Asking for Help When You Can’t Pull Back Any Longer

My trust issues continue to abound, but help is healing them

Just the month after posting the first part of this series, I experienced the latest in a long line of setbacks: a labor dispute at the publisher of my investigative series kept the third part of the series from publication.

I had planned to write more about the issues at the heart of the series here, along with other topics. All these issues, I felt, were related, all stemming from the breakdowns in community that can make it so hard for us to ask for, much less receive, help in its various forms.

In fact, the timing of this labor dispute came just as much of the rest of the freelance journalism industry was, if not collapsing, then on very shaky ground. The more journalists were laid off, it seemed, the more of us competed with one another.

Yet publications’ freelance budgets were shrinking. Many journalists more experienced than I talked about their own struggles landing pitches and getting pieces published.

Unlikely help from an unexpected source

A few months previously, I’d picked up a part time job to help make ends meet. But the hours were limited, and the pay wasn’t much. I needed a better opportunity — and fast.

At that point, help arrived in the form of an invitation to apply for a steadier, more consistent job with one of my employer’s clients.

I balked at first. I didn’t want to run afoul of my employer’s ethics rules, even though they didn’t seem to extend to better hourly pay for what could be grueling work.

Ultimately, though, for nearly $4 more per hour, and the possibility of more responsibility as time went on, and — most importantly — supervisors who seemed to value me, the offer was too good to pass up.

My situation did improve. I indeed had better pay and more hours, work I liked that got me out of the house, and the opportunity to connect with parts of myself that had gone buried for so long, I’d forgotten they existed. I even got my fence repaired.

Under these conditions, I had started to get past my blocks in asking for help. But my writing career continued to founder. By June I was starting to wonder where the money was going to come from to survive.

One step forward, two steps back

Some people are able to ask for help from family. Mine was limited. Estranged from my parents, I turned to my mother’s half-siblings. They were willing, but had their own kids to help. I was still, for the most part, on my own.

Maybe this was all behind the nightmare I had about my son being hit by a car. I called 911 once I realized he had altered mental status — then was told the emergency room was full and no one could transport, much less assess him.

In the dream I was stuck wondering what to do because I didn’t want to move a patient with a head injury. I don’t remember what happened after that, though I do recall wondering how bad a trauma needed to be before someone would help.

I later journaled that if my son represented my inner child, and the car that hit him represented the abuse I experienced, then the ER represented anyone who was ever limited in their capacity or willingness to help. I can still feel stuck wondering how to move forward.

When I was growing up, asking for help always felt dangerous. There were the class bullies who mocked me for being stupid, teachers who wanted me to figure it out on my own, parents who often seemed simply not to feel like helping.

I was asking too much. I needed to be more considerate of others’ time and energy. I needed to give before I could receive. Hadn’t I seen what people were already giving me? What did I want them to do about it, anyway?

When they did help, I learned I wasn’t grateful enough for their efforts. There had been an expectation that I would pay them back, which I’d failed to meet whether I knew of the expectation or not. I wouldn't have tried hard enough, or I should have known what was expected.

Of course, I believed that since I was hearing this, others were hearing it too. That meant I couldn’t ask for help from a wider sphere: other people wouldn’t trust my intentions.

As an adult, thus, I found myself in a freeze response, becoming tongue tied when I wanted to ask for help. I couldn’t figure out how to communicate what I wanted, or needed. I couldn’t advocate for myself.

And I misjudged helpers. Whether I believed they would help me out of a sense of goodness, or mistook their exploitative goals for goodness, I always seemed to end up blaming myself for not seeing their true intentions.

And yet: I needed help.

Leveling the field of exchange

Just like in March, I couldn’t afford for my insecurities to be triggered again. When one of the office staff contacted me in early July to offer more part time hours in the office’s call center, I jumped. (Never mind that nearly 25 years previously, I’d sworn I would never work in a call center again.)

I didn’t know that I was walking into chaos. Earlier in the year, one of the managers had a mild stroke. A few weeks after I started, another manager suffered a terrible accident. The wife of a third manager died suddenly.

They needed my help as much as I needed theirs.

Happy to be promoted, nonetheless, I soon learned that my salary wouldn’t cover as many of my expenses as I hoped.

I picked up overtime hours, then realized how mentally and physically taxing that kind of schedule could be.

I cried in that widowed manager’s office. But even as we bonded, somewhat, over shared hardship, I felt triggered once again: had I forgotten myself, and revealed too much of my own vulnerability?

Then Hurricane Helene blew into town.

Among our team, thankfully, no one’s home was destroyed. But most of us had some kind of property damage. People were without power for days, internet for weeks. In that mix, we were all engaged with various degrees of storm recovery. 

Our own office was one of the latter. We found work to do, but we also found ourselves conversing more, getting to know one another a little better.

Stressed as I already was about finances, I thought I’d have to pay to have storm debris cleaned up and removed. I did a lot of the work myself, using loppers on smaller branches. But I didn’t know what I was going to do with them.

I continued to ponder the nature of vulnerability and trust following the election. Knowing so many of my coworkers had voted for a bully and abuser left me feeling, once more, that I couldn’t be sure whom to trust, what would be asked of me in return. I felt myself pulling back.

Then the county promised free roadside cleanup. I found a neighbor willing to cut up the remainder of my small fallen tree for $50. When it took him only 10 minutes, he told me the job would be free. My sons and I dragged everything out to the curb.

As for the stump left in my yard that the neighbor couldn’t tackle: I’d signed up for a free volunteer cleanup service the county offered. But weeks had passed without my hearing much at all. I thought it was because the work wasn't interesting or challenging enough compared to entire lines of fallen Leyland cypress.

Just as I was deciding I’d probably be able to manage it with a handsaw, a pair of Mormon men from a nearby neighborhood stopped by one evening after work. It took them about an hour to break up the stump, dig it out, and carry it to the curbside along with all the other debris. They even filled in and smoothed over the hole, making room for the coming year's garden.

Help is what takes us from survival to thriving

Rewiring my nervous system starts with noticing all the times people are available and do help. From there, I’ve found it easier to identify who they are, who they aren’t, and what kind of help they are or aren’t willing to offer.

Not that this is easy. I find myself wondering whether limited help is really just breadcrumbs I should refuse to accept, or if that makes me once more ungrateful. I wonder if it’s possible for me to ask for help too often, if people will start to judge me again for being overly dependent.

Then I remember that whoever the “real me” is, is just an illusion based on my own memories and experiences of who I am, which means that other people judge me based on their own memories and experiences.

This realization is simultaneously freeing and damning. But I’m learning that much as being seen and feeling judged by others hurts, my own fears of them judge them, too.

Sharing from survival mode introduces power differentials that can feel difficult to get out from under, but which are, ultimately, temporary. I’ve been learning to let exploitative humans have their motivations, while I detach my need for help from my need to get things done.

Maybe most importantly of all, I’m learning to grant myself space to pull back and get a breath — versus pushing myself “out of my comfort zone” so far I no longer recognize the landscape, and become overwhelmed.

I do still need help. Subscribe to my newsletter to read more essays like this one, share it if you think it’ll help other readers, or leave me a tip!