove.

She doesn't live in the palais anymore, doesn't have to sit through trials anymore, but her heart and soul are still there. In her dreams she's still at the place she spent her entire life's memories at.

Yes, she can make new memories, but it'll take time. More time than she has, maybe, now that she's the closest to being human she'll ever be.

She'll never be human in the way the people around her are.

What sort of human has 500 years worth of memories after all? What human tells personal anecdotes and mixes up their centuries?

What sort of human can feel the absence of their divinity like it's a physical thing? A voice that will never speak to her again, or keep her alive? What human has no family, no childhood?

What human remembers so little, but still remembers death somewhere deep within?

She jerks out of sleep from it sometimes, gasping for air, and spends the rest of the night awake, almost frozen by fear. The flood is over, but it's hard to convince her racing heart that the danger is too.

Humans have entire family trees that go generations back, but Furina was put into this world a solitary creature, her blood heavy with sin ever since she turned human.

She owns a hydro vision now and doesn't know how to yield it, but the ocean still calls out to her some days. Sea creatures flock to her like they can smell she's not human enough.

She learns how to make little hydro companions for herself, so the darkness and emptiness of her apartment feels less ominous when she lies awake at night.

She can't turn her vision into a weapon quite yet, but when it rains the droplets seem to cling to her. She's watched them roll upwards along her arm, watched them gather in her palm like kin. She wonders if sea creatures flock to neuvillette in a similar way, or if his immense power makes them recoil. She wonders if elemental dragons can feel regret. Wonders if he, too, ever feels entirely foreign in that human body he was given. If he, too, lies awake trying to grasp faint memories of a past life.

She's extremely human in the way she's plagued by body pains from not being able to relax just one day in five centuries. The years catch up with her once she gets out of survival mode, and fatigue is a constant companion now. Sleep comes difficultly and getting out of bed was easier when the fate of a whole nation depended on it. On her. She's never lived for just herself before and some days she's not sure she wants to.

She did her duty and earned her retirement and the story turned out well, all things considered. She still has people by her side, some of them.

Still, she feels raw and tired and overwhelmed by the life lying ahead of her. As a human and as someone who will always be Something Else.