Last update: May 02, 2018
When do we need help? When should we look for an outstretched hand or ask for it and not row alone? When is external assistance needed? Are there any objective patterns for going to someone and asking for help? In short, when is it time to ask for help?
We cannot define a specific moment that universally marks when we need to ask for help. Limits are specific, just like resources. So how can we figure it out? Everyone needs to know what is changing in his life, what things he is not leaving out because of fear, sadness or lack of desire, or what relationship he has to all the activities that previously made him happy.
The index to ask for help is within each of us and we must be able not only to recognize it, but also to abandon pride and go to someone who can help us. Enduring and resisting indefinitely does not generate any progress which discourages us and leads us nowhere. In this sense, sometimes timely help leads to a won battle.
In many cases, asking for help offers us a new opportunity to find hope, saving us from a situation that we thought impossible to solve, but for this we need to know who to turn to and when. Once we have overcome personal limits, we must open up to someone and let ourselves be helped.
Asking for help is a sign of courage
Hiding one's feelings, believing that crying is weak, thinking that one's strength goes far beyond the energy they can actually bring, embracing the idea that no one will understand us, are all threads that can suffocate us. We cannot do everything (nor must we be able to do it), showing what we feel is not a sign of cowardice, just as going to a specialist is not synonymous with losing or admitting defeat. Asking for help shows courage, intelligence and confidence.
Battles are won with smart efforts and decisions, and being smart also means using the tools that others can provide or that help us find ourselves when we have lost our personal map. Asking for help is courageous, because it involves recognizing the need, as well as indicating that we are not giving up and that we have the hope of getting what we want.
When we feel that the situation is exceeding the limit, when we believe we are no longer the same people as before and we are not happy, when we consider that we have gone too far on our own, when before we could find that sweetness that resides only in small things and now we can no longer do it, when everything that enjoyed us stops doing it and we do not find other activities that give the same effect, it is the right time. It's time to ask for help.
Learn to ask for help
Perhaps the first step is the most difficult, talking about ourselves, telling someone how we feel, expressing ourselves and looking for what we lack in a determined way. How can we learn to ask for help? The first step will be to find someone where we can store ours confidence. If we have tried with the people around us and have not found any improvement or if the help they provide us is not enough, it is time to seek help from a specialist.
The variety is so great that it will probably not be difficult to find a specialist who can specifically help us with what we need. If our throat hurts, we go to the doctor; if we can't move our neck, we go to the physiotherapist; if we don't see well, we go to the ophthalmologist; if we have cavities, we go to the dentist; so if our soul hurts, why not go by psychologist?
The psychologist is another specialist and to see him as someone who only works with crazy people is a very old-fashioned and limited portrait of the help he is able to provide. In this sense, work with the psychologist allows the person to increase his or her range of resources to cope with difficulties. It can also help us when we want to discuss a theory, dispel that unwanted, almost suffocating, feeling of loneliness that we have all felt at times or it can help us to reinforce our motivation if it has weakened. And if that's the case, then why not ask for help even before you need it, when it's the best decision?
