Confession: I hate needing help
Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels
Confession: I hate needing help
(TW: car accident)
I think it’s important to understand and relate to my students’ mindsets and emotional states in order to teach them well. I draw on my own experiences for that. One experience I understand deeply is the desire to insist, “No, I can do it myself!”
Aversion to getting help is a hallmark of perfectionism. Recognizing and countering the feeling that you should do everything by yourself is essential for perfectionists trying to overcome anxiety and live a good life. (This article is part of my Progress for Perfectionists series exploring specific challenges related to being a perfectionist.)
I have to admit, I hate needing help, asking for help, and accepting help. And what’s more, I try very, very hard to hide that. My instinctive reaction anytime I struggle, so ingrained that I usually don’t even realize I’m doing it, is to Pretend I Am Fine and refuse all offers of help, so that no one will find out I’m not actually fine. I’ve been working on recognizing those feelings and behaviors for a long time, because I know they hold me back. It’s a work in progress.
It’s hard to combat toxic self-reliance, because I tend to think self-reliance is a good quality. And it is! To a point. Sometimes, though, I take a hard look at myself and realize how much I’m making things worse for myself by insisting on handling everything alone.
Let me tell you about a time I caught myself being unnecessarily, foolishly self-sufficient.
Last year, I was in an accident that totaled my car. I wasn’t hurt. And I wasn’t totally panicked, because this was not my first horrible car wreck. In 2016 I was in a serious crash, and I’m not even going to get into what happened there, but suffice it to say, it messed me up very badly for a long time.
But I was probably pretty panicked, despite knowing what to do and acting calm and rational. This time, I had been taking my kitty Marla to the vet. She was in her carrier in the front seat. My first thought when my car finally skidded to a stop was, “Oh my God, they killed my cat.” She was silent. I couldn’t see into her box. I started yelling her name. Then, to my immense relief, the yowling started. She wasn’t hurt either, it turned out, but I couldn’t be sure yet at that point. I kicked my car door open and pulled her carrier out with me.
So there I was, a few minutes later, on the curb, looking at the mangled wreck of my beloved car, fielding continuous phone calls and being approached by tons of people, some maskless (this was pre-vaccine), while my cat was shrieking in terror from inside her carrier. A woman and her daughter, who seemingly lived in the apartment building I was in front of, approached me, and the daughter held out a bottle of water and said, “Excuse me, can I offer you this water?”
And I said no, no, I’m fine, thanks. I don’t need any water. A minute later she offered again, looking at me with something like trepidation. And I realized, “What the heck am I doing, in the middle of a disaster, pretending there’s any reason not to take a bottle of water? Why, because I need to prove I don’t need anyone’s help?”
It wasn’t water she was offering me. It was comfort. Kindness. And I did need it.
I took the water. I said thank you. I drank it. She talked to me for a minute, asking about me and the cat, making sure I was okay.
I called my neighbors to ask if they would come take Marla home while I handled everything. They came running, happy to help me. All I had to do was ask.
Proof of life. Sorry I scared you with that story. Marla is totally fine!
With my students, I am always on the lookout for the signs of toxic, fearful self-reliance. Of all people, I should know exactly what it looks like. Not everyone is as monumentally jacked up with regard to seeking and accepting help as I am, but I do see those little signs often. So many people are reluctant to say they need help, or to recognize that they could ask for help.
There’s no easy solution for this challenge. Anxiety around needing help isn’t usually the kind of thing that’s caused by one discrete life-changing incident. Rather, it’s built up slowly, gradually, by little momentary experiences over many years.
We don’t even see the pattern beginning to form, most of the time. We don’t realize how it starts to snowball. One day you’re ten years old, trying to figure out how to play “Für Elise” by yourself instead of asking your piano teacher to help you. Then one day, you’re an adult making bad financial decisions because you won’t seek professional advice, or working sixty hour weeks because you won’t tell your boss that your workload is too heavy, or suffering with poor mental health because you think that getting therapy means you’re weak.
Teaching private lessons gives me the opportunity - and, I believe, the responsibility - to shape my students’ beliefs and behaviors around being helped. While I do congratulate students on their self-directed achievements, I also affirm them when they ask for help. I also tell them all the time that they should ask for help from me or their parents when they are struggling, and that there’s no shame in saying you can’t do something by yourself.
I want my students - and you, dear reader - to truly believe that asking for help when you don’t know what to do is a positive thing. Needing help is not a failing. Having help doesn’t negate your achievements. You should ask for help.
This article is part of a series addressing the challenges of perfectionists, both in music study and in life. There’s a “Progress for Perfectionists” category tag above the post title, which you can click to see everything in the series so far. Add your email address to the mailing list if you want to make sure to read future installments.
As a (mostly) recovered perfectionist myself, I feel for the students and friends in my life whose perfectionism gets in their way, and I’ve put a lot of deep consideration into how to address the struggles we all face in trying to live up to our potential and keep our sanity at the same time. Please leave a comment or send me a message if you want to share your own experience, or if you want to suggest a topic for a future article. I would love to hear from you.
Coming up in 2022: Why you should ask for help and “How to ask for help”
