Asking for Help: Taking a Mental Trust Fall
I watched helplessly as the flood waters rose. Panicking, my husband and I tried to barricade certain areas of our apartment with anything absorbent. Towels. Old clothes. Spare bed sheets. We tried to bail out as much water as we could, which was really only effective in reducing the helplessness we felt versus actually making an impact on the rising water.
If you live in the Midwest you know about the torrential downpours that appear out of nowhere, dumping down on everything in sight. It happens a handful of times a year and if you don’t actually get caught in one of these storms they can be pretty cool to watch. On this night, however, it was pure hell and high water.
The hours ticked by into the early morning as we dealt with the clean up, but we knew that there was going to be damage to our home. The next 48 hours were spent in some denial of the amount of damage until we got the news that the hardwood floors needed to be ripped up and about 2 feet of drywall around our apartment needed to be cut out to avoid any mold forming. This meant that we were out of a home for the foreseeable future...Crap!
This was the time to call on my support system, both for emotional support and physical...because we needed somewhere to live for the month. This is a topic that gets brought up a lot in the therapy room: support systems. What are they? When do I need to use them? How do I form one? And probably the most difficult part: When I need it, how do I ask for help?
In my case, my husband is the biggest support I have and I’m lucky to have someone I feel comfortable with asking for help. However, when we are both going through a shit storm we rely on our friends to be there for us. This is often a very vulnerable experience for me. It’s one thing to ask for a listening ear to air some extra stress, it’s much bigger to ask for a temporary home for a month.
One of my friends put it best: Asking for help is like a mental trust fall. You feel fairly certain that people will be there to catch you, but right before you ask comes the worry. Will they be available? Am I asking too much? Will they just begrudgingly say yes?
Setting up a good support system takes time because of how trust is formed. We form trust by sharing bits about ourselves and seeing how people take it in. If it goes well, we share more. Once enough trust is formed we can begin to ask for small things of our supporters and increase those asks over time. Remember: in any relationship give and take is a must, so make sure you’re also available to show up for those in your life when they ask something of you.
When you ask for help, be yourself. It’s okay to show your nerves and awkwardness (like me) when you explain the situation. It’s best to be genuine. Express how you’re feeling, whether it’s wishing you didn’t have to ask, or being grateful to have people in your lives to ask in the first place. Be direct instead of beating around the bush. Don’t hint at what you need. If you just need to be heard, ask for it. If you need a place to stay for a month, ask for it. And of course, express all of your appreciation for their support.
As I deal with the aftermath of this flood, I realize that I know people are there to support me and my husband. Even though I know that, it hasn’t made it any easier to actually ask for the help we need. It really is like standing with your back toward a group of people and falling, hoping that they will catch you. I’m grateful that so far, that has been the case with this crisis. Next time you’re in need of help, take a deep breath and fall back on your support system. Even though it’s scary and takes a lot of trust, it’s worth it to have the support.