How Do We Ask For Help?

I love Paul Williams’ line, “When I got honest and egoless, I found the help I needed.”  This can be tough for a lot of us.  Getting real with oneself is no easy feat.  We all live with a curtain of denial around us.  It serves as a protector so we can function through most things in our lives.  But when our life and functioning ability is being diminished, it’s high time we open that curtain and expose our difficulty to the light. For it is when we shed light upon it that we can begin the work of chipping away at it.

We have to put aside bravado and bring forth vulnerability.  We have to acknowledge to ourselves that we are {all} flawed and that there’s no shame in that.

We have to “give ourselves permission to be human” with all that that entails.  Feeling those icky feelings – of shame, fear, powerlessness- they’re all part of being human.  If we look them in the face, meet them head-on, and dance with them awhile, they will go through us and start to lose some of their grip.  We will then be more open to facing our issues.

It’s said that courage is not the lack of fear; it’s feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Sometimes we’re afraid of what we might find when we open up our pandoras box.  We may not like the outcome of examining the problem.  I once spoke to a friend trying to encourage him to get professional help.  His response to me,“ If I delve into my marriage too much, I may discover I really want to get divorced and I can’t do that, so I’m not going there.”  It takes courage to examine a problem.  There’s fear of the unknown; where will it take me?

It takes strength of character to be ready and willing to deal with the issue, to walk on an unpaved path.

Getting help gets us more in touch with ourselves, with our inner core.  It peels away some of those layers of protection.  Scary, you bet.  Painful, oh yes.  Hurtful, yup. Hard work, of course.

But it’s eventually freeing and liberating.  And healing.   Getting that elephant out of the closet makes room for new and wonderful things to go in.

We need to shed our:

Bravado

Ego

Pride

Shame

Weakness (recognize it’s really strength)

Fear

And embrace our:

Flawed self

Pain

Vulnerability

Strength

Honesty

Emotions (all of them- the good, the bad and the ugly)

There’s a heavy price to pay for not getting help.  A compromised life, untapped rich potential in oneself, pain and suffering.

“Will you help me?  I need help.”   These are the expressions of courage, honesty and strength.

 

How are you with asking for help?  Is it hard for you?  

Thank you for reading.  I hope you’ll share this post.