I know myself. If it wasn't for my kids I would slip into a hermited life and never return. My daughter outright calls me a hermit to tease me, but it's true.
A reluctance to ask for help because it could be interpreted by others as a sign of weakness? Wrong. What you call a "lone wolf" does not measure his/her personal value based on what others think of him/her. Self-sufficiency is SELF sufficiency, it is entirely disconnected from others. Self-sufficient people think and do their own things because they simply don't care what anyone else thinks or does.
It doesn't need to be mutually exclusive. You do get a different type of assistance if people perceive ask for help as a weakness. It boils down to the internal dilemma of spending your time and energy on: 1. explaining the task and the assistance required 2. trying to figure out and solve the problem on your own Even those 2 processes don't need to be mutually exclusive, because of the "rubber duck" method, or enforcing the process 2 through process 1. It's just personal preference, especially if the task is not centered around the person asking for the assistance.
