Why Asking For Help Feels Hard?

I don’t know about you but there is something about asking others for help that causes me to feel inadequate. How about you?

But every time I have asked for help and received it, I’ve often learned something and expanded my own world as well as given someone else the opportunity to give to me. I am a giver you see, someone that will be the first to put up my hand to help someone, first to say I can do it! I love being a giver, but it makes me a terrible receiver. Do you know what I mean?

As soon as someone wants to do something for me, I’m up to help them and can’t sit still. I’m the best person to invite to a house party as I’ll be the one helping in the kitchen and likely clearing up the rubbish at the end of the night. Anyone else the same?

I always thought this was a good trait, but if I look at it from another side perhaps its not. My inability to receive and feel good with it could make me look ungrateful or controlling as I need to do it my way or the highway. This has been very eye opening as I get back into the dating scene and I notice myself being uncomfortable to receive from a guy like I would need to pay him back.

I seem to be a score keeper if a friend does something for me then I try to make sure I do something back, why? I don’t keep score when I help someone, I don’t assume that I will get something back I do it because I like to help, and it makes me feel good. There it was the imbalance in giving verses receiving. Which of course makes it hard to ask for help as I had a score board to monitor.

Now don’t get me wrong being self sufficient and capable has got me an amazing life but I certainly could have got things quicker if I had been welling to ask for help. Asking for help is my last resort when often I have spent hours trying to figure it out myself or finding any solutions, so I don’t have to say those three little words ‘I need help?’

Now you could blame my upbringing of always being told to try it yourself and don’t ask for help until you really need it. But even when I really need it, it feels painful to ask. How about you? We all know someone that always needs help and aren’t they so annoying? You just want to shout, ‘Do it yourself lazy bugger?’ and often it’s quicker for me to do it for them, so I do.

There you have it in a nutshell the reason I can’t ask for help ‘I don’t want to be annoying’ and ‘I’ll have to pay them back’. Add on the belief that it has to be done my way so it’s right! Is a nightmare! Is this the same for you?

When you rarely ask for help how can you be annoying, but my mind has linked the two, so I needed to reverse this thinking and use my coaching tools to undo the years of conditioning. Secondly my score board of paying people back who help me. I needed to remind myself that when I give its because I enjoy it so I should remember that when I am receiving. I’m giving the other person an opportunity to feel good about helping me.

Lastly is them having to do it my way, this was the hardest for me to change and through my own awareness and coaching tools. I’m now in a place where I can let go and it doesn’t have to be my way. I don’t rush in to take over as it’s not important to me anymore how its done, just that its done. But I also have a trick on how to get someone to do it the way that I want if it’s super important.

Asking for help is smart and, in a society, where time equals money you want to be as efficient as possible and not waste it.