How do I ask for help?
Yet again, I have been ill… I’ve been working too hard and not looking after myself properly… trying to take over the world and forgetting to get my beauty sleep. And this time I’ve had an added problem that I haven’t really encountered before… I’ve been alone.
I have spent most of the last two years+ living alone, but I had a significant other at the other end of an online messaging service to pander to my every emotional whim. And before that, although my marriage may not have been the stuff that happily ever afters are made of, I had been known to get a glass of water with my paracetamol, when I was ill.
These last three days I have been feeling like death and without an other half to lean on, I’ve been groping around in the dark, not really knowing how to get the support I need. I’ve been sleeping between sobbing fits, until I was well enough to go downstairs and sit on my little square pouffe (being without any comfy furniture right now) and cry into my latest easy to make and nutritionally empty meal.
My question is a simple one. “How do I ask for help?” I would have liked someone to keep me company a little bit. I could have done with someone to pick up some painkillers when I ran out and had to suffer with headaches. I really could have done with some decent food to help me recover. I wasn’t asking for anything out of this world, but the problem was I wasn’t asking! Why wasn’t I asking? I like to think I’d help someone else in a similar situation.
I had one friend who was able to pick up from cryptic messages on facebook that I was somewhat under the weather, but even then I didn’t pursue. I even told her I didn’t know how to ask for help, but still didn’t actually let her know what I needed. I would like to thank her though for taking the time to check if I was ok.
I considered putting a call out on facebook, but that felt desperate. I thought about texting a couple of friends and asking them if they could do one of my three tasks required above, but that felt plain rude. A phone call was out of the question, my voice had completely disappeared!
I did actually text another friend telling them how crap I was feeling and it was completely ignored… I am hoping to receive an apologetic text in the near future about how the phone had been dropped down the loo and they had just got the message or that some tragedy had befallen them that makes my poorliness pale in comparison… I am also not holding my breath.
I am feeling much better now, although my voice has still not returned enough to hold a sensible phone conversation. For next time, I am now asking from anyone reading this… How do I ask for help?
Jan
x
Asking for help is always a bind, because if like me its a sign of weakness. This time last year after months of headaches and wrong diagnosises from Doctors I was at the end of my tether. Headaches are a sure sign something is not right and I physically was getting weaker and weaker. Nobody knew that I was becoming more and more emotionally fragile and was hitting severe depression and anxity until one saturday when I went to a freinds house for tea. I got there and started to cry and told her (and it seems laughable now) that I beleieved I was dying. I cried for 8 hours solid and it was only then that I asked for help. I went and saw a different doctor who diagnosed muscle damage on my neck, which was causing the pain and was put on antidepressents because the anxiety was making the headaches ten times worse and I had got into a vicious circle. So in a long about way you should not be ashamed to ask for help, because true friends will be there and I was the one you texted, Im sorry but didtnt get it and you can kick my ass later because I would never let you suffer.
Oh no, you weren’t the one I texted. That person now knows who they are and they do not think it was unacceptable to ignore my text, as that is what they did. Lesson learnt – I won’t be turning there for help again.
Thanks for the response. Jx
Asking for help – if only we could do it! If only it was easy. And yet so many of us find it one of life’s hardest tasks, even when we’d happily give away our time, money and love to help others we can’t ask for ourselves.
What gets in the way? Well, the first is not knowing that we need help. We can get so used to doing it all for ourselves that it never crosses our minds that it would just be so much easier to not have to do it on our own. So STEP 1 is recognising that we need it.
Then there’s Step 2, knowing that it’s ok to ask. Sounds really simple and it’s such a minefield. Here we encounter all that garbage like “I don’t deserve it”, “no one will help anyway”, “they’ll think I’m weak/ a failure/ a mess/ a cry-baby/ a burden” . . . . the list here is endless. We need to recognise that this is the voice of doom in our heads and IT’S NOT REAL. We do deserve help, there are people that will help (maybe not the ones we wanted or expected to, often total strangers, maybe not the people we asked first) when we ask them. And they won’t help if we don’t ask! Especially if we give off that “I’m a grown-up, I’ll cope, I have to be in charge” stuff.
And of course step 3 is asking. Saying out loud “I need help”. Hearing it come out of our mouths whilst silencing all the voices from Step 2 – ‘cos they are not going to like it! It can make it easier to ask for very specific things like “I need someone to bring me some milk and half a dozen eggs” or “Would you proof read this document for me”? Most people will respond more readily to a specific than a vague request.
And there’s a Step 4. Celebrating having asked – rather than beating yourself up for the next 3 weeks for being weak and pathetic.
So Jan – celebrate this blog post. Acknowledge how brave you were to write it. And get well soon.
love
Tilla
Thank you, Tilla. I definately feel like celebrating. My friend, Catherine, has just popped round and met all three of my needs – painkillers, food and, most importantly, company. I am feeling much closer to recovered and I’m experiencing the value of asking for help.
Next time, I’m hoping I can progress to stage 3 without having to create this whole song and dance about it.