This week's blog is written by my favorite person - Jon Ackerman. For those of you who don't know us very well, I'm also married to him! Several weeks ago, Jon and I were having a conversation about the idea of asking for help and all the things that come with that. I thought he had a lot of great things to say and so asked him to guest blog for me. He graciously agreed! Check out what he has to say...
I really don’t like asking for help.
Really.
At all.
I like being able to do things myself. I like trying to handle things that life throws my way. And there’s nothing wrong with either of those sentiments. But if I’m being honest, that’s not my deepest motivation.
In the interest of full disclosure, I really don’t like asking for help because…
I often feel like I’m supposed to know how to do it myself.
I’m afraid I’ll be a burden on someone else’s time, energy, and resources.
I worry about what “they” will think if I ask for help -- that I’m ridiculous or lazy or stupid, etc.
Yet here’s what I’ve found fascinating as I continue to grow and mature…I ask for help all the time and have never once seen any of those concerns materialize.
I take my car to a mechanic because I don’t know nearly enough to maintain the vehicle on my own. Are there times when I feel like I’m supposed to know more (particularly since I’m a guy)? Sure. But not once has the mechanic thrown the keys back at me and told me to go back home and do it myself. They happily take my money in exchange for providing a level of expertise and care that I simply don’t possess.
Along those same lines, the kitchen sink started to back up a couple of months ago. I know a little more about plumbing than I do cars, and at first, it wasn’t bad, so I tried using a gentle drain cleaner for a couple of days. I then tried snaking the drain. After almost a week of inconvenience and unsuccessful measures, I even resorted to disassembling the trap and snaking down into the stack to find the clog. After trying everything I knew to try -- and having made zero progress in removing the clog -- I had to ask a professional for help. And when the plumber showed up, instead of feeling embarrassed or ashamed, I felt an incredible sense of relief that I could turn this over to a skilled and capable professional who could think about the problem in ways I can’t.
More importantly, when the plumber showed up, we found out the problem wasn’t with a clog but with a faulty vent…something I didn’t know enough about to diagnose or fix.
Which brings me to the point.
I’ve started to realize just how many people we feel comfortable asking to help us do things we know we can’t do on our own. A mechanic. Plumber. Electrician. Doctor. Accountant. Experts who can help us resolve issues when we’ve exhausted everything we know to do.
I’ve also realized there seems to be a handful of places where most people genuinely believe they don’t need help…or worse, that they’re supposed to be able to figure it out on their own.
Their mental and emotional health.
Their marriage.
Parenting.
As someone that struggles to ask for help, I understand the discomfort. But it seems like these 3 areas, in particular, create a special kind of unhealthy self-sufficiency that fiercely resists inviting a third party into the mess. In many cases, we’ll double down on the best we know to do and persist even when the best we know to do isn’t solving the problem.
For myself, I first needed to see that, much like with my attempts to fix the kitchen drain, my best efforts weren’t going to solve some of my problems. I could keep pouring drain cleaner down that drain in the hopes that the 10th or 12th time might somehow yield a different result. I could snake the same drain twice a day for a month, trying to solve a problem that turned out to be a symptom of something much different. And I could fervently hope that all of my efforts weren’t unintentionally making things worse. Or I could call the person who had the tools and the training to help me understand and do something I couldn’t do on my own.
I needed help to get through the pain of my first marriage ending and to better understand the unhealthy things I had contributed to it.
I needed help to get to the root of my need to be self-sufficient.
I needed help to stop turning to food when I was anxious, sad, or angry.
And I’m so very grateful I was willing to ask for that help…and stick with that help. There are now things I’m able to handle in my internal world that I never thought I’d be skilled and experienced enough to handle. And there are still many things that I know I’m not able to handle on my own.
And so I ask for help…again.
I still struggle with asking. And I know I’m not the only one.
But I’ve finally realized that the only thing harder than not asking for help…is living with a clogged sink.
Want to talk more? Please feel free to send me an email or schedule some one-on-one time with me. And consider subscribing to my blog, where I post lots of helpful suggestions on how you can begin (and continue) this journey of recovering your blueprint!
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