Dependency, interdependence
and care.
Mainstream psychotherapy can quietly reproduce a cultural ableism that treats self-sufficiency as the universal marker of adult health. It isn’t. Receiving care can coexist with adulthood, and autonomy can exist without physical independence.
Questions this topic keeps raising
- Is dependency always pathological?
- Is self-sufficiency a universal developmental ideal?
- Can receiving care coexist with adulthood?
- Can autonomy exist without physical independence?
- How do carers and disabled people negotiate boundaries?
- What happens psychologically when someone needs assistance with intimate tasks?
- What does choice mean within unavoidable dependence?
- When is independence itself an ableist standard?
A redefinition of independence
“I do everything myself” is one version of independence. Another is just as valid: I retain autonomy, choice and control over my life and how support is provided. A great deal of disability-related distress in therapy comes from measuring against the first definition when the second is the one that actually matters.
Independent living isn’t doing everything alone — it’s having the same choice and control over your life that non-disabled people take for granted.
For carers
Care can exist without reducing the disabled person to a passive recipient. The themes that matter most here are support versus control, autonomy, privacy, choice, communication, boundaries, dignity, sexuality, adult identity, burnout, and family relationships that hold all of the above at once. See the full Carer Guide.