Help

Help wanted, but I'd rather die than ask for it.

For most people, asking for help is just a normal part of life. For those of us,

from dysfunctional families, it's one of the hardest things we'll ever do. We learned early that

needing help was dangerous, shameful, or pointless. So even as adults, asking feels almost impossible.

How our struggle to ask for help shows up. Number one, we wait until we're in

crisis before asking. We don't ask for help when things are manageable. We wait until we're drowning,

completely burn out, or in full breakdown mode. By the time we finally reach out, we're often so far

gone that we're ashamed of how bad it got which makes

asking even harder too we ask but we minimize or downplay what we actually need we say i'm fine

i just have a quick question when we're actually falling apart or we ask for a tiny piece of help

while hiding the full scope of what's going on. We ask for the bare minimum

and hope they'll read between the lines, which they usually don't. We over-explained, over-apologize,

or preemptively let people off the hook. When we do ask, it comes with a thousand disclaimers.

I'm so sorry to bother you. I know you're busy. No pressure at all. It's totally fine if you

can't. We give people every out before they even respond,

protecting ourselves from the rejection we're expecting. Four, we ask in ways that guarantee we won't

actually receive help. We ask the wrong person, someone we know can't or won't help at the wrong

time when they're clearly unavailable or in a way that's so

vague or indirect that they don't even realize we're asking it lets us say i tried while never

actually risking being vulnerable five we help everyone else but refuse to receive help ourselves

we're the first person there when someone else needs something,

...