The Cultural Paradox of Interdependence and Burnout

By Jules McVey, organizational psychologist and co-founder of Wicked Rae’s

We live in a cultural paradox.

What does that actually mean?

We treat interdependence as a moral virtue, not a skill. Yet, when something is treated as a virtue, it's assumed to be innate. When it's assumed to be innate, it's never actually taught. When it's never taught, people fail quietly and blame themselves.

Have you ever sat with that?

Autonomy as identity.

Interdependence becomes expectation.

But interdependence isn’t “works well with others.”

It's a developmental capacity that requires co-regulation, perspective-taking, conflict fluency, emotional literacy, cultural attunement, shared meaning-making, tolerance for ambiguity, and embodied relational awareness.

A lot of big things, right?

And yet none of these are taught in childhood.

Not in school (unless you opt in during college). Not in the workplace. But every human is expected to know them; especially inside modern multicultural teams.

Humans, my friends, are relational beings whose identity forms through interactions, not isolation.

And when a society demands relational complexity without ever teaching "relational capacity", it begins to fracture; not at the edges, but at the emotional core.

Which is why, symbolically, we’ve become a modern Atlantis.

From ancient scholars, Atlantis represents:

→ a society that lost balance

→ a culture that advanced technically but collapsed relationally

→ a warning about systems that evolve faster than human emotional development

When we focus on independence + autonomy, we see:

→ “team players” burn out

→ “helpers” become emotional pack mules

→ “bridge people” collapse under invisible labor

→ “empaths” leave the workforce entirely

🦋 We condition people for isolation, then punish them for not knowing how to connect. We build systems that require interdependence, then staff them with humans trained for autonomy. And when the mismatch breaks our people, we call it burnout instead of what it really is: a systemic design flaw in both our personal and professional spheres.

I drew the picture of the child as a metaphor for what's inside every adult years ago.

As always, I leave you with this:

Where in your life are you still trying to “go it alone” because you were taught that’s what strength looks like? What’s one place (just one) where you could practice letting someone in? Systems (and humans) don't change through policy enforcement. Remember that. They change when people choose to relate differently.

Image: Pastel drawing by Jules McVey symbolizing the inner child carried within every adult.