lifehacker.com: Asking for or accepting help can bring up a wide range of complicated emotions. There’s the fear of being seen as needy or weak; the nervousness associated with showing vulnerability; or the worry that asking for help means you are entitled. But as hard as it can be to accept help from others, giving and receiving is a necessary part of life.
10 comments:
If there is one thing I am terrible at, it is asking people for help. Whether it be a tiny request that has zero consequences or a major ask, I have so much trouble approaching someone to ask a question. This article covers this issue, but I feel like it is very short and doesn’t go all that into depth about the issue. It suggests one possible cause and gives one little solution that is even shorter than the suggested cause. Considering that it is intended to be a guide on how to get better at asking for and accepting help, it certainly does not do a lot of that. The last section of the article prompts the reader to think about how it feels when someone asks me for help. And yes – there certainly is a feeling of gratification in being able to help someone else out, but my brain simply can’t apply that line of reasoning when the situation is flipped and I am the one asking for help. Why? I simply could not tell you. I think I would have to leave that question up to a therapist or a psychiatrist, so I suppose it will remain a mystery.
It seems to be so common in this industry that we take on/accept that which is thrust upon us is far more than we can chew. In an industry that asks so much of you personally it can be challenging sometimes to see the line where ambition dies and pride begins. A lot of people are too prideful to ask for help and wind up having to fail to juggle nine things in comparison to successfully juggling seven.
I think there is this ingrained pressure in the entertainment industry to not let down your peers, as though if you took a moment to focus on yourself, you will miss some crucial moment that you could have been there to make a difference and therefore through your absence you have hurt the rest of the team. I think we need to start normalizing that it is okay to take a step back every now and then if the alternative is burning out dropping out of your career at a time you otherwise would not have.
These kinds of articles are always a little intriguing to me.. but rarely give me new or informative ideas. I think asking for help is something we learn, or have to learn. And its an interesting discussion, but this article is too short and too broad to really get very far at all. For me, asking for help is about trust. (And, also, what exactly I need help with. Context plays a huge role here). Trusting someone makes it a heck of a lot easier for me to ask someone for help. Because it can be a vulnerable experience. Their idea at the end was interesting, because of course I am happy to help someone when they ask me for some support, but I just think theres a lot more here than what they say. I could go on and on about how I think about asking for help, but I don’t think that is a discussion for now. I think I just wanted a little more from this article, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with their ideas on this.
From personal experience, I feel like the hardest part is pinpointing what the actual issue is. Don't get me wrong, it's nerve wracking and a little defeating asking for help, especially when other people don't have to. But I just don't know how to ask for specifically what I need. But there's no shame in being weird figuring it out, learning, and growing as a person. I've also realized nothing in life is selfless. Everything we do is transactional and there's no use in keeping such strict rules for myself striving for complete selflessness. So, there's no harm in asking for what you need. You just have to recognize when you're neck deep in problems and crying at night that you might actually need help instead of powering through. Ope, not me accidentally venting on the green page.
Whatever! Know the warning signs, drink water, and accept the help that people want to give you! They only want to help because they care and want good things for you.
I really needed this article. I have never really been good at asking for help. I actually vividly remember yelling at my mom that I needed no help whatsoever at about eleven years old. As adults, it has been drilled into our minds from an early age that asking for help makes you weak or says that you're not good enough. At least, that's what's been drilled into my mind. I do agree that struggling to ask for help stems from some part of your childhood, and I think that it's really easy to blame parents for everything they could have possibly done "wrong." However, I think it's important to remember that every human being in completely different thus making it impossible for there to be a "correct" way to parent. In terms of the tips suggested by the article, I had never thought of asking for help as a sort of muscle to exercise. Practicing by asking for small things over and over to make myself more comfortable is a completely new idea that I will be trying out.
I think that asking for help is a criminally underrated skill. I am terrible at it, but I know that it's not a sign of weakness or anything, more a way of knowing what you can do, and what you cannot.I think the reason why asking for help is often looked down upon in so many cases, and so many circumstances, is because of the idea of strength. But what these ideas fail to realize, and what I keep telling myself, is that asking for help, or recognizing when you need help is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength, and it is a sign of smartness.I think it takes a lot for anybody to be able to step back and examine the situation and to realize that they need help and then ask for it. If you're able to do that, it does make your life a whole lot easier. You're not trying desperately to overcome obstacles you're not able to overcome on your own.
Not asking for help is something that I constantly get in trouble for. I’m sure some of it stems from childhood, though not all of it. What really stopped me from asking for help happened as an adult. I was an intern and not only were my needs completely ignored by the company, but during the last third if my ten-month internship an employee used me asking for help as an excuse to harass me. She repeatedly called me stupid to my face and said it to other employees in the company and to guest designers that I was working with. This was one of many things she did. I did eventually report her behavior to the Managing Director (me asking for help, again), after another employee saw her behavior and told be to report it. Not that anything happened, he gaslit me and turned it all around on me. Asking for help is not my strong suit, and it is something that I am working on improving day by day. But it takes time to break what is essentially a survival instinct. It’ll take time, but I’ll get there eventually.
It’s nice the article pointed out ways to start improving asking for help such as starting small but I also think it focused too much on why some people tend to not ask for help versus how to actually accept it as the title implies. In this program in particular I feel like there’s a culture of just figuring it out yourself–not because it’s hard to ask for help or accept it–but simply because of pressure to just go for it and being judged if you don’t already know how to do something. I think asking for help is important outside of the classroom as well but it can be hard with time constraints and the idea that if “you just make it to x” then you’ll be fine and it’s difficult to slow down and even recognize you might need help.
Oh man, is this the article for me. I'm terrible at accepting help, and even worse at asking for it. It's not that I think receiving help from others is a bad thing, and I'm not too proud to accept that I'm struggling, I just feel guilty burdening others. It's interesting that the article cites behavior developed in childhood as a huge motivator for shirking help as an adult. I know that I, for many reasons, adapted to helping myself during my formative years. When we learn to problem-solve and cope alone, it becomes especially difficult to reach out for support. The article calls it an extreme form of independence... I'd say it's something else. The best way I can articulate this is that because I know that I can help myself, I will endure the struggle. Maybe it's a lack of trust more than independence. Either way, I think people who are used to coping alone give off the impression that they're fine and handling it, so no one offers to help. It's a double-edged sword that way. But I do like the advice the article imparts: to start small with low-stakes requests and build a support network that way. It's much easier to accept help on the big things when you have a foundation of accepting help for benign issues.
This article talks about a topic that I find to be very pertinent, especially in the kind of design environment we actively find ourselves in, and that is accepting help. I am really glad the article specifically brings light to the traumatic history of people that could lead to a person denying help; that is to say that people can be physiologically damaged from neglect within their childhood that specifically leads them to feel guilty or weak when asking for/needing help. I really relate to this point, especially growing up in a negative environment, and as an oldest sibling. It all comes down to the fact that we as individuals do not know the feelings and experiences of those around us; and we likely never fully will. It’s really important to learn people’s boundaries, and actively try not to underestimate any specific person or their abilities. However, we also want to be able to create an environment with people where you can actively give and receive helpful criticism to help each other fluently develop your own knowledge and skill sets.
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