You would think that accepting help would be easier than giving it, yet it is the opposite for me. I can give of myself so easily. I listen, I problem-solve, I help complete tasks… the list goes on. It’s receiving support that feels so vulnerable to me. At times, accepting help can feel insurmountable.
For my entire life, I have internalized this belief that asking for help was burdensome to other people. Unwittingly, I have believed that accepting help was weak, selfish, or just plain troublesome to other people. As a result, I’ve learned to become highly self-sufficient, expecting very little help from other people. Often, I have found that I am more comfortable with just doing things myself. And yet that strategy often backfires on me, sooner or later. I get burned out. I feel resentful. I start to blame other people for not doing their “fair share,” even though I’ve never once communicated my needs or asked for support. Even now, as I’ve grown in my awareness of the support I need, it still feels so difficult for me to openly articulate. I can feel the words get caught in my throat before I can ask for help. Why is it so difficult?
In the United States, we are taught the value of “rugged individualism.” You grow up hearing the importance of self-reliance. We highlight those who achieve greatness (seemingly) all by themselves, either through hard work or sheer genius. We idolize people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, or fucking Jeff Bezos — all without mentioning the many people they exploited to achieve their “greatness.” In contrast, we look down on those who fail at being entirely self-sufficient. The unhoused. The “welfare queens.” The lazy people who “just don’t want to work anymore.” The key message is, “You should not need anyone’s help. If you do need help, it’s probably because you did something wrong. It’s your fault.” It speaks volumes to our country’s values, including the degrees of racism, sexism, and classism within them.
In the span of a couple of months, COVID-19 exposed the myths of rugged individualism. Suddenly, minimum wage workers were revealed to be “essential.” The government effortlessly issued stimulus checks, paused student loan payments, and expanded relief to families and the unemployed. Where the government fell short, people helped others in their communities via mutual aid. It wasn’t rugged individualism that kept us safe during this pandemic. In fact, rugged individualism has often put us further into harm’s way. What has kept the world together are the ways we have acknowledged our interdependence and how we so desperately need one another. Not just in crisis, but every day.
Yesterday, I Googled “how to accept help” and came across an article from Psychology Today by Dr. Lisa Firestone, titled “How to Let People Help You.” In that article, she writes
In order to get better at accepting help, we have to stop seeing it as selfish, but rather as a healthy way to respond to others and enrich our relationships. The more we can accept, the more we have to offer. When we deny ourselves, we deny the people close to us. Generosity is a two-way street from which everyone benefits.
The line that struck me hardest was “When we deny ourselves, we deny the people close to us.” Oof. I’m trying to remember this and unlearn the messages I inherited about not asking for help, now, in my mid-30s. I’m trying to remember that asking for help is as healthy a part of any relationship as giving help, and that all healthy relationships are built on the foundations of mutualism. To attempt to live a life without dependence is, if not impossible, a life of poverty. It is healthy to seek support from others, building not only individual bonds but also a broader community of reciprocity. Maybe if we could each learn to accept help a little better, it would not only transform our own lives but the ways that we view and treat other people, as well.