Why Do I Hate Asking for Help: What your Past Experiences May Be Telling You (From an EMDR Perspective)
Difficulty asking for help can stem from many different areas for different people. But sometimes, it can be a trauma response. Oftentimes, my clients sit on the other side of the room saying to me, I don’t have trauma, I had a good childhood, nothing bad has happened to me, yet why do I have so much anxiety and difficulty relying on others? But when we start digging deeper into the roots of their anxiety, suddenly negative past experiences pop up as possible sources of triggers and overwhelm in the present. This is because their anxious responses in situations often resemble trauma responses.
Let’s take a closer look at why you might hate asking for help.
Here’s Why You Hate Asking for Help
You’re scared of loosing control.
Anxiety thrives on the unknown. Control is power. If you are out of control, you’ve lost. And you’ve had experiences where you’ve felt out of control and promised yourself you wouldn’t feel that way again.
Your anxiety tells you, ‘You are a burden’.
Maybe you’ve had actual negative experiences in the past where you asked for help and felt rejected. As a result, now in future situations your perception is someone will think of you as a burden, no matter what.
You’re worried asking for help makes you look weak or incompetent.
These worries can be connected to underlying fears of being vulnerable or trusting others, living by perfectionistic tendencies in order to be accepted or because of learned cultural or familial messages. This can even be connected to not having had reliable people in your life so you’ve had to learn to fend for and depend upon yourself only.
You may be scared of letting other’s down (aka people pleasing).
Because you’ve had experiences that have taught you you’re not accepted. So now, you go the nth degree to help others rather than ask for help yourself.
What Your Past Experiences May Be Telling You About Your Needs and What to Do
We all have needs as human beings. Needs for…
safety
self worth
responsibility
control
connection and belonging.
But difficult past experiences can drastically change how these needs are met and the story we tell ourselves about even being worthy of getting those needs met.
Need for Safety
Perhaps people have not been safe and trustworthy in your life, no matter how big or small. This can lead to a core belief of “I cannot trust others” making it difficult to ask for help. You need to feel safe to ask for help.
Need for Responsibility
Perhaps people haven’t been reliable and dependable and somehow this leads you to the conclusion “it’s my fault”. If you feel like things are your fault, you’re less likely to ask for help without feeling like a burden. You need to the strength to be responsible for yourself, not others.
Need for Self Worth
Perhaps you’ve had experiences in which people haven’t been accepting or validating of you in some way. Therefore leading you to believe “I am unlovable or I am not good enough”. And if you don’t feel good enough, why would you ask for help? You need to feel valued and worthy of asking for help.
Need for Connection and Belonging
Perhaps people ignored your ideas and opinions leading you to believe “I can’t connect with others or I’m invisible”. If you feel invisible or unable to connect, you might say, what's the point? There’s no point in asking for help because people won’t get you or will continue to ignore you anyways. You need to feel connected to be able to ask for help.
Need for Control
Perhaps you have an overwhelming sense that everything happens to you and you have no choices. This may lead you to feel “out of control or not able to trust yourself”. And if you can’t trust yourself, you probably can’t trust that you actually need to ask for help in the first place. You need to find control within yourself to trust yourself and what is best for you.
Therefore, the conclusion we come to about our needs and whether or not we deserve to have our needs met affects us as human beings to our core. This then affects how we integrate into and approach the world around us.
To heal, be happy and feel confident, those negatives beliefs about ourself and our needs need to be shifted towards positive beliefs about how we want to feel instead. This is possible with support through EMDR therapy.
How to start practicing asking for help on your own…
Reflect on your assumptions or beliefs about asking for help
Notice past experiences where you did not get your needs met, no matter how small
Practice reframing and finding evidence for or against what your anxiety is telling you about asking for help
Identify your personal values and goals and reflect on your capacity to accomplish those goals on your own
Consider trusted sources to ask for help, not everyone may be an emotionally safe person to ask for help
In terms of more specialized professional help, EMDR therapy can significantly help those who are struggling with getting past difficult past experiences on their own. EMDR helps by reprocessing experiences that are tied into how you are perceiving the world, others and yourself in the present. EMDR therapy can help you discover new insights about yourself, your strengths and your resources to find a more helpful and healing view of yourself and your past. EMDR therapy can help you shift those negative core beliefs into positive core beliefs about yourself that you actually believe. It can help you live more confidently in the present.
In Conclusion
Therefore, as human beings, whether we like it or not, we are a collection of our past experiences. Sometimes those experiences can have a significant impact on how we view and approach the world around us. So although you may want to leave the past in the past, it may be time to consider if what happened in the past has formed your perceptions today. EMDR is a different approach to healing that can help.
-Nicole Egan, LMFT
Learn more about EMDR therapy at Balanced Mind Therapy