Do we need to know what we need help with to be helped?
Last weekend, I had a very profound conversation with a stranger.
I’m sorry I couldn't talk yesterday, I went to the doctor.
How are you doing?
Not well, it was bad news.
…
Do you have anyone you could talk to?
I don’t know how anyone can help me.
Asking for help is hard
In my work as a life and cultural coach, I often hear clients say that asking for help is weak and humiliating because it shows their limitation, dependence and incompetence. We make the assumption that help looks like problem solving. We have to do things alone. And this belief is very well rooted in our culture of self.
As coaches, we are often expected to partner with clients to explore their problem and help them find a solution. Sometimes it works. Most of the time, it does not work so simply. We also make the assumption that if we know the causes of the problems, we can “fix” them. What if we can’t? When we focus on the problem, we might miss the most important thing: the person.
I don’t know how anyone can help me.
Do you want to talk about it now with me?
A new research conducted by Stanford social psychologist Xuan Zhao shows that “we shy away from asking for help because we don’t want to bother other people, assuming that our request will feel like an inconvenience”. What the research concludes is that others want to help more than we often give them credit for.
I don’t know. Not sure what to say.
Ha, me neither! Let’s explore.
How can I even talk about it?
I don’t know, I feel most of the time I don’t know what I need.I don’t know, I feel most of the time I don’t know what I need.
In less than an hour, we were sharing thoughts about life and death and saying things we had no idea we would say. We laugh, we cry.
Who was helping who? What was helpful? What is the activity of asking for help and helping?
Asking for help is an opportunity to build a relationship and it does not request that you know what is needed. What is requested is people showing up for each other and willing to listen and respond, not with solutions but with who they are and how they are impacted by each other. When we share our pain, fears, frustrations, anxieties, joys with others, we share our humanity and that’s a gift. It connects us into something bigger than us. It creates hope.
That evening, we both texted each other after:
Thank you for sharing with me today., our conversation helped me.
And still today, this conversation makes me smile. Thank you.
