For women ready to stop shrinking. You’ll get somatic tools, honest reflections, and invitations to go deeper—circles, events, and practices that help you feel your boundaries, not just think them. Sent with intention, not noise.
What if needing someone feels dangerous?
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There’s a kind of person I’ve worked with many times over the years. They are extraordinarily capable. They know how to handle things. Other people depend on them. And needing somebody else feels almost unbearable. We tend to call this independence. But lately I’ve been thinking about it through the lens of power. Children live inside an enormous power differential. They depend on adults for food, shelter, safety, affection and belonging. They cannot simply decide that the arrangement isn’t working and find another family. So if depending on another person repeatedly comes with disappointment, intrusion, humiliation, unpredictability or fear, the nervous system adapts. One adaptation is: I will become very good at figuring out what you need so you won’t leave me. Another is: I will make sure I never need you enough that you can hurt me. These look completely different from the outside. But underneath, they may be responses to the same dilemma: How do I stay safe when another person has power over something I need? And we carry these solutions into adulthood. They show up when we fall in love. When we need help. When we have to trust a doctor. When we enter therapy. When someone is angry with us. When we say no. This is one reason I’ve never understood boundary work as simply teaching people to be more independent. A healthy boundary does something more interesting. It allows relationship without requiring self-abandonment. I can need you and still disagree with you. I can receive from you without owing you my obedience. I can love you and still say no. I can disappoint you without immediately deciding I’ve done something wrong. I can remain connected to you without leaving myself. That is not radical independence. It is interdependence. And I think it’s one of the most sophisticated things our nervous systems can learn. This is also why, as a therapist, I don’t want clients to need me indefinitely. I tell people fairly explicitly that I’m trying to teach them tools they can use without me. Over the years, I’ve watched many clients do exactly that. They come intensely for a period. Something changes. They leave. They live their lives. Sometimes years later, something happens and they come back. I actually love that model. Because the goal was never: I never need anyone. The goal is: I can use support without surrendering my authority. That distinction is becoming increasingly central to the practitioner work I’m developing around RIFRA, attachment, boundaries and Somatic Experiencing. And I suspect I’ll be writing much more about power in the coming months. For now, I’ll leave you with this: What happens inside you when you need someone? Not what you think about needing people. What happens in your body? Do you soften? Tighten? Feel ashamed? Get angry? Want to disappear? Want to grab tighter? That response may tell you something important about what dependency has meant in your life. Warmly, P.S. If you’re a clinician interested in learning the RIFRA Method more deeply, I’m preparing a small six-week practitioner training beginning this fall. I’ll share more shortly. |
Tanya Dantus
For women ready to stop shrinking. You’ll get somatic tools, honest reflections, and invitations to go deeper—circles, events, and practices that help you feel your boundaries, not just think them. Sent with intention, not noise.
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