Borrowed Strength: How Community Expands Our Internal Resources

The more I come into my own—as a therapist, a mother, a member of society—the more I notice how little true community exists today, and how much that absence affects all of us: me, my clients, my friends and family, society as a whole. 

For most of human history, community wasn’t something you opted into. It was a built in, nearly inescapable part of life. You lived among multiple generations. You worked alongside the same people (and in person!). There were shared rhythms — market days, town meetings, seasonal work, annual festivals. Belonging was woven into daily life. 

Today, it feels like we’ve built a society designed to let us avoid one another. We scroll past our neighbors online instead of meeting them in person. We trade shared rituals for curated hobbies and personal playlists, and obligations that once bound us to others now feel optional — or worse, burdensome. Community exists mostly as an idea, a background concept, rather than a lived reality. 

As a result, the structures that once naturally supported belonging, accountability, and shared purpose have mostly disappeared. And that absence isn’t just cultural — it has real effects on our minds and bodies. Without regular participation in collective life, our nervous systems miss the subtle rhythms of co-regulation, our tolerance for difference shrinks, and our inner resources are forced to stretch further than they were ever meant to alone. 

In those repeated rhythms of community, our bodies learned stability together. We practiced being irritated and staying. We practiced disagreement without disappearance. Compromise wasn’t heroic — it was ordinary. 

Developing a sense of self didn’t happen independently, but rather as part of a collective. Before we were able to regulate ourselves, our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors and community members co-regulated with us. While this co-regulation is essential for survival in infancy, it remains important throughout our entire lifespan. Our bodies are constantly reading other bodies — breath, tone, posture, pace. It’s a kind of dance. When one system speeds up, another can slow it down. When one person falters, another steadies the rhythm. 

But strength isn’t just co-regulation. It also comes from engaging with difference. Community often places us alongside people we wouldn’t choose as friends—different ages, temperaments, values, or viewpoints. These encounters are sometimes frustrating or awkward, yet navigating those differences strengthens psychological flexibility. It teaches us compromise, patience, and tolerance. Over time, the friction of collective life expands our capacity to absorb discomfort and maintain connection even when things aren’t perfect.

Community structures also give us repetition, roles and accountability, and while those might seem like a drag, they are actually quite regulating and self-defining. When life feels chaotic or uncertain, stepping into a space with an established cadence can calm the nervous system. Roles support identity, purpose and belonging. Expectations exist. If you don’t show up, it’s noticed. That accountability can feel uncomfortable in a culture that values personal freedom, but it also stabilizes us. 

Over time, these repeated experiences of co-regulation and collective strength become internalized. Your body learns what steadiness feels like. Your sense of self becomes anchored not just in private reflection, but in communal participation, and your nervous system strengthens as a result. 

Participation alongside difference amplifies these benefits. Community doesn’t require liking everyone or agreeing on everything. You learn that relationships can remain meaningful even when people behave differently than you’d prefer or fail to meet every need. Over time, repeatedly navigating these small tensions builds resilience and flexibility, and teaches that belonging isn’t contingent on compatibility—it’s contingent on shared purpose.

Research supports this dual effect. Studies on social integration show that well-being is shaped not just by the number of close relationships, but by engagement in broader networks with shared routines and expectations. Longitudinal work suggests that people embedded in these systems report lower distress, higher resilience, and more confidence in their own abilities to navigate challenges. These effects are particularly pronounced when groups mix ages, backgrounds, or viewpoints, highlighting that exposure to difference is as critical as steady co-regulation.

In recent decades, many of the structures that once provided this embeddedness have weakened. Groups of all varieties have declined; participation in almost all forms has dropped. Neighborhood life has become more transient. We move more. We curate more. We choose our relationships carefully — often selecting people who mirror our values, our politics, our lifestyles. At the same time, polarization and mistrust have deepened. It can feel risky to engage with people who think differently. Safer to stay within smaller, ideologically aligned circles. Independence has become a virtue. Needing less from others is framed as strength. 

But we are losing something so fundamentally human in this shift. 

I’ve seen how powerful it can be when a client facing a difficult moment imagines their community standing alongside them in support. Even just visualizing that network can shift posture, breathing, tone, and help the body to remember: I am not operating alone. 

When community erodes, we are left to develop both stability and flexibility in isolation. We try to build a sense of self in a silo, and the individual psyche is asked to carry what used to be distributed across a web of relationships and shared life. Strength, it turns out, is not purely self-generated. It is relational. Rhythmic. Collective. And it thrives both in steadiness and in friction.

If we want sturdier internal worlds, we may need to rebuild the external structures that once helped us borrow strength—spaces where our bodies learned regulation, where we practiced compromise, and where we participated alongside people unlike ourselves. Only then can we internalize the rhythms, tolerance, and confidence that true community has always offered.