Over the years, I’ve needed help on different levels pretty darn often. I’ve needed help carrying books, making supper, choosing an outfit, figuring out the best angle for an illustration, life advice, getting off the floor after passing out, dealing with loss and so much more.
Overshare: Asking for help is a weak point for me. In fact, I remember that it was officially listed a criticism given to me in a work evaluation 20 years ago.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t always ask for help when I need it.
It’s just 4 letters: H – E – L – P. It’s not even a word that’s hard to say, our sigh of pain almost sounds like “Help”.
Today, I would want to share a book through the aid of a time-machine with someone who was suffering and didn’t call out for help. They suffered for many years, in silence, no one knowing how much they were struggling.
Let’s do this!
I’d like to first address that I do not have a time-machine. Sorry…
As an Ayurvedic consultant, I noticed a correlation very early on how people feel, when people don’t ask for help, and how generally supported they are (or feel like they are). And that was the key. How individuals FEEL they are loved, understood and supported.
Activity time!
I’d like to propose some thinking and writing:
SET 1
- Who is in your personal help team? Try to name at least 10 people. They can be for different reasons. You can make columns like Work, Personal issues, Health concerns, Relationships, Cooking, …
- Determine your top 3 people who you can call on if you need help.
- Who do you help? Try to list as many people as you can think of that you help or are ready to help over the past few years. Divide by category if you’d like.
- Why do you help?
SET 2
- Do you generally feel understood and supported? Even if people don’t agree with what you do.
- When we feel we are not supported, who can you consider to ask for help? (This is a tricky one, I’m sorry)
Sidenote: I’d like to highlight that there are always people out there to help. In particular, there are groups relating to specific reasons why we need help (such as AA), but there are also making new connections through our interests.
Overshare: I’ve met some people who’ve reached out to me at work where we didn’t know one another very well, but the fact that we worked together. A simple invitation for tea opened the door to some great sharing and the beginning to some pretty amazing friendships which I am grateful for.
Another overshare: As a young parent, one of the best parts of the early years was the support group I created along with a few other new moms. We committed to one another and got together weekly and connected all the time. We were one another’s constant line of support and help. It was a wonderful feeling.
SET 3
- How do we know we need help?
Overshare: There was a time when as a young adult where I felt the world crumbling around me. Recently dumped by my boyfriend at the time, struggling in school and in life. Oh, and I had dyed my hair blond (well, attempted to), and needed to cut it off because I burnt it off so badly attempting to dye it.
Fun times, right?
I wasn’t going through what I felt was needing help necessarily, but I did know that I was having trouble. The thing is that I couldn’t define what “needing help” meant. I couldn’t understand how the whole process of asking/receiving help could work for me, if at all. It all felt too far and unknown.
Overshare again: There have been many other times when I needed help. This particular event was one when I was so down and so lost that I could not imagine a way out, and that’s why I’m sharing about it.
Overshare more: As a kid with learning issues, I was perpetually sinking. I could have asked for help… but I didn’t know what needing help vs. not needed help felt like. Weird, I know… In my children’s education and for other kids I’ve helped out, I’ve stressed time and time again that asking for help is often the only way to feel good in learning. Sometimes, no matter how hard we work to understand something, we can’t do it on our own. No one can read our mind and how we feel. We have to own needing help.
What could I have done? What we can we do when we are feeling that we need help?
SET 4
- Do you know what needing help feels like for you?
- Do you ask for help?
- What keeps you from asking for help?
SET 5
- Does looking for “the right help” keep you from asking someone? How do we know who to ask for “the right help”?
- How can you feel comfortable to ask for help?
Sidenote: As I write this, we’re approximately 10 months into the 2020 Covid crisis. Everyone I know, and I’m sure you’re no different, has been affected by this in a myriad ways. Some ways are more obscure than others because we don’t see them, much like the virus itself. During this time, pretty much everyone has needed help in some way or another. For some, it’s as seemingly simple as needing a hug. For others, it’s needing work and stability. But the need to feel safe, to have predictability, stability and tradition, human contact, fun and unpredictability of whimsy and so much more are all real needs. All of which are also hard to ask for help in.
“I might bother them”
Reality check: Yes, you might bother people. That is, indeed, a risk. But let’s define “bother” in this case, because it’s not the “bother” we might think it is. Truly, if we call someone and ask for help, we think we are making our issues more important than the issues the other is undoubtedly living. We might feel like we’re applying unwanted pressure.
Truth check: We don’t know what others are truly living, thinking and feeling. We don’t know how important each person’s problems are because there is no measuring of problems. We also don’t know how they think and feel about collaborating with us to work through what we are living.
Respect, liberty and the right to change
Respect: I respect your issues and I hope you respect mine. Through respect, we welcome people to approach us and we can feel respected for what we living.
Liberty: People are allowed to want to help and are allowed to not. They are allowed to reach out to us and they are allowed to find other help. We are also free to reach out to who we feel is best.
Right to change: What is a problem for me today, might in the past have have felt like nothing. But due to a combination of things, it is a problem for me today.
“I don’t want people to think I’m weak”
Overshare: I don’t like to bother others and I feel that everyone has enough issues and life to handle. But ultimately, what keeps people from reaching out to others is that I don’t want people to think I can’t hack it. I know, it’s stupid.
“What other people think of me is none of my business.”
-Lana Del Rey, Wayne Dyer, Gary Oldman, RuPaul, Anthony Hopkins, and many, many other people…
We talk to children facing bullying about being brave to speak up. We tell them that being brave isn’t an absence of fear, but working through fear to say what needs to be said to be able to help.
Being brave is feeling weak and still speaking up. Strength is being able to find the best way to handle a situation and sometimes, that’s through finding the team to handle it.
Solutions?
So, I’ve addressed a few questions here, but it all comes down to the same principles:
- Awareness
- Trust
- Plunging into the unknown
- Speak
- Being brave
- Knowing that everyone needs something at some point
- Giving people freedom to want to help or not
Ultimately, in looking for the solution to needing help comes to us opening up and inviting collaboration from our personal community.
Collaboration & Community
A good way to know if we need help is to keep communication open with our support team, our own personal community. If you don’t realize you need help, one of them certainly will be able to tell.
We change the message from “I need your help” to “I’d like us to work together at something”.
Collaborating is something I think about a lot. I think back at people working together towards a common goal and to address helping others as a team, coming in and making the best of the situation.
The bonds that strengthen relationships often come through sharing our vulnerabilities and trusting our team.
REFLECTION:
Think back at your most precious relationships. What were the things that made the relationship strong? Odds are there were a lot of moments of collaboration, listening, sharing and being there.
Clearly identifying the need
When we need help from our mechanic to work on our car, we know what we need. We need help with our car. Sometimes, it’s very clear: I need the tires changed. Sometimes, it’s more ambiguous: Something is rattling and I don’t know what it is.
Either way, we know it’s for the car and we know a mechanic is the right place to go.
In life, we might have the same clarity and ambiguity about our issues.
Top 5 feelings I dislike
Overshare: The feeling of not being able to help is probably more of an issue for me than needing help – weird, right?
I don’t deal so great with not being able to help. I don’t like feeling like loved ones need help but aren’t reaching out.
The Goal
Simply, my goal is that we feel like asking for help is normal, beautiful and natural. We can’t do life on our own. Life is alive and we can do more as a team than solo.
I wish for all of us that we feel that there is help just a nudge, text or phone call away and that through that help, we feel more connected to the best of ourselves.
Ask, help is out there.
Karine