Transcript
This article is going to be spoken by me, Robert Strock on how to gracefully ask for help in times of need.
It is staggering the percentage of people that can’t ask for help in a way that makes it likely to be received well. It is staggering the percentage of people that can’t ask for help in a way that makes it likely to receive it well. Please take this in personally, especially when you need something important and you’re afraid of asking.
This is a big part of what keeps us individually wounded. And when we’re wounded and can’t help ourselves or ask for help, we can’t really help others nearly as well either. It is so important to master this skill with heart and intelligence for ourselves and the world.
Almost half the people I’ve met in my life, whether as a therapist, friend or family have great difficulty asking for help. You might be similar to them when it comes to seeking help, or you may be pretty good at asking for help when you need it. Still, I would venture that there are certain areas in your life where it’s harder for you to recognize that you need help and ask for it.
Fear of rejection, distrust of false self-image of self-sufficiency are some reasons why we shy away. Why you shy away from asking for help. If you were to look at yourself, where would you place your ability to see that you need some help? Just rank yourself on a one to ten scale and then look at the area just quickly where it’s hardest to ask for help.
What need do you have where? It’s really hard to say. You know what? I’d like a little more gentleness. I’d like you to hold me. I’d like to be able to feel like we can communicate about sex or whatever it is.
When we’re able to see that by asking for help, we open up avenues for others to love and care for us in ways that matter to them and make them feel good. One of the greatest ways we can live our lives with purpose and heart is to be on either end of giving or receiving help in times of need.
In fact, being able to help someone in deep need and feeling good about being a giver often blurs the concept of a giver and a receiver who’s who really both become very close to becoming one, and they’re both a central core of being alive. Being intimate and living from our truest potential.
The giver is grateful for being able to give someone they love something special. The receiver is grateful for being able to receive also from someone they love in the very best of life. It isn’t clear who is receiving more as both are united in love.
Why is it so important to ask for help? If you choose not to ask for help when you need it, especially when you have people around you who you can help, you are intentionally, perhaps unwittingly, withdrawing inside. It’s like putting yourself in solitary confinement when you have a chance to share an intimate experience with another.
Not asking for help is one of the biggest sources of reducing and eliminating intimacy. I’m going to repeat that not asking for help is one of the biggest sources of reducing and eliminating intimacy. It ensures nothing but isolation and little gratitude and closes the door to growth.
It also is a common defense against developing a more profound love, which hurts both of you and the person you don’t reach to. This isn’t something you should feel guilty about asking for help, but take a moment to reflect.
Learning how to ask for help gracefully inspires the potential for more intimate love and connection, moving from old wounds to create patterns of growth. More often than not, our inability to ask for help stems from wounds in our younger years. Seeing how the patterns from our upbringing can last until we die can help us become aware of them.
It requires us to recognize that this is not who we really are down deep, but it’s a pattern that’s keeping us frozen until we can thaw out by finding our courage. It’s not a moral standard that you should reach out to when you need help. Instead, it’s a sign of wisdom, self-compassion, and trust, which are hallmarks of maturity.
It’s a feature of a life oriented towards seeking out the answer to how can we be closer? Just feel how beautiful that is. How can we be closer? The unconscious can be a strange deceiver. It can make us feel natural. To be distant and dangerous. To be close.
The more clearly we can make these connections, the greater the chance that we can break the chains with our own sensibility. Our existing habits of how we behave don’t define our existing habits of how we behave. Don’t define who we are unless we die with them.
When we find the strength to break the original wounding pattern. We become both the liberator and the liberated. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big or small expansion. What matters is that we’re aware, honest and aspire to be our best selves and use that aspiration and get a feel even as you’re listening right now.
Get a feel for approaching anyone that you’re close to and see how you would ask for help. Not only the words, but the tone. The benefit you can create by finding that tone in your heart that makes it more likely.
What happens when we choose not to ask for help? There are many couples that have stopped being intimate for decades. This erosion of intimacy is rooted in the lack of finding the courage to ask for what they need or want.
It may be feelings of inadequacy because one of the persons can’t function the way they think they should be able to. They don’t want to expose this and perhaps ask for a different way of being touched, kissed, held, or sensually connected. This is so much more common than anyone realizes.
Only by getting to be a counselor can you see the back end of what’s really going on. Especially in long term relationships. It also applies to every relationship that there are levels and levels and levels where we can ask for more support.
There are many individuals that have gone through their whole life without asking for help. Not even when they felt really sick. Alone. Depressed, anxious. Of course, for this person it might be seen as being self-sufficient. Or it could be an aversion to being seen or to see oneself as needy or weak.
This is not seeing yourself clearly. It’s putting yourself down. It’s self rejection. Instead, you aspire as you’re listening. Right now, I. You aspire to be the one asking for help to your beloveds. We’ve all been this person in our lives.
If you can think of similar instances, can you maybe ask yourself this one poignant question? When you feel like you want someone close to you to treat you better, and they have the capacity to do it in a helpful way. Would it make more sense to ask for help or to withdraw? Would it make more sense to ask for help or to withdraw?
Now, obviously you know the answer. Can you visualize and imagine right now who it is and what you’re going to say? And what’s the vibe?
The power of the subconscious is quite astounding. Much more than virtually any of us realize. Our distaste or inability to ask for support doesn’t have to make sense at all. Our subconscious doesn’t want to ask. It wants to appear strong, Wrong, but it’s not feeling good. Don’t let the subconscious control you.
At times, I also can feel parts of me that have to double check when I ask for help. As feelings creep in and say, are you being needy? I smile when I’m aware of it and I hope I catch myself most of the time. My father and mother never modeled asking for help. Yours probably didn’t either, which I’m confident made me and my subconscious a bit unsure.
Insecure. Feeling like maybe I’m being inappropriate. Maybe I’m sucking. If you think it doesn’t apply to you, you’re either very rare or unaware. When in doubt and with someone with the capacity to help, it’s a good thing to rooting for, finding courage and the humility to ask the key.
Asking for help gracefully, not asking for help is one of the reasons that stops all kinds of relationships in the political world as well. Business, sports and causes rifts between nations. The potential of each of us working this out is almost unimaginable, as it seems so easy for many of us, but it is a culprit that comes with a great price.
We’re fighting wars because we can’t ask for help from another nation. We’re fighting battles because we can’t ask for help in our relationships.
Of course, there are some that ask for help every single time, more than they need or more than their loved one has the capacity for. This is a form of dependency that can be equally disturbing. Now this is unusual. You have to look closely. Are you really, really needy? If not, this isn’t you.
This requires communication between both parties involved. It is a worthwhile question to ask those that are close to you. Do you feel like I ask for too little or too much. This takes a bit of humility and courage. Yet it is a source of deepening love and trust.
It’s quite vital that we each do a self-assessment of where we fall on that continuum with the relationships that matter. We need to contemplate where the optimal place of asking would be most natural and complete.
Now, I would say for eighty or ninety percent of us, it’s to find the area and the areas that you really need something important. Let yourself see relationships where you might be the one giving or the one receiving. Or perhaps you don’t know which one you are.
This is a growth step waiting to happen, and when done sensitively, there’s virtually nothing to lose and so much to gain for everyone involved.