Do you struggle with asking for help?

[Ziggiddy]

More than one thread topic have led me to thinking about the difficulties some of us have in reaching out for help or how hard on ourselves we can be for even needing help.

Is it harder if you have BPD somewhere in your circle/family? Does the disordered person's behaviour affect your ability to reach out?

I remember one time driving a friend's car on a busy freeway and it broke down. I was stranded there with a mass of traffic rushing by just trying to wave someone down to help (this was before everyone had their own mobile phone) I remember feeling deeply ashamed even though it was not my fault - not even my car! And super extra grateful when someone DID stop to help me.

It seems rational to expect that as human beings in the human family, it would be a natural thing but I confess it is a deeply distressing thing for me to have to ask for help especially with emotional issues.

Add to that the fact that I am extremely sensitised to being rejected for asking for help even if the person has a good and true reason to not be able to help.

How do you go with this issue?

Do you have a line of thought or a motto that helps you to reach out? how do you cope if you don't get the help you need?

And also how do you respond if you do get the help?

I feel the compulsion to shower them with over appreciation and gifts and thank you cards for even bothering!

[Turkish]

Do you think that a tendency to either reject help, or at least resist in seeking it may be the carryover from being a neglected child who had to take care of or raise herself?

[Ziggiddy]

Turkish that is a good question. More so because it raises in me issues that are oblique to it and till a few minutes ago never thought to examine. (It never ceases to amaze me how many deficits there are in my cognitive thinking! It's exciting and hopeful to think there are other ways of looking at things and it reinforces my decision to reach out.)

It doesn't feel like I was neglected although it is clear upon examination that I was.

I wonder if the more profound effect - fear and shame are born of believing I wasn't worth providing emotional support for.

Hmmm. I need to think more on that.

Also why it's shame-based.

I am this minute remembering being in hospital with a head injury in intensive care and my mum crying and telling me how stupid it was of me to get in a car with someone who might have an accident. How worried she was. What it put her through. I remember apologising before going unconscious again.

Oh dear that is loosening something inside my chest.

There may not have been room in our family for anyone else to be emotionally supported.

[Ziggiddy]

and for some reason I am picturing you falling asleep in your spaghetti and it's making me sad and happy at the same time! 

[Woolspinner2000]

Ziggiddy,

This is a great topic, one I have often struggled with. I can remember when my d1 came home to visit many years ago and started cleaning up the kitchen, tidying and scrubbing. I hadn't asked her to help, she was just trying to help ease my load. I had the most interesting reaction. I panicked inside of myself and felt like an absolute failure which truly had nothing to do with her and everything to do with my past.

The feeling of being a failure when someone else was cleaning meant I couldn't get it done myself - that was the failure. I should've been able to get it all done myself without help. Those were/are the voices from my FOO. As I've been reliving memories the past few months, I've been able to recall a uBPDm who would yell at me and say she guessed I wasn't capable of doing the job she'd given me, that she would have to do it herself. She would shame me and I would offer to finish it, but usually she'd tell me to go away, making me feel miserable that I caused my mom more work in her busy life. It didn't matter that she would expect me to do an adult's job or that she'd not instruct me in how to do it, yet she'd expect me to know how to do it and then criticize me for doing it wrong.

Now I do better (generally) at accepting help, but I'm still not good at asking, especially with kitchen duties. I have to consciously make the choice to accept help as it isn't easy for me. It is my opportunity to bless them with receiving their gift when it is truly given. When someone does help, I'm like you in that I gush all over and thank them. I'm learning to tame back the gush and just say thank you, but my mind wants to gush anyway, as if I'm undeserving of help and they stooped down to assist. D2 said she once wondered why I never ask for help. Now she cheers when I ask. 

I am this minute remembering being in hospital with a head injury in intensive care and my mum crying and telling me how stupid it was of me to get in a car with someone who might have an accident. How worried she was. What it put her through. I remember apologising before going unconscious again.

How very sad! That you would feel the need to apologize when you were injured, but I understand. That we caused extra pain to them is why we do it, yet it clearly was the focus on her emotional pain that she emphasized, and obviously had nothing to do with the dire state of injury you were in. Have a little care for your wonderful child is what I wish to say to such a selfish pwBPD. This is about the child, not about you!

Wools

[Turkish]

and for some reason I am picturing you falling asleep in your spaghetti and it's making me sad and happy at the same time! 

I'm glad my dysfunctional childhood is entertaining. No, seriously. Humor is often a mask for anger which is a mask for pain. I just made that up, feel free to use it 

Seriously, there are many moments in my childhood which I find funny because they are so absurd. Like the time when I was 15 and my mom was raging on me. My buddy rode up on his dirt bike. My mom turned to him and switched, "you know, you're such a cute boy!" Grabbing his helmut, then halfway turning to me and saying, "unlike areshole here!" (ass). Almost 30 years later, it's still an inside joke between my buddy and I and sometimes we are talking, or in certain situations, it just seems appropriate to mimic those words. Writing this, I am even chuckling now.

So you weren't overtly neglected, but emotionally. Invalidated. Didn't feel safe showing your feelings, but instead told how to feel, even if implicitly. Of could.rse you're going to carry those  forward. The good thing is that you are aware of this, and it's not too late to drag yourself kicking and screaming through the threshold of change...

I know why I am the way I am, and my Super Independent Man raised issues with my uBPD somewhat codependent Ex. I'm not the guy who whines for care when he is sick. I'm the guy who when 17 pushed his motorcycle a 1/4 mile, then hobbled another 1/4 mile with multiple lacerations, an exposed kneecap bone and a severed quadricep after hitting a deer at 60 mph at night on his motorbike. My hands were slick with blood. I had to right my big using my forearms because the handlebars kept slipping out of my grasp. My mom was the 3rd person I called for assistance. Random strangers finallydrove me to the hospital and my mom met me there, despite me being only 3 miles away and the hospital 10. I was three weeks from moving out of her house forever. At that time, my leg was still in a brace, the knee wound was still open after surgery, and I was on crutches. I still crutched it almost a mile hobble to college and back to the apartment. Good times! Seriously.

[Harri]

Hi Ziggiddy.  I too have trouble asking for and receiving help.

Is it harder if you have BPD somewhere in your circle/family? Does the disordered person's behaviour affect your ability to reach out?

I think it is harder because my family's behavior made it so very difficult.  Everything was a chore and a big deal growing up... .and that set off land mines.  The fallout was incredible too, affecting not just me but my brother and father as well.  So rather than slightly inconveniencing someone when I needed help, it became a burden.  It was all about my mother/family.  If I got sick, it was about how upset and stressed she was.  Asking for help or needing help just added to the instability and that caused me even more stress.  I see all of this carrying over into my other relationships.

Just recently I asked my brother for help (a temporary loan) and yes, he came through but he is very much like my mother in some ways.  Every time we talk about my financial situation, he tells me how stressed, worried and upset *he* is and while I appreciate that he cares, this is *my* issue and I am at the center of the whole mess.  Hearing about how this is affecting him just adds to my stress levels and as I do not want to be the cause of anyone getting upset, it makes it that much harder to ask.  I also find myself feeling frustrated and hurt that I can't just be the needy one... .I have to then hold up the other people and take care of them-- it ends up being easier to just deal with things on my own or waiting until the big part is over and then share.  On top of all that is the fact that I do feel shame for being in the position I am in.  Similar to you, when I got sick, I actually apologized to my family and my ex. because I knew they would be stressed.

ugh... .I could go on and on here.  I think what it boils down to is:

1) I fear the fallout and adding to someones burden. (boundary issue)

2) I do not believe I am worthy of another's attention and concern (self-esteem issue)

3) Asking for help will often lead to even more stress and anxiety rather than relief and feeling supported (?)

4) I feel frustrated that when I have asked for help it was because I truly needed it but have been lectured about the need to take care of myself (this is in relation to my ex and I have come to see that it was projection on his part.  Plus I think he was/is a closet misogynist  )

I have had some times where friends/people will actually help, sometimes without me even asking!  That usually brings tears to my eyes and I feel an ache in my chest... .and then I feel like this person is my friend for life and yes, I then feel compelled to over thank and praise (I have learned to tone this down a bit, but the compulsion is there)  I notice I feel surprised they care and are willing to spend time to help me. 

There may not have been room in our family for anyone else to be emotionally supported.

Yeah.  That sounds about right in a family with a BPD parent.  I have no motto or mantra to address this.  It becomes a matter of taking a leap and seeing what happens.  I try to remind myself that I can trust me to handle any outcome and that I have tried to every other option first. 

It does not help with the whole feeling needy and unworthy part tho. 

Sorry, I was all rambly here. 

[Ziggiddy]

1) I fear the fallout and adding to someones burden. (boundary issue)

2) I do not believe I am worthy of another's attention and concern (self-esteem issue)

3) Asking for help will often lead to even more stress and anxiety rather than relief and feeling supported (?)

4) I feel frustrated that when I have asked for help it was because I truly needed it but have been lectured about the need to take care of myself

I have had some times where friends/people will actually help, sometimes without me even asking!  That usually brings tears to my eyes and I feel an ache in my chest... .and then I feel like this person is my friend for life and yes, I then feel compelled to over thank and praise (I have learned to tone this down a bit, but the compulsion is there)  I notice I feel surprised they care and are willing to spend time to help me. 

  It becomes a matter of taking a leap and seeing what happens.  I try to remind myself that I can trust me to handle any outcome and that I have tried to every other option first.   

Some really interesting points in here, Harri. Quite helpful for me to read.

1 - fearing adding to another's burden. Does this come from feeling you are a burden? I feel like I am. or have until recently. I have found it really helps to try and realise that many many other people may feel like they are a burden on me when they are truly not. it is a great leap of faith to say 'Can you help me without punishing me?' I think a problem has arisen for me in this in the past because I continued to attract abusive people so it skewed my population idea! If 80% of the people I asked for help responded by making me feel I was a burden then they must be right, right? Except when I realised 8 out of 10 of my 'friends' were sponging taking and selfish. And very VERY happy to guilt trip me for asking or for not giving.

(Say it with me "Smarmy gits"!)

Like that meme - before you diagnose yourself with depression make sure you are not, in fact surrounded by (say it with me) SMARMY GITS!

2. Not being worthy of another's attention/gifts. oh I so SO get this. My work on this is mostly about identifying toxic shame that was acquired by beleiving what my mother told me. I work against it by noting that she was and is INCREDIBLY grabby and sponging. So why is it ok for her to ask anybody and everybody for help in every possible way - including getting me to ask MY friends to help her (so she is spared owing them the favour)?

There's imbalance there, at best. I jump on the other end of the seesaw - she deserves all therefore I deserve nothing. Hmmm. Feels true but doesn't seem fair. or logical, Captain.

3. Asking for help creates more stress because you might get it! I have often resorted to financial transactions in order to avoid this feeling. If I contract the work then I know EXACTLY what the cost will be, whether I can meet that cost and that there will be no further cost later. All quite different from asking BPDm for something.

No wonder it is nerve racking - it will cost and cost and cost. in terms of pride kicking "Ha! You need me. You can't do things yourself." as well as guilt 'Well I WAS going to use this money for me but I suppose ... ." and in terms of future accounting "You have no right to ____ - remember when i lent you that money? now it's YOUR turn to help ME out." She gets to determine the reward and it's ALWAYS worth 50 times the value of the 'loan' So yeah. I get that.

4.I should be able to take care of myself. Well no one is an island. And unforeseeable circumstances befall us all. Do you think earthquake victims or people who have suffered crimes perpetrated on them should have taken care of themselves? life is too unpredictable. not everything that happens to us is our own fault.

I guess I conclude now that asking for help is not as much of a problem as choosing the right person to ask for help

Zig