#168 - Joseph Pawson: Dependency and Denial - The Stories That Divide Us

"When our cries go unanswered, we find ourselves having to shout louder. It is easy to see how these attempts to be praised can be misread and labelled incorrectly as arrogance, misbehavior, or being a show-off. As a result, it may feel as if we are being told that our need for mirroring is in some way bad or wrong. In being misunderstood, our developmental needs can be misconstrued, and a distorted story may be told about who we are. Sadly, we often internalize these stories and labels and, in doing so, inadvertently deny and exile the vulnerability of our own needs. Misunderstandings of this nature occur not only during our development, but also in our daily lives." Just one of the MANY great quotes from my psychotherapist -guest today, Joe Pawson, from his book "Dependency and Denial: The Stories That Divide Us" (Karnac, 2026)

This became a deep conversation about how we NEED each other. And in a culture that idealizes self-sufficiency, our dependency, our need for others, becomes something we exile and DENY. Joe Pawson talks about how the stories we create protect us from pain, but also separate us, separation from each other and from ourselves. He is excellent with words (AND EMPATHY), so slow everything down and go into a reflective space with us as we talk about:

Why our connection to each other can be both the source of our wounds and part of the remedy

Anxious and avoidant attachment, and what may exist underneath the attachment styles themselves

How falling in love reactivates some of our earliest hopes, fears and developmental wounds

Denial as a way of creating maps and stories that make life, pain and trauma more manageable

How we can internalize the message that our needs are too much, silly, weak or unwanted

The moments in therapy where a client begins to become vulnerable and then suddenly interrupts, minimizes or dismisses their own experience - before the therapist does (?!) We have a long segment on denial in therapy setting-  and also we come to talk about the therapist's own vulnerability, the willingness wo be in the unknown

How TRAGIC misunderstandings happen when we cannot see the vulnerability underneath another person's behavior

Projected vulnerability and what happens as when we see what is ours in other people

Buddhist ideas of interdependence, the illusion of a completely separate self and the difficulty of seeing beyond the maps through which we understand reality

The idea that the key to reconnecting with greater wholeness may lie precisely in the vulnerabilities we have abandoned