Why you should ask for help
Progress for Perfectionists: Why you should ask for help
Or, more accurately, why you won’t ask for help, even though you know you should
Asking for help is the Achilles’ heel of the perfectionist.
Everyone needs help sometimes. But perfectionists have a really hard time getting the help they need and deserve, because they resist asking for it, and they’re reluctant to accept help when it’s offered.
Perfectionists are convinced they shouldn’t need any help.
Why? Oh boy. If we really knew that, maybe we wouldn’t be such perfectionists!
Getting better at asking for help would be greatly beneficial to a lot of us. If we want to do that, we have to start by understanding why we’re so reluctant.
I previously wrote about a time when I rather foolishly tried to resist someone’s assistance, an incident that brought to my attention how much I hate needing help. That article is part one of a Progress for Perfectionists three-part miniseries about needing and getting help. This is part two. As you can tell from my personal story in the first post, the advice I’m giving in this series is based on my own experience as a mostly-rehabilitated perfectionist. I’ve also gleaned a lot of insights from conversations with others who struggle with perfectionistic tendencies.
Just to prove to you that I have lived the struggle, let me tell you about another time I accepted help from someone. This time, I actually asked someone to help me.
This happened quite a long time ago. It was a few weeks after I had had surgery for a broken arm. I was on crazy-making painkillers, I had lost my car and a lot of income, I was extremely shook up, and I was trying to put away my laundry. With one functioning hand. I had put clothes on hangers, but I couldn’t lift the hangers to get them into my closet.
So I called my friend Lauren and asked if she could come over to help me hang up my clothes in my closet, because I physically couldn’t.
What was it about this situation that made me feel like I could ask someone to help me?
I felt justified in asking because I knew I genuinely needed help. I admitted to myself that I simply couldn’t do what I needed to do alone.
I also cried about it. I was embarrassed! It’s a ridiculous idea, of course, but I felt like I should be self-sufficient at all times. And it was hard for me to trust someone - not just to trust that they would help me, but to trust them with the knowledge of my vulnerability. I’m fortunate to have a friend like Lauren who’s worthy of that kind of trust; I don’t know if there are many other people I would have been comfortable asking. Lauren was happy to come help me, and it was so not a big deal to her that I doubt she even remembers it happened.
Looking back on it, I’m really surprised I managed to wash the laundry with one hand, and I wonder why I didn’t ask for help with that, too….?
Probably, I should have. Because it IS okay to ask for help. And you’ve got to really believe that if you’re going to get better at asking for help when you need it.
Do you believe it’s okay to get help when you need it?
I bet you do. Intellectually, at least.
Then why do you resist being helped?
It’s because, deep down, you believe there’s a compelling reason that asking for help would be bad. Maybe it’s one of these:
Reasons you think you SHOULDN’T ask for help:
You think it’s important to do things on your own, or that doing something unassisted has more value than doing it with help.
You think getting help is cheating; you think your achievements don’t count if you had any kind of assistance.
You think you are expected (by others or yourself) to be able to do anything and everything, and that you will be disappointing everyone if you don’t or can’t do it all.
You see yourself as a self-sufficient person, and admitting you have limits would call your identity into question.
You think you have to be The Best™ at everything you do, and accepting help means you’re not The Best™, or that someone else is better than you.
You are afraid that you can’t do it even WITH help and you are afraid of failure; you’re using lack of help as an excuse for not accomplishing or attempting something you think you should be able to do.
These reasons for rejecting help are rooted in your relationship with yourself. They’re based in your own personal values, and they center around expectations and judgements about you. These rationalizations for not getting help reveal some values and reasoning that, upon consideration, you may want to challenge and change. Just reading this list and admitting to yourself that one of these self-defeating beliefs has been guiding you might be all it takes for you to start breaking free of that limitation.
Or maybe you’re thinking and feeling something more along these lines:
More reasons you think you shouldn’t ask for help:
You feel safer doing things the way you have always done them.
You are uncomfortable not being 100% in control of the situation.
You don’t trust anyone else to do things correctly; you think it won’t get done well if you don’t do it yourself.
You think people will feel obligated to help you if you ask, and that they will resent it.
You think no one will want to help you; you will be humiliated if you ask and they say no.
You think there will be strings attached; you think if you let someone help you, they’ll hold it over you forever, or that you’ll “owe” them and be unable to repay your debt.
You think it’s unjustified to take someone else’s time and energy instead of taking sole responsibility.
These reasons have to do with your relationships with others. Even the sense of safety you get from self-sufficiency probably stems from fear and distrust of other people. In each situation, ask yourself whether the assumptions you’re making are warranted. A lot of the time, you’re worrying about a worst-case scenario that probably won’t happen.
Sometimes, though, these might be legitimate reasons to hesitate to ask for or accept someone’s help. Because in certain situations, with certain people, your apprehension may be justified.
We’ve never seen a 100% emotionally healthy and untraumatized adult human. Everyone - each of us, as well as the people around us - carries scars from their old emotional wounds. We don’t need to pretend we don’t have scars or that they don’t or shouldn’t affect us. Our fears deserve recognition and respect, even if we don’t choose to base our decisions on them. And others’ issues need to be acknowledged and respected, too.
That means we might need to see and accept that a certain person is not the right person to help us.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no one we can trust to help us.
Perfectionists usually have trust issues, I notice. We’ve been burned before, so now we’re wary. Even if we know the ones in our lives who love us should be worthy of our trust, it’s hard to really feel sure that it’s safe to get help from them.
That is something you have to learn to deal with somehow. I can’t really help you. I’m never going to write something so profound that it solves your trust issues here and now. I will say, though, that it is possible to find a safe person who will be willing to give you non-transactional help. Even when you find a safe person, asking for and receiving that help will require a leap of faith from you. Let’s not pretend it won’t. But you can make that leap.
Let’s also specifically address the anxiety about obligation to help. If you’re worried that asking for help is tantamount to demanding help or compelling someone to help you, there’s a simple solution: Make sure the person you ask feels comfortable saying no. That could be as simple as saying, “You can say no if you want.”
Some people have serious hangups born of trauma around communication and conflict; if the person you’re asking for help might be one of them, it could be more challenging to make them really feel safe saying no. Do your best to convince them that you mean exactly what you say, that it’s not a trap or a test, and that if they don’t help you, you truly will not be mad at them.
So yes, there are some reasons to hesitate to ask for help, and there are some situations where you would decide not to ask for or accept a certain person’s help. That’s a problem with the person and the situation. It’s not a problem with you. It’s not a reason that you don’t deserve or need the help you were seeking. And it’s not a reason to avoid help in every other situation.
Okay, now, I hope, we’ve established that asking for help isn’t a bad thing. Now let’s talk about how it’s a GOOD thing!
Here are some practical reasons that getting help is better than going it alone:
Reasons you SHOULD accept help:
Efficiency - Do you value your own time and effort? You should. Don’t waste it trying to build something from the ground up when someone else has already done the legwork. For example, let’s say you need a website for your business. You could spend hundreds of hours learning to code and build yourself a website from scratch, or you could make one on Squarespace that will, let’s be honest, look more professional and be easier for you to use and update than your DIY version.
Access - Getting help isn’t always about capability; sometimes, it’s about access. Other people have access to knowledge and resources that you have no better path to access than through that person.
Gestalt - Especially for creatives, collaboration can produce results on a level far beyond what the individuals involved could achieve on their own.
And since we talked a lot about reasons for rejecting help that are based in one’s inner emotional life and relationships, here are some reasons why getting help can align you with your ideal values:
More reasons you should accept help
Connection - Accepting someone’s help builds a stronger relationship with that person. It’s often called the Ben Franklin effect; a person who has done you a favor will have a more positive opinion of you afterwards, even more so than if you had been the one to do them a favor!
Trust - When you believe someone is worthy of your trust, then truly trust them. If someone has proved themselves worthy of your trust, don’t disrespect them by doubting them. People who love you deserve your trust. They deserve for you to fully engage in your relationship with them. That means letting them help you.
Humility - Humility doesn’t mean self-abasement; rather, it’s a realistic acknowledgment that you’re an imperfect being. Think of it as the opposite of superiority. Honestly and nonjudgmentally recognizing your shortcomings is central to accepting that you need help sometimes.
Graciousness - You can treat graceful receiving of gifts as a virtuous personal characteristic you want to develop. Like humility, graciousness puts the focus on others and on building relationships. Asking for help is an opportunity to show gratitude to the person who helps you.
Self-respect - You deserve to get help when you need it, and even just when you want it. Your needs and wants are valid, and your happiness is important. You are worthy!
Okay, so once you let go of your reasons for resisting help, and you’re ready to reap the rewards of collaboration… then what? Are you willing to accept help, but you don’t know who, or how, to ask?
In part 3 of this series, “How to ask for help,” we’ll look at some dos and don’ts of making a request for help, along with scripts for some specific scenarios.
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.
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