Asking for Help

Feeling like you can’t count on anyone is one of the loneliest feelings there is. Hyper-vigilance combined with staunch independence is the recipe for a closed heart. The emotional pain that comes from needing help and being rejected is one of the worst heartbreaks I’ve ever dealt with. The feeling of being a burden to someone (and having them confirm it) is just as bad.

Learning to ask for help has been a complicated and messy lesson for me to learn. I wasn’t born not knowing how to ask for help, after all, infants are literally helpless. When we’re babies we rely on everyone around us to provide us with care and protection, and we do so without shame. When the world (through our caregivers) starts projecting shame onto us (and programming it into us) depends on your specific situation. For me, it was early.

I have vivid memories of being a burden as young as I can remember. Whether it was being beat over the head with a hairbrush for crying about my tangles while getting ready for my first day of kindergarten, or being screamed at for trying to get myself something to drink and making a mess, I was constantly being made to feel stupid and useless. The feeling of feeling someone else’s contempt for me became very familiar. I learned quickly, for self-preservation’s sake, to take care of myself.

This followed me into my interpersonal relationships throughout my life. I wasn’t the kind of person that selfishness came easily to. I was a nurturer and a caretaker. I was a lover! So I protected myself by over-giving. I became the king of “I’m good, how are you?!” I refused to let anyone see me suffer, not even when the suffering felt unbearable.

This lead me to becoming extremely resentful and bone-weary lonely. Even if I had more friends than I could handle, I always had this overwhelming feeling that none of them really knew me. My family had taught me how to put on a happy face and pretend until I believed it. I was good at it. But because of this, I only attracted people who were attracted to my over-giving. The people I was closest to were always takers. I didn’t have boundaries and no one expected me to. I was constantly distracting myself by putting out other people’s fires, meanwhile my house was in cinders.

Those inevitable moments when I would need to feel vulnerable, when something would happen where a normal person with healthy relationships would have a supportive community, I had no one. I was left to pick up my own pieces again and again. For a long while, I saw this as proof that I wasn’t worth helping—that I was broken and destined to keep everyone at arm’s length. I developed a kind of nihilism about the inherent selfishness of people. I withdrew and got numb and started going about giving up.

But divinely, at times annoyingly, the Universe had other plans. Once someone showed me they were never going to come through for me (sometimes it took a couple handfuls of times lol), I couldn’t bring myself to show up for them anymore. My heart started selectively hardening. Without realizing it, I was developing a boundary around reciprocity. I had such a tenuous grasp on it, I couldn’t have even put it into words at that time, but I started moving away from people who expected my codependency while giving nothing in return. Not a thank you or a kiss my ass or nothin’. In fact, they were often more keen to point out the ways I had fallen short. Instead, I started gravitating towards relationships that felt more reciprocal. This was a years-long process that I often stumbled through. I accidentally pushed away many people that loved me, and got too caught up with people who really didn’t. I got burned and burned in return, but considering where I started? I can give myself grace for that (even if no one else will).

Asking for help, or even just letting people in, has become a daily practice. All of the relationships I have established in the last half-decade, and some who came with me from the before times, get to experience the real me. They know the real me. They don’t put me on a pedestal as someone who doesn’t suffer. They don’t see me as some kind of maternal martyr. They allow me to be myself, in good moments and in difficult ones. In that energy, I am able to give them the same. The energy is able to flow freely and reciprocally and no one is ever drained dry. We become a circuit, recharging each other and it is such a pleasant surprise.

When you’re stuck in the muck of codependent relationships, it can feel like love, friendship, family, community will always be a burden. This is where avoidant attachment styles come from. The prospect of being loved doesn’t feel worth the misery connection brings with it. But when you’re in relationships based on mutual love and respect, as well as reciprocal giving and receiving, everything becomes so effortless. Not to mention that all of our burdens feel lighter when our loved ones can help us bare the weight of them.

If you often find yourself over-giving to protect yourself from needing anyone or from truly being seen, consider why. Think about how you react when someone asks you for help. Do you feel like they are a huge burden who isn’t worth the effort, or do you feel honored to step up for them and show them how loved they are? Who in your life do you feel like gives as good as you do? Who has the loyalty, the compassion, the empathy? Who truly sees you? Try asking them for help. Even if it’s for something small.

When you first start putting in the effort to be vulnerable with your loved ones, there is often a period of resistance and rejection. Everyone who was attracted to you because they perceived you as weak or easy to take advantage of, will start to repel from you. They will poke all your deepest wounds and your biggest fears. They will belittle, reject, abandon, guilt, or try to control you. Stay strong. Those kinds of reactions are just clues to the fact that they aren’t your people. Try not to take this as evidence that you will never get to experience real love or belonging. You will. The purge of the negative from your life is part of the process. Train yourself to appreciate the people who come through for you more than you resent the people who don’t. Soon enough, you’ll notice the shift.

Finally, asking for help is a radical act of anti-capitalist empowerment. The “I Am a Rock, I Am an Island” mode of operating is nothing but white supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchal propaganda. Anyone who claims to be thriving under these conditions is not a reliable narrator. At the very least they aren’t looking at themselves or their lives holistically. Humans are communal mammals—we are meant to work collaboratively. No man is an island, he’s just extremely avoidant.

So remember, when you ask for help, you are challenging the status quo and helping make the world a little bit softer for those who come after you, regardless of what the reaction to your vulnerability is. Be brave, be open, honor your boundaries, and when you need to, ask for help.

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