This week's prompt about asking for help, has been a really useful thing to ponder on:
What am I not asking for help with? What would this help ideally look like? What if the help came in a less-than-ideal form?
What does this help represent for me? Why am I not asking for it? What might I need to do, in order to be able to ask?
What would it mean if I asked and help was refused? What if it was given?
Have I really looked everywhere, exhausted all possible avenues for help? What role could my inner resources play?
Am I really as alone as I keep telling myself I am?
These questions could have brought me to some dark places. So I skirted around the feelings for a bit (as I tend to do), staying on the edge and not going too deep. Just deep enough. Treading water for a while as I got myself to a place where I can hopefully use what I've learned.
There were a couple of days when I told myself another old, old story, about how I did or didn't ask for help in the past. I identified that yes, I have had, and maybe still do have a problem with asking for help. What became usefully clear however was that I needed to focus more on how to ask for help; that is, how to get the balance right between asking for help and appearing needy or of coming from a place of huge lack (which scares other people).
Of course there have been many times when I've asked for help and it has been given and recieved gratefully.
Thank you. I am so lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life.
Sadly there have also been times when I've pulled myself in tightly, putting out only my spikes to face the world!
 | |
| By Abderitestatos (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
I'm working on it.
More often I've been indirect in my asking, not knowing how to ask or who to ask. In the context of work, the office/management culture combined with recieved "wisdom" about needing help equalling weakness, meant that I often felt unable to safely ask for help. To be fair to my employers, I dont think that the situation was helped by my own identity and self-worth being so closely tied up with my work(something I've been working on since reading this a few years ago).
I also didn't know until now, just how many other people feel the same! This week I googled "asking for help", and discovered a ton of people writing articles on this very subject. Two of the best are here, Dr Deb and here, How to ask for help ; just in case they are of help to someone reading this one day!
This week I've learned that asking for help might just be about choosing who to ask about what, and being clear about exactly what I want help with. Maybe in the past I wasn't clear or maybe even not honest with myself or others about the effects of, and extent of the depression and anxiety, so the person helping me wasn't clear either.
Then again, there was so much wrong at times, that if I'd asked for help (which sometimes happened), then the whole kit and caboodle would flood out, hence overwhelming the person I'd chosen to ask for help; and probably because they were the wrong person to ask in the first place!
Then there is me - on being given help, maybe I didn't tlike the answers I recieved sometimes. I thought I knew better or I didn't have the strength or motivation to follow it through.
What has to be thrown out today is the need to define myself by how things were in the past. I can still look back with understanding but that is not who I am now.
Lately I feel that I am asking the right people for help. I am also building my own self awareness and clarity, trying to clear out old stories and be kinder and honest with myself. Seeing how all that past stuff has led to the perceived aloneness I have felt for so long, but not beating myself up for that anymore!
It's time to think about who I am now, and to let the past me go to a certain extent.
What all this thinking about asking for help has really opened up for me this week, is the real need to draw on my own strong core, all my strengths, gifts, people that enrich my life, and how I am learning to trust myself.
Something else has opened up also, and that is the need for the spiritual dimension in my life to become more purposeful. Maybe I'll write more about that later.
This week's prompt has brought me back to the people in my life who have loved me with all their heart. I have been thinking particularly of my little sister and my friend, who both sent me mixtapes when I was far away from them, and to whom I sent many letters and music tapes too.
Here is some music from those times. In honour of the angry and very independent young woman I was.
It would help me greatly to hear your thoughts on asking for help.
Great post indeed... I always found it easier to give help... support others... lend them a helping hand... and I was always good at it but I failed to ask for it... i try to control everything... do everything by myself and not even ask my own husband for support... I run around like a headless chicken and I would not ask for help... maybe it is because I do not want to show that I may be weak...or maybe it was due to the countless times I did ask for help (a long time ago) and received answers that hurt or my feelings were brushed away as if they were ridiculous... I do not know... but what I do know is that I understand what you are going through and know how it feels...
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to ask for help... so hard to show someone your weakness or that you are in need of someone else's input... that you need to reply on others or need a crutch... it takes courage to risk the possibility of being turned down or brushed aside... I am slowly learning to ask for help... I find it easier every time I try... I have just started asked my husband to help me with a few things... slowly but surely the fear of or uncertainty of showing my dependence or weakness will go away... I do not have to ask for help whenever possible but it feels better to brainstorm for ideas on how to solve my problem or to work together as a team than doing everything on my own...
Great post!
Thank you so much, Jan, for diving into this so bravely. I am sorry that it took you to some dark places but I am also proud for the way that you circumnavigated them with such wisdom and grace.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I am learning is that asking for help when you don't receive it can suck. I mean, obviously, it sucks to need help in the first place but it can suck big time when people don't just offer help, because that's something you'd do for them without question.
But the biggest lesson I received last week is that it sucks a lot more if you expect from someone what they are not capable of giving. And then it sucks a trillion times on top of that if you blame yourself for their shortcomings in relation to your needs.
I can't help but wonder if the trick is in, as you say, asking the right people for the help that you know they can give and allowing yourself for being grateful for that... without trying to ignore or refute that fact that it sucks in the first place.
My therapist calls this "living with complexity" and I am learning to quite like it actually! :-)
It helps to know that many of us feel similar tensions about asking for help. To know we are not alone and to learn something from each other's words is just so precious. Thank you.
ReplyDelete