Asking for help should be easy … or is it?

by convenor on 11/11/2013

In our earlier post we asked you to tell us how to overcome the difficulty that some Shut-in Seniors face in asking for help to book their Rides. To help you with that question, we are reproducing an approach suggested in wikiHow, below:

“While it may sound simple enough, accepting help is something that is extremely challenging for all of us at one time or another. It can be especially hard for those of us that believe that seeking help undermines our independence and our ability to cope. However the truth is that by refusing to accept help we ignore the fact that we are social beings who need to co-operate with one another in order to ensure that we thrive.

Seeing taking help from others as a weakness is often a very ingrained pattern of thinking and may be hard to overcome. However there are ways of changing how you think. The following suggestions may help you overcome seeing accepting help as a sign of weakness and allow you to develop a healthier sense of interdependence with those around you.

 Expect some paradoxes. In opening yourself up to others by asking for help, a couple of key paradoxes will confront you. Rather than seeing this as a challenge, look for solutions to your concern about being seen as too weak:

  • Abating your fear of rejection: In fearing rejection, you open yourself up to allowing others to be the judge of your worth. This is needier by far than asking for tangible help! Don’t let your self-view be coloured by how you think others might or might not choose to accept you.

 

  •  Strength: In order to seek help, you need to be strong enough to accept that you have weaknesses (remember, no-one is perfect!), and you need to be stronger still to accept help. While burying problems may seem strong, it is the same as running and hiding.

 

  • Giving: In order to get, you need to give. If you keep cutting yourself off from opening up to others, you risk not sharing       your skills, talents, and abilities with others in need of help. In giving of yourself (your time, your listening ear, your love, your care, etc.), you are helping another to learn more about you, to be able to care for you, and to feel that you reciprocate the attention that they bestow upon you. In helping another person, you cease to focus on yourself. And when you cease to focus on yourself, it is far easier to accept support back from the other.

 

  • Trust: In order to receive help, you need to trust the other person and to trust that you’re worthy of help (self-respect). This might be the hardest part but it is absolutely vital. Wholesome, accepting, self-assured trust is capable of absorbing rejection, attracting genuine help, and will easily detect the occasional exploitative person. (In the case of meeting an exploitative person, remember that it is about their karma, not your worth.)”

Your suggestions for turning wikiHows thoughts into concrete actions that HillsCarPal can take or contribute to will be greatly appreciated.

 

The HillsCarPal Team

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