Help! Five Courageous Truths about Giving and Receiving Help
You have a belief about both giving and receiving help that is part of your core belief system.
These beliefs have the power to dictate how you conduct your relationships, business and the rest of your life.
When was the last time you could have really used help?
Did you request help from anyone?
How does it feel to ask for help?
There are two sides to the experience of help that we may or may not even consider, depending on what our beliefs are about it.
Many of us go about life, often keeping things tidy with a dualistic belief about help. “I’m the one who helps” or “I’m the one who needs help.” It often seems reasonable to us to ascribe to a simplistic perspective of this equation.
There are those of us who identify with being the ones on the giving side of the equation.
And there are those of us who identify with being the receiving side of the equation.
With a long career in education and non-profit leadership, can you guess which side of the equation I felt most familiar with?
What if our belief about help is faulty? What if it’s getting in the way of our own resilience and the resilience of others?
This dualistic, polarized perspective of help can undermine the very essence of why we’re here and what we’re wired for. Connection.
There are five courageous truths that are important to consider as we lead, ask for support and support others.
1. We’re all wired for connection. Everything in this human life is about connection. The greatest pain any of us experience is that of disconnection. We were never meant to do life alone. Helping others and receiving help is vulnerable and courageous.
Let’s be clear here that asking for help should never be used to hotwire connection or manipulate….but when we need help, asking for it creates a powerful bond between people. My first experience with English as a Second Language made such an impression on me when I was partnered with a family who was experiencing their first winter in Canada. Giving and receiving made this an incredibly rich experience that I’ll never forget.
2. The most meaningful connection is two sided. I learned this when my own life went sideways. The people I had given to were much less invested in me than those who I had a reciprocal relationship with. The trouble is that some of us only show up when giving is possible. This can leave helpers lonely and very alone when we most need connection.
When we separate the world into healers and wounded, both sides lose out on the opportunity to connect. Connecting appropriately, depending on the context is also important to take note of.
3. Asking for help is hard, and it’s essential. Asking for help is critical for everyone, because we all need it. If not asking for help is part of your identity, you might want to reframe that. Even the most capable caregivers need help, belonging, hope, support, love and connection. Many of us who are caregivers or on the helping side of the equation believe that it is our obligation to help others at all costs.
From her extensive research about relationships, Dr. Brené Brown says, “We cannot give what we do not have.” It is important for us to both give and receive. If you’re still objecting, ask yourself, “What is getting in the way of being on the receiving side of this equation?”
4. Asking for help is vulnerable. Vulnerability is an often misunderstood experience and emotion. Some of us understand it to be the magical key ingredient to every relationship. Others understand it to be something avoided at all costs. Vulnerability has both a dark and a lighter side. Both are essential elements of the emotion. Because vulnerability has both a light and dark side, choosing vulnerability appropriately has the potential to build trust, resilience, empathy, love, belonging.
Over the years I have noticed that help very often comes from the most unexpected places. If you ask for help in one direction and you find yourself disappointed, don’t let that deter you. You may just need a different audience for your request. This is brave, gritty, tenacious and important.
5. Vulnerability creates connection… and we’re right back to #1. Imagine a world with increased trust, love, empathy, belonging, hope, resilience, creativity and less scarcity, comparison, judgement and criticism. Asking for help increases our capacity for these elements of life that we most desire.
An Uncomfortable Truth
Seeing people who need help can be very uncomfortable. Many of us want to distance ourselves from pain. One way to do that is to believe we are above it, that another person’s story could never be ours.
There are times when we, as helpers, unknowingly judge those we help because we may even silently think of ourselves as superior. This is the dark side of giving help. We all have the need to feel seen, heard and understood. Without support, we become less effective over time.
A kinder way of looking at help, because life is both wonderful and hard, is to close the gap and understand that all of us need help sometimes and that is not bad.
For those of us who see ourselves as Helpers…..If we see giving and helping as the only side of the equation that is permissible for us, we may unwittingly create a gap between the helped and the helper? Over time the result can be burnout and disconnection.
Unfortunately many of us are so capable that we don’t ask for help until we’ve hit a wall. That wall can spell disaster for us. The fallout may include many people around us.
Asking for help is the ultimate act of self-compassion and it is courageous.
Where are you currently trying too hard to keep things together without help?
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
Pema Chodron
Questions for Self-Reflection:
I want to be perceived as…..
I do not want to be perceived as….
What do these unwanted beliefs about help mean to me?
Why are these beliefs about help unwanted?
Where did the messages that fuel these beliefs come from?
What do I need help for today? Who is the best person to ask?
Do you know a helper who needs to read this? Please share.