Breaking The Habit Of Hyperindependence

What if the strength that kept you safe is the same wall blocking the support you crave? We open up about why receiving help can feel dangerous for many first‑gen Latinas, tracing the roots from migration and poverty to language barriers, racism, and the family roles we adopted too young—helper, translator, emotional anchor. Those experiences shaped a survival identity that equates love with being low maintenance, being needed with belonging, and silence with safety.

Together we name hyperindependence for what it truly is: a nervous system strategy, not a personality trait. We explore how praise for usefulness creates a loop where asking feels like failure, and how guilt, control, and emotional debt make support feel heavy with strings. Then we pivot to a grounded path forward. You’ll hear practical ways to practice receiving without losing your independence: accepting small offers without overexplaining, letting someone listen without fixing, using community resources without shame, and working with therapy or support groups that honor dignity and confidentiality.

We also talk about rest as a right, not a reward, and simple tools to reclaim it: take the medicine, see the doctor, schedule downtime, and use the delegate‑delete‑delay approach when your plate is full. With breathwork moments and somatic check‑ins, we show how safety rebuilds in the body, one yes at a time. If you’ve ever felt your chest tighten when someone says, “Can I help?” this conversation meets you where you are and offers a softer, stronger way forward—one rooted in respect, reciprocity, and being known rather than needed.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a comadre, and leave a review to help more first‑gen listeners find these tools. Tell us: what small support will you say yes to this week?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Grounding Breath
• 1:54 Naming The Survival Identity
• 5:00 Poverty, Racism, And Language Barriers
• 9:12 Lessons: Don’t Ask, Don’t Complain
• 14:40 Being Needed Versus Feeling Supported
• 17:10 Hyperindependence As Nervous System Strategy
• 20:35 The Helper, Translator, Emotional Anchor
• 24:00 Guilt, Control, And Emotional Debt

Transcript

Dora: 0:00

Amijita. Welcome back to I'm Brace Your Raíces Reclaim Your Essentia. If this is your first time here, bienvenido, bienvenida. And if you've been walking with me for a while, gracias. Truly gracias. Today's episode is tender. It's one I didn't always have the language for, but my body has always known it, like deep down inside me. We're talking about why so many first-gen Latinas struggle to receive support. And through my point of view, and throughout many many years, I've been able to work with people one-on-one and see it firsthand with them as well. Not because we don't want the help, because help never felt safe. And I want you to hear this clearly before we go further. There is nothing wrong with you. If you've ever said, I got it, you know, loo sola, I'll figure it out. It's fine, don't worry about me. And you leave yourself always to the last. And especially this is my favorite. Like you say, other people have it worse, like Alino tiene peor que yo. This episode is for you. So take a deep breath with me. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Let your shoulders drop. You don't have to be the strong one here. Alrighty. Well, grab your beverage of choice, cafecito, te water, and we'll get into it. The survival identity we inherited. Well, let's name it. Many of us were raised in survival mode. Not metaphorically, so it's literally. Like we had, I again, I feel always like Dorothy Splur in the jungle with my backpack and my machete trying to go and figure shit out all on my own. So literally, like going through survival mode through life. Our parents, our grandparents, they survived. My parents migrated, so migration was definitely something that happened in our family. Um, my I'm a first generation because my parents traveled from Tamaulipas, Mexico. And as so many, many, many, many people here in this United States, we call America, um, there's so many families that do come, right? And so many first genes that I see that are trying to go and figure things out. Another thing that we went through was poverty. My grandparents, um, my grandfather and my mom's side, like they had a ranch back in Mexico and stuff, but then they ended up losing everything. So they did have this sense of like poverty in a way, because they were always trying to make ends meet. My parents, they had two jobs each, and thus I did all the craziness I did. Um, because they would always be working. And so even though we we they did not want to admit they were poverty or they were poor, um, or we were living pay to paycheck to paycheck, they didn't want to go and get the help, like the food stamps and the everything, especially when we went our family went through a medical emergency with my younger sister. And of course, racism. The eso no falta. We don't get enough of that, right? Um, racism, especially being younger when I gr when I was growing up, I saw my dad struggle with that because every time we would be waiting in line or somebody would discourage us, my dad would kind of yell at them and say, You're being racist. Even though that might have not all been true. My dad kind of had his fun with that. And then language barriers. Um, my parents, my dad, I thought he spoke perfect English. As I grew older, he did not. And I grew up in a predominantly white town, my hometown of Roselle, Illinois. And I was like one of two Mexicans in my grade, and that was pretty tough for a while, like growing up in my grade school. That's why people notice I don't have much of an accent when I speak English, because I was taught, or I was actually bullied, that if I had an uh accent, I got made fun of. So that's why I tried so hard to speak English. But my parents, like my dad, he didn't care. He was like, and my mom to this day, she's like, no, you're not in English. I'm like, mom, yes, you do. Um, and and she jokes because when she gets mad, like she'll speak English and you can totally understand what she's saying through body language and the other. Um, and then systems that were never built for our parents and grandparents. Um, nowadays we have technology that works super fast. We can get our information super fast. We have Google, although I do get hit up on a lot of family because they don't know how to figure stuff out, and I usually go to my best friend, Google, and start Googling stuff. Now it's Chat GPT, so pick your poison. So, what did we learn from all of this? And their upbringing and their batallando, like their battles and stuff with all these different things. Well, we learned that as a first gen, I learned don't ask. No preguntes, just do it. And especially don't complain. Like you can't be like going off on like, oh why me, and this and that. No, no, snap yourself out of it. And it would have been like a chanclaso moment. The sandal would have been thrown at you, or paw paw would have been in the in the works or in your cards. Because you don't complain, you just keep going. You suck it up, butterclip is kind of the mentality. And you don't need too much. You don't you you don't ask for too much, you're and you don't you aren't too much. So you need to kind of tail it back and just suck it up pretty much. Like I remember crying, sobbing when I was a little kid. Like I would be you know, like the whole like sub sob. And my favorite was no yores. And it's like, don't cry. And it's like, are you kidding me right now? Like, I am having an emotional breakdown, and my parent is telling me to not cry. I'm like sobbing even more. And then mokles and everything go. Um, yeah, you kind of get me. And then don't take up space. Like, I would get shut up so many times when I was little that that really closed my throat chakra. And for those of you that follow the different chakras, it's just in your throat. Um, it's seven different chakras that we have in our body, going from the root all the way up to the crown, and every one of them has its own thing. But just to be with me for a sec. So in the throat chakra, I would always get a knot in my throat, and for the longest time, I would not be able to speak. Like every time I would call my dad or for something or speak up for something, I would start sobbing. Like I would prefer that reaction versus like actually speaking up because I did not know how to articulate my what I needed. And so we learned that being low maintenance was love, and that's what I learned is Caeda, te ves más bonita, so just being silent, you're prettier, and just go with emotions. Don't just what is it? Like not surrender, but just like go through it, you know, don't don't ask no questions. And so we learned all this, and and slowly being needed became safer than being supported. Because when you're needed, you've you have value, like you have self-worth, you tie it back to like, oh, good job, Michael, or oh, que bueno, que hiciste esto, you did good job that you did that. And you have this sense of belonging, especially in a group, in a community, and your family, and your friends, you name it, and you become useful. And that's one thing that I was like addicted to was being needed all around me. And I'm a great resource to people and I love it, but it's like it's addicting, right? The the the praise, the outside validation. But when you need what happens when tunes, like when you need something, that's when the fear creeps in. And I'm guilty of this too. That's where I start spiraling out of control. I'm like, no, I have to do it on my own, like I I'm a chingona, I have to do this, and yeah, that's when that's that's when the fear starts definitely making its appearance. Let me say this clearly hyperindependence is not a personality trait. So when you're super uber independent, that's great, but it could bite you in the butt. It's actually a nervous system strategy. Your body, nervous system is trying to keep you safe, and it's what happens when you learned early that no one was coming, like you're on your own. No one's gonna come and save you and give you the lifeboat and all that works. And and and like you fall off the cliff and then and somebody like magically throws you a rope and stuff. Yeah, not happening. Or you become the helper, the translator, the emotional inker, which were all my three jobs growing up. Um, being, you know, helping out with my sisters at a very short age at five. I started taking care of them. I don't know how, who in the I don't know what my parents were thinking. But then the translator, I mean, going and translating documents to people and from English to Spanish or Spanish to writing something up and my broken little lay, you know, like writing pencil to paper. Um, and then emotionally being anchored. Um, my parents, like my mom especially, when she came home from work, if she saw a mess in the in in the house, or like according to her, a mess, like addition the plate, a paper on the floor, oh my gosh, she would blow up. And let's just say there was a little physical physicality there where chunkas were thrown, pow-pows were given. And so going through all those emotions, like you did something wrong. Like, I always wanted to again seek that validation from my parents, and consequently, I grew up too fast, or you grew up too fast in these situations. So now it's a struggle to rest. Like, I I I can't just sit and relax because that's being guebona, that's being lazy, that's yeah. And you minimize your pain. Like, I think even going through my whole cancer journey right now, it's like I I downplay like what's really going on because I I don't want, I mean, one, I do have a high tolerance for pain, and I'm I pride myself with that. But then again, it's like, why the hell am I suffering? There's Tylenol, there's like a lot of products on the market. It's like you don't have to live in this pain. But you also you feel guilty for receiving. Oh my, like this has been so big for me. It's you feel like if you receive something, like this, I feel like this gut punch, you know, like, oh yeah, you failed. See, like I told you. And that's not a great feeling. And then you say yes when your body is screaming no. Like, there's a lot of shit I do on a daily basis that I should not probably be doing. Um, probably in my recovery too, like um, I would drop something and I got creative and I would like bend over, not bend over, but I would like lift my leg or like sit in a position to pick it up. You know, you get creative. And so when someone does offer the help, your body tightens, like my chest closes, and your mind starts saying, like, oh, I'm gonna owe them. You know, you can't, it's not tit for tat. Like, that's what my dad taught me. It's like, trust no one, please. Don't trust no one in this life because no one's gonna be genuinely nice to you. Well, guess what? News flash, people are genuinely nice, and that was a total mind flock for me to get over. And so, because support once came with the strings of like, you help me, I help you, kind of thing. I don't know if my parents just never worked out um like that. But like the sense of guilt if I don't do something or if I'm speaking too much, or I'm feeling too many emotions, like I'm crying right back to that sobbing story of like um, and the other thing too was control. Like, there's people in your life that have control over you, and and and you provide that support, and that it's controlling, it's to the point where it's gaslit. You're being gas-lit to provide support, and so consequently, this leads to my last point of emotional debt. You feel like you feel that guilt, you feel the shame, you feel the everything, and then that's where it's like, oh great. Like we went from being like probably okay to now I feel shitty. And so, of course, receiving feels unsafe. Like, especially growing up with my mentality of my dad, right? That trust no one, it's like, oh, we could get it. Like, there have to be something that they want, you know? And that's not necessarily the case all the time. So it's a lot of unconditioning and reframing. So let's go deeper. For many first gen Latinas, asking for help meant being judged. Like, why are you asking for help? Like, can't you figure the shit on your own? Like you should be able to, or being dismissed, like oh, tuna importas, like you know, when uh again, when I would be especially younger, like trying to speak up that hey, like I have a question or something, I would just be shut down by my parents. Like, ah, tú no sabes, like you don't know anything. Or being told to aguántate, like just suck it up. No complaining, and you have to tolerate whatever's going on. Or you were being compared to others who had it worse. Like, oh, I niños en la calle que no tienen nada que comer, like there's kids on the street that have nothing to eat, and it's like, okay, but that doesn't mean I have to eat the broccoli or whatever my mom was cooking because I don't like onions, there's certain things I don't like, I'm not a I don't consider myself a picky eater, but you know, you get the gist. And so your body learned being vulnerable or vulnerability was equal to danger. Even now as an adult, like with resources, with awareness, with like I feel like I got shit going, like things are going for me, and I got my stuff together. My nervous system still whispers don't be a burden. Handle it yourself, like you got this, and you're chingona. You should be able to figure it out on your own, or you'll be disappointed. Like if somebody were to, you know, when you try to receive help, like you're not gonna get your expectations of what help means. And so this isn't a weakness, this is conditioning. And healing doesn't mean forcing yourself to ask for help overnight, healing means learning how to feel safe, receiving little by little. And I've learned this again throughout this, especially these past few months, of like all the unconditional love and support and prayers and thoughts and everything. And I learned to open up like a vessel of just wow, that this is God's work, and I'm uh and I believe in God, divine source, and I associate it to God, right? That's the term I use. But it's all being conspired and and working for me, and there's so much stuff that has come through lately with people and the the genuine seeds I planted many, many years ago, that unconditional support without them necessarily needing anything from me, or expecting more so anything from me, or me from them, that is so beautiful. That is genuine love. That is a genuine friendship, that is genuine humanity, and the respect and the holding space and hearing me out, uh, engaging in support groups. Um, I recently applied for a few grants and I was able to get like resource money for things that I didn't even know I needed. So it's like and it doesn't mean you're poor, it doesn't mean like all these associations my parents had or our parents had. And as a first gen, like I was taught don't ask for help, like you don't want to go to public aid and you don't want to do this and food stamps and everything. We're so like above that. But the resources are are there for a reason, and I've always been of the thought that you can't do life on your own. You need a network, you need a community, you need a a support team, a family unit. And so those are the things that I've been noticing, especially when I'm receiving support. Let's be honest. Doing it all alone costs us our health. And I mean by like you're sick and you probably don't tend to yourself because you have so much other stuff going on. Our joy. Because why do we need to be happy? Everybody else needs to be happy, and our softness, like we end up being so hard on ourselves, on everybody around us, like we have these flipping high expectations, and especially our relationships. Sometimes we don't communicate or we rush through things, or we don't give the people around us or ourselves the me the time and energy that we actually need. We kind of just take it for granted and think everything's gonna be there forever. So it keeps us in over-functioning mode. So you might be the strong one, the fixer, the reliable one, the one that knows how to figure shit out all the time. But ask yourself, who holds you? And so I mean, you don't get extra points for suffering quietly. You don't heal by proving how much you can endure. You heal by letting yourself be held emotionally, energetically, spiritually. And this is where I say, it's like if you're in pain, why not take the fucking titan? Or if you broke something, or if you feel something funky in your body, why not go to the doctor? You know? It's like honor those things that are coming up. So what does receiving actually look like? Receiving doesn't mean trauma dumping, like you just like share your life story with someone and that's it. Or depending on everyone, or losing your independence. Like you don't that's that's not what it necessarily looks like. Receiving can be letting someone listen without fixing, like giving you that space, calling a friend, calling calling a comadre of um your sister or sibling or a tía o tío. I mean, obviously, if if you aren't afraid of things, you know, obviously confidentiality comes into play. Or it's accepting help without explaining yourself. It's just I need, you know, just calling up a resource, a hotline. Um if you're having dark thoughts like suicide hotline or a depression hotline or talking to a therapist, like no it's para locos, that's not for crazy people, the therapist. I mean, I have a therapist and I've been working with her for a About a year and a half, and and if it wasn't for that, like foundationally, I would not be able to encounter this whole situation and have the mindset that I do. And next is saying yes and thank you without guilt. Like when somebody offers you a cup of water, just say yes and just have it. Even if you take one or two steps, like just accept that. Like accept the res the support, accept the gift, accept it. Because you don't know if that was meant for you, that situation. And then you don't do it for yourself necessarily. It's like that person is also practicing giving, right? Um, and you're practicing receiving. So there's a lesson in all of this. And so my last one here is allowing rest without earning it. I always thought I had to work really hard, and then you go on vacation, and then you work even harder on vacation because you have to like plan it and everything. Well, no, you don't. You get to rest because you book it, like appointment, like massage, or how does rest look like for you? Is it just sitting or laying down watching TV, Netflix, or VIX, or whatever it is that you watch nowadays? Or YouTube, funny videos on your phone. Like, what is it that you get to rest without necessarily the carrot of like, oh, you're always like the moving carrot that you always have to do something in order to get that rest? So receiving is a practice, and it starts in the body. So sometimes it starts with one safe person, so one person to where you feel safe with, or it's an honest moment that you have with yourself of like a realization or awareness of like, oh shoot, I'm like catching myself that I want to do this alone, and there's help out there, or you could delegate. Like a good friend of mine just told me something not so long ago, where if you can't do it yourself, delegate it, delete it, or put it on the burner for something, you know. It's like you could delegate, okay? There's you don't have to do it all on your own, and you take one breath where you don't rush to hold it all together, okay? Just slow down and breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth. And if it falls apart, it falls apart. So be it. Just know that when you're building back up, you're building that much stronger. You already know nobody could take away the experiences you've lived. That's uh I always have a saying on that. It's beautiful to go through life, and you want to go on the highway always, but sometimes we gotta take the detours and we gotta learn things a little different, take a little different perspective, and you don't have to go through all the life experiences to learn them. You can definitely learn from others by their own experiences, and if you actually have the space to hear them out and accept and receive their learning experience, then you're learning that much more. It's like reading a book, you get to transfer that knowledge over. That's with life. So the more, the merrier. So if you're still listening, I want to congratulate you because this is a lot to take in. And even though you might not be a first gen and you're listening to this podcast, it's a refresher to realize the things that might condition ourselves ever since we're really young, or things that happened, and we just think it a certain way. So I challenge you to think about it a different a little differently from a different angle of perspective. But, Mijita, if this episode stirs something in you, that's by no accident. I'm actually very proud of you because this is the work of you working on yourself. And this is exactly the kind of work we slow down and unpack in my one-on-one spaces. It's not rushing, it's not fixing, but gently unwinding the survival identity that kept you safe and learning how to live beyond it. How do you cope with this? So you don't have to do this alone anymore, and you don't have to figure it out today. You just notice, just soften, just stay and be present in the moment. So thank you for being here. Thank you for your heart, and thank you for your trust, la confianza. And as always, embrace your raises, reclaim your essencia. Hasta pronto, un forte abrazo ande,