Do You Really Want People to “Just Ask for Help”?

CW: self-harm, suicide, animal injury

At the wildlife sanctuary where I once volunteered, one of the non-releasable rescue raccoons died of complications from a perforated intestine. A necropsy revealed she’d swallowed something metal and sharp — a nail or screw or something.

Hadn’t she shown any signs of being injured? I asked at one point.

No, the director told me.Wild animals normally don’t display signs of distress. It might attract predators.

That was, as they say on the interwebz, a hard relate.

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do has been to ask for help

In the weeks after I separated from my children’s father,I found people to be most willing to help when I was able togive them something specificto work with: “please mow my lawn because I let it grow too tall while I was busy sorting my life,” for one.

Other requests included: “help me clear out the neglected brush in my yard in case I need to sell this place,” and “that home cooked meal you offered would be great on Thursday if you could.”

But as weeks turned into months, help was less easy to come by.It was as if people expected me to have “moved on,” or at least, to be sufficiently self-sufficient that I shouldn’t need help.

Or else, that was my projection. I thought I shouldn’t need help. I thought asking would be imposing. I thought it would look like I was trying to take advantage. Like I was mooching off their good will. Like I needed to learn to stand on my own two feet.

Indeed, after two clients dropped my contracts at once, I reached out to the husband of a friend who had started to work on rebuilding my rickety fence.I’d already purchased materials before the income crisis; I just wanted to finish the project.

I couldn’t pay the labor he’d asked for, though. If a job came my way, the mortgage would be priority.

He never answered me.

It compounded all the things I already believed about myself: that at heart, I was merely “whining” or “manipulating” to get my way.

Did I ask for much help after that? No. No, I did not.

It’s not as simple as “just reaching out”

People put a lot of stock in asking for help. Online, especially, they exhort connections suffering from depression to reach out “anytime.”They post and repost the National Suicide Prevention number.

Sometimes they talk about the good times they shared with someone who died, as if trying to make their followers ‘see the light’ of how valuable they are. (Plot twist: it’s just as likely at least one follower will think they have no one to talk about them in such glowing terms.)

I don’t believe this kind of social activity is “virtue signaling” so much as it is classic good intentions. People like to think of themselves as heroes, the good guy who did a good thing, the friend or coworker who knew just the right thing to say.

On some level, maybe they’re also inviting good karma; a bulwark against some unknown future in which they themselves will need help.

Ultimately, though, I think people who say “just reach out” become overly focused on suicide prevention in a way that doesn’t examine ‘lesser’ forms of mental health struggles.They likely don’t realize what’s involved with being reached out to.

It’s not your friend walking up and telling you “I’m suicidal.” To say something as vulnerable as that takes hours upon hours of trust-building, deep conversation, which takes a lot of time and emotional bandwidth.

It takes real love to help someone deal with the outsized, intense emotions of an anxiety attack or PTSD episode. It takes time to quietly hold space.It takes the recognition that ‘help’ can look very different from person to person.

“Just reaching out” can come out sideways, leaking through the cracks of an otherwise sparkling veneer.Other times, people who are struggling often push other people away, sometimes hard.They can step all over your carefully constructed boundaries, or simply have bad timing.

Even the most generous among us can find themselves having to choose between a friend’s venting phone call, and some other need or obligation —say, a child’s recital scheduled between business trips, or a critical deadline, or a partner’s own emotional crisis.

There’s a reason people say “We never knew they were struggling” or “I knew they were having problems, but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

The dark side of good intentions

I worry that people can get so caught up in their own best intentions —their own narratives — that they lose touch with the compassion that inspired their intentions.

I’ve encountered this when I felt expected to be grateful for the intentions themselves, instead of disappointed by the limited or lack of follow-through.That brought back uncomfortable memories of years past, when such expectations were tied to judgments of my character.

I’ve been dismissed as “dramatic” or “overly sensitive” or “too depressing.”I’ve been told things like, “Everyone struggles with that,” or “suck it up, buttercup,” or “life is hard, we all have to deal with it.”

I’ve been asked, “What do you want me to do about it?” as if I’m supposed to have it all figured out already.

I’ve heard about the liars they’ve known or heard about from other family or friends. About the times they’ve been disbelieved.If they had to go through something alone, they tell me, then so should I. After all, they turned out OK. (Or did they?)

It feels as if there are only certain ways to ask for help, or certain kinds of help available. That I should already know this.

That I should be cognizant and rational enough, at least, to think past my heaviest emotions and the pressure I feel to recognize, articulate, and express what I need.

And that when I’m at my neediest, I should be able to understand that other people have limits and sometimes I’m just not a priority.

The people who say these things don’t recognize that sometimes can feel like all the time when you hear it from enough people, enough times.

At best, thus, people with the best of intentions often forget what vulnerability really means. At worst, they know exactly what vulnerability means, and that’s the point.

Some people fetishize vulnerability.They need to feel needed, and it becomes more about their ego or meeting their own emotional needs than it does about yours. Over time, you start to feel invisible, or worse, your vulnerability gets used against you later on.

You might start to hear that you’re unstable because of your “episodes” or the fact that you don’t remember what you said during them or simply that you ask for too much help, and they “have better things to do.”

Sometimes, the people who are supposed to help us the most, hurt us the most.

Hurt people struggle to connect with others

I’ve been gently chastised in the past for not giving friends the opportunity to step up for me. On the flip side of that, though, is not giving them the power to decide whether to turn me down or give me a dose of ‘tough love’ they think I need.

It sounds terrible unless you’re able to recognize that it’s possible to seek help from the worst kind of people because 1) they’re your ‘normal,’ a twisted form of familiarity you turn to in times of stress; and 2) you learned you don’t deserve the time and energy of healthier people.

That dynamic creates a double whammy: when the people we’re close to can’t be trusted, we still can’t figure out how to forge relationships with healthier people we aren’t close to.Their healthy boundaries can even look like unhealthy barriers designed to keep us out, reinforcing our worst beliefs about ourselves.

These dynamics have an isolating effect, including making it more difficult for us to know how to ask for help. For example:

• I often struggle to articulate what I need.Years of hearing that there was a “right way” to ask for something, or that my timing was poor, left me tongue-tied throughout adulthood.
• I’m usually not even sure what it is I need, or I think the thing I need will be too much to ask. That’s particularly true when I’ve been in the grips of a depression, afraid I’ll burden that listening ear.
• I can tend to operate between one extreme of believing it’s safe to ask anything and everything, anytime; and the other extreme of believing I’m incapable of honoring others’ time and energy while receiving help.
• The vulnerability of needing help often feels threatening to me. While I judge myself for taking advantage of others,I really fear whoever steps up will be looking to take advantage of me.

It’s easier to never ask at all.

How can we actually help our friends in need?

All of the above should have clued you in that we live in a deeply dysfunctional society. We fear each other now instead of respecting and honoring one another; instead of mirroring each other’s best, we project and reflect our worst.

Even people who have benefited from mainly healthy, stable, secure relationships in life can struggle with fear, if they don’t understand how dynamics like the ones I described above can isolate people and undermine community.

We’re only trying to protect ourselves. Yet in doing so, we fail to remember that vulnerability requires a softening of boundaries, and that this is required to fulfill our biological need as humans for normal, healthy intimacy.

Our fear speaks volumes about our past experiences with being victims.“Victim” is a dirty word in our society. We don’t like helplessness.We will tolerate “survivors” as long as they don’t talk too much or too long about being victims.

Thus I worry that as a society, we invoke mental health services, community services, or even government services like law enforcement because we are a culture of “let someone else deal with it who is better equipped than I am.”

In doing so, we may not recognize that the services themselves are not always well resourced and in many cases might even do more harm than good, including being used as tools of abuse.

The good news is, there is still plenty we can do to correct the situation.More than exhorting people we know to “just reach out and ask,” it’s worth our while — and our loved ones’ — to do some extra work around our beliefs.

Some questions to answer in your journal or groups you might be a part of that can help facilitate the conversation:

Are you more or less comfortable helping people you already know or trust, versus those (like coworkers or neighbors) you don’t know as well? Why?

When someone asks for help, do you feel confident in your ability to follow through, even if they aren’t clear on what they need? Why or why not?

Have you ever felt uncomfortable turning a friend away who asked for help? Why or why not?

Have you ever enforced a boundary and told someone they were asking too much? What happened? How did that affect you and your willingness to help or be helped later on?

Think about when you’ve asked for help in the past:

• What made you trust the person or people you asked?
• Did they come through for you, or let you down?
• How did either outcome affect you, either in terms of your relationship with them, or how you felt about yourself?

If you trusted someone who let you down either repeatedly or maliciously, what did you do and why? How did this affect you and your other relationships?

These questions and answers are, of course, only a start.We should also be actively working to build communities, whether physically, virtually, or as part of our personal networks. Strong communities are in a better position not just to identify problems, but also rectify them without the burden falling on one or a few people all the time.

Some action steps

Take the time to learn what community resources exist in your location. Shelters, food pantries, soup kitchens, youth outreach, addiction recovery, and legal aid are some examples among many.

Also take the time to understand where these resources fall short. A shelter may not be able to take in your friend whose marriage is abusive, if no threats have been made. Or you may live in a food desert or rural area where it’s harder to access services.

Understand what resources and skills you have that others may not. If you have a vehicle in good working order, you may want to offer to take people where they need to go, or bring back supplies for them. If you have consistent internet service, help them with research and form fills. And yes, consider helping with basic trade skills and tools.

If you want to suggest therapy, then also offer help in finding a good therapist or group. If your friend is struggling financially, offer to help pay for some sessions and/or prescriptions. If there’s a group, offer to attend with them over their first few meetings until they find a sponsor they trust.

Understand cultural and communication barriers to accessing services and support. Learn the fundamentals of another language, as well as how to be a good advocate.

Most of all, remember that help is not ‘rescue.’ Friends need encouragement, but often the verbal kind doesn’t go far enough for those who don’t believe they can do it on their own. You yourself may not be able to ‘rescue’ someone — but you can show up when you say you will, and be there with them on their path.

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