Are You Letting Your Trauma Prevent You From Seeking Help?
Image: Vitaly Gariev Unsplash
Do you say I’m fine a lot when you really need some help?
Do you often state I can do it on my own?
Do you say don’t worry I can do it, when someone offers you help?
Do you feel like a burden when asking for help?
What’s common about all those statements above is that they are your trauma wounds speaking. Ones that you had to develop when no one came to help you when you were younger. The responses that you learnt meant that you weren’t seen as demanding or weak or bothersome to a caregiver. However, now as an adult they mean that you’ve stopped asking altogether for help for fear of looking weak or feeling like a burden to the people in your life. These responses now keep you stuck in a pattern of not achieving some of the goals that you desire. It often keeps you in the loop of saying I know what I’m meant to do but I still can’t make it happen.
When I was about 10 years of age, I was in grade 4 and in the school that I went to they split the grade 4’s into two grade 5 classes. As part of this process, we were asked who we wanted to be in a class with, I obviously put my best friend of that time down. As it turned out I didn’t get put in a class with my best friend. Now this isn’t where the trauma response came from, it came from my mother’s reaction to this event, basically it was suck it up and move on, little to no empathy for the child in tears saying she had just been separated from her best friend. In that moment unknowingly I made the decision that I couldn’t rely on my mother to provide me with emotional support. I will be honest I didn’t recognise this to be the event that created a hyper-independent me until much later in life. For a long time, I thought my independence was a strong suit of mine, not needing anyone to look after me, learning not to need emotional support and I still struggle with this a little bit even now. I am slowly learning to ask for help when I need it.
“Getting support is the way out of the loop not an admittance of failure”
Sarah Yeoman
Image: Brett Jordan Unsplash
One of the other ways that I recognise this has influenced my capacity to ask for help, as there is a part of me that when confronted with something that I know I should be able to do by myself but struggling to implement in some ways would rather stay stuck than ask for help. But that means that I end up stuck in a loop of never taking action, when what I really need is some support and getting that support is the way out of the loop and not and admittance of failure.
What I’ve come to realise is that getting the support I need will create an exit from the loop, it will take me out of the frustration that hangs around because nothing is changing, the annoyance that I can’t do it myself. I also know when studying my master's in nutrition that getting support often produces better results and more compliance. But I have still struggled to do this personally with my online business and aspects of my health since entering perimenopause. I keep buying courses where I get to sit on the periphery and diving down rabbit holes of self-study and feel like I’m achieving results when actually I am still stuck where I am years later. I’m not going to deny that the current business strategies don’t align to my values makes it more challenging but not impossible to find someone to help me. Or just because I know what to do when it comes to my health doesn’t mean that I can’t ask for help. It wasn’t until I recognised that it was tied to my childhood trauma that I can acknowledge that seeking help is not a sign of weakness or failure but it’s part of getting out of the loop.
I have couple of questions for you to contemplate:
Where have you told yourself that you must do it on your own?
What is your earliest memory of feeling like you couldn’t rely on anyone else? Who made you feel like this?
Where have you told yourself that it is a sign of failure that you cannot do this on your own?
Where have you told yourself that you cannot rely on anyone else because you have been let down in the past?
Where are you actually stopping yourself from receiving the help that would shift everything because you’re afraid of what taking action might mean?
Now when you answer these questions, listen to the little voice that might still be telling you that you can do it all on your own. Consider whose voice that might actually be, most likely a much younger version of yourself that’s been hurt and learnt that they couldn’t rely on anyone else. I always say that awareness is the key, without it nothing changes, but I’m going to add to it what are you going to do with that awareness? Are you going to let it continue to run the show and continue to tell yourself that you’re doing everything right and nothing is changing, or are you going to use that key to open a door of a different possibility? There is probably a part of you that is resistant to the idea of change because where you are feels safe. Change can bring up a lot of emotions as well, I’m not going to deny that, so part of this process is about what is it you really want. Do you really want what you say or is it what you think you want and that is why taking action feels challenging?
I am going to honour the fact that this is multi-layered and there are probably no simple answers to some of these questions, but asking them is still a starting point on a healing journey that requires you to be more honest with yourself. Honesty can feel challenging when there is probably a part of you that feels safe living the lie. I am currently sitting in this space with you. I’ve had it highlighted to me recently so I know the emotions coming up around feeling like a failure, not wanting to rely on other people so I can’t get let down again. Keeping hidden so that people don’t judge me. Buying another course to keep me distracted from taking action but feeling like I’m achieving something. But I have taken a step to getting help from a source that feels aligned and is already challenging some of my thinking which feels liberating, yet slightly daunting. I’m not sure what will come of it but I haven’t allowed that to stop me from taking action.
I’ll finish with asking what’s one small step that you can take that will get you closer to your desire? Who could you ask for support from? Obviously, I am available as a holistic counsellor but that wasn’t the point of the post it was highlighting that asking for support from an aligned source gives you an exit key from the loop you find yourself in and is not a sign of failure.