356 Holly Worton ~ How To Ask For And Receive Help

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 356. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am talking about asking for and receiving help. These are two things that have always been really difficult for me. I am not good at asking for help when I need it and I am not good at accepting help when people that care about me see that I need help and offer it. There have been some ridiculous examples in my life of times when people offered help to me and I said: oh no thanks I can do that on my own and then really regretted it. And we are, as I record this, still in lockdown in the UK and things haven’t really changed much since last weekend’s update. My moods have still been kind of up and down, more down than up if I am going to be honest and I have had some extra kind of personal and professional stress going on in my life lately. And this week I had to ask for help and that wasn’t easy for me.

So, I thought this would be a really useful topic for this week’s episode because when I am struggling with something, I often find that my listeners, or my newsletter readers, are often experiencing similar challenges. So, before I get started today, I am going to ask you: are you good at asking for help when you need it? Can you accept help when it is offered to you? Think about that. I think a lot of us think that we are better at asking for and accepting help than we think we are. I however know that it is something that I am really not good at.

So what are you going to learn in this week’s episode; you are going to learn: how to know when you need help. How to know what kind of support or help you need or want. How to ask for help and get it. How to know when you need professional help rather than support from friends and, finally, how to accept help when it is offered to you.

So how do you know when you need help? – and this is tricky, the more you know yourself the easier that is. I think I know myself pretty well and I think I still struggle sometimes knowing when I actually need to ask for help. So, I think one of the main ways you may know that you need to ask for help or support is: are you functioning well? Are you able to do the things you need to do in your life? Are you able to take care of your kids, your family, do your work, take care of yourself? Are you functioning well? And not just are you functioning at the bare minimum, but are you thriving? Are you doing really well? Are you coping? And I have been functioning, you know, I have not been doing all the things that I want to do, sometimes I just do the bare minimum, that basic stuff that I need to do. I do my client work, but I don’t do my personal work. I haven’t worked on any of my books in probably a few weeks and that doesn’t feel great, but I am functioning. I am eating, I am taking care of myself, I am exercising, not as often that I would like, but it is happening.

But the sign for me that I needed help this week, was just realising that I have more kind of “down” days than “up” days and realising that I was feeling kind of like crap in a few days in a row and it didn’t feel good. And what happened was, during one of my master-gut calls, and it wasn’t even this week, it was last week’s call, I talked about some things that I was going through and one of my friends, actually they all, offered help. But one of them in particular stuck in my mind, had offered me help with tapping or EFT and, that stuck in my mind. And so this week, I was not feeling well, and I knew that getting out of the office and going for a walk would help me to feel better but I just didn’t want to, but in the end I forced myself to go out for a walk. And I am out on my walk and I am walking and I a thinking: I don’t feel like doing this, but I am going to get in my 10,000 steps, because that is kind of my benchmark for a decent length walk, but I was really tempted to just go back home and sulk in my room and be in a bad mood. But I forced myself to go walking and stay out there and as I was walking I was thinking: okay, this friend of mine offered help, she saw that I needed help, I think I need help {laughing}.

So I sent her this really disjointed message and said: hey, you offered to do a tapping session with me, can I take you up on that? I know you are really busy, but just let me now if you have time in the next few days to do that because I am feeling really depressed and it is not shifting and please help. So within an hour or so she texted me back and said: yes, I have some time on Friday let me know if that is good, what time is good? And we arranged a time. And I had this really great session with her, and I hadn’t done EFT in ages, probably over a year. And to be honest I haven’t used PSYCH-K™ with myself since last year. I just haven’t been doing that kind of work because I have been doing different kinds of work with myself but to be honest, I hadn’t been doing any kind of work in ages. So it was just really, really, good to show up to this call and she had a very professional session with me, this is part of the work that she does. It was really good, and it was really easy and it felt really supportive and I really felt like it shifted things and I really felt lighter afterwards. And I sent her a message and I said: thank you so much for this, you are so good at what you do and I really appreciate this; and she wrote back to me and said: it is my pleasure, I really mean that, I really enjoyed it. I was just so glad that I asked for help and so glad that I was able to receive.

As we were doing the session she said: I really think this is not the only work we need to do, I think you are going to need at least another session, so let’s make time to do this next week and I was like: oh, thank you. And she just kind of laughed and she said: after all the help you have given me this is the least I can do. And I realised I am so good at helping other people, people send me emails all the time and they are like: hey, can I pick your brains on this; hey, can I get your help with this… and I am happy to help. This is the thing I don’t mind helping other people, on the contrary, I love helping other people. People send me emails sometimes and they are like: how do I do this thing? And I am like: oh that is really good, let me write a blog post about that, here is the link, tell me if you have any more questions and we will have a chat. I have had so many conversations with people where they say: hey can I pick your brains on this… I am so happy to help. I have given friends healing sessions even though I don’t do that kind of work anymore, because I want to help. I love helping people.

I am not good at receiving, so I was pleased that not only did I receive this session that I had today, because that was today that this happened, but I allowed myself to accept another healing session next Thursday and I am really looking forward to it and I am just so pleased with myself for having accepted this. So that is my story but like I say, there have been times in the past where I haven’t accepted help. I remember when my husband and I first moved to the UK, we were staying for the first three weeks in London at this B&B and the B&B owners, the guy was a cab driver, and when we checked out of their place and got ready to move into our flat they said to us: we have got a big cab – we had all this luggage – why don’t you let us drive you to your new place with your luggage. Any reasonable person would have said yes, please take your giant London cab and put our luggage in it and drive us there. By car it would have been a maximum five-minute drive probably less, we were moving really close. But I didn’t want to bother them so I said: thank you so much, but no we will be fine. And they said: really are you sure? It is no problem at all. And I said: no problem at all we will be fine. We were not fine! We had to walk… that five-minute drive was at least a 15-minute walk with five or six pieces of luggage plus backpacks between us. We did it all in one trip, it was so ridiculous! And as we were like sweating and dragging this luggage up the street in London, I was thinking: what the hell is wrong with me, why didn’t I just say yes? They offered to help, not once, but twice, maybe three times I don’t remember the details, this was ten years ago. They offered help and I said no, because I didn’t want to bother them and it would have been so easy for them and it was such a pain in the ass {laughing} for us to carry this luggage uphill to our new flat, agh it was ridiculous.

So if you are the kind of person who struggles to accept support, I hope you found that amusing and I hope you can find examples in your own life of when you ridiculously did not accept help so that you can hopefully make it easier to accept help in the future. So that was my how do you know when you need help? You have really got to tap into yourself and just know when you are not doing it on your own. Like if you have had many days on end where you are just not doing well and you are feeling depressed, your mood is down, and you can’t get yourself out of it, or you haven’t got yourself out of it, that is time to ask for help.

So how do you know what kind of help or support you need? Maybe you need just a friendly chat so you don’t feel lonely, you know? We are all stuck at home now, I have been having lots of zoom calls with friends, which is actually normal for me because most of my friends don’t live in my local area, but I have also cancelled some friendly chats with people because I just wasn’t feeling up to it. So maybe you need a friendly chat, maybe you can’t handle a friendly chat. Maybe you just need someone to listen to your problems and just unload your crap? At the start of my call with my friend she said: what can I help with? And I was like: I think I just need to unload for five minutes and just vomit a bunch of words to you and then we will see what I need help with, because I am feeling depressed but I am not sure what the root is of this. So maybe you need someone to listen. Maybe you need advice, maybe you need mentoring, maybe you need solid: what do I with this? Maybe you just need company so that you don’t feel lonely, maybe you need someone to just be there for you. Maybe you need someone to be there in silence for you. Maybe you just need to have a call with friends where you just hang out and do some work together, or you each read a book but you are on the call? I don’t know – there are so many ways to get company. Maybe you need healing? I have so many friends that are healers, and coaches, and therapists, and we have, at many times in the past, helped each other for free. If a friend comes to me and says: hey, I need help with this, I am not going to say no, I am happy to help.

Or maybe you need help from a friend’s network, maybe a friend of a friend could help you with a thing? Maybe you don’t know someone who can help with your problem, but you think maybe a friend might know someone. I remember years ago, when I was in a bad financial place because I got into credit card debt, I didn’t know how to get out of it — this was before 0% credit cards were a big thing, it was at least 15 years ago. I just didn’t know what to do, I was getting all these calls from creditors and I was like: ugh this is so stressful I don’t know what to do! And I remember just sending out emails to a handful of friends and I think some friends were afraid that I was asking for money, which I wasn’t, I just legitimately didn’t know what to do. I think a couple of friends were like: hey, I don’t know but good luck with that. And I had a call with a family friend and I kind of suspected that he thought I was asking for money, but I wasn’t, and he was like: hey, I don’t know what to do but good luck with that. And I was like: shit! And then there was this one friend who totally stepped up and said: my partner had this problem and he did this, so maybe you could look into that and you know what, my sister is a lawyer, here is her phone number, you call her, she said you could call her. So I looked into what her partner had done and that is what I ended up doing but I also called the lawyer sister and I got some advice from her for free. So you never know, if you have a problem, put it out there to your friends and be like: do you know what to do, do you have friends that know what to do? Do you have family? What do I do with this? Help. So maybe you need support from a friend’s network. There are so many options.

So how do you ask for help, especially when it is uncomfortable for you? When I sent out that email to friends 15 years ago, asking them for help with my credit card debt, I had so much shame, I had so much shame around: oh my God, how did I get myself into this situation? Oh my god, how can I get myself out of this situation? I am a business owner, I should know how to do this, I don’t know what the hell I am doing, I had so much shame…but I just sucked it up and did it.

So how do you ask for help, how do you make it as painless as possible? First of all respect the fact that you are not expected to know everything, life throws situations at us, and we get ourselves into situations, that sometimes we don’t know how to get out of on our own. You can’t be expected to know everything and sometimes we google things and we still don’t get the answer, so sometimes we need personal support and advice we can’t get online. So just respect the fact that you don’t need to know everything, different people have different knowledge banks, different people have different experience, different people have different areas of expertise, and different people are going to be able to help me with things that you can’t necessarily do for yourself and that is fine. That doesn’t mean that you are less of a person, that doesn’t mean that you are bad, or wrong, or whatever. It is not something to be ashamed of. So respect the fact that you don’t need to know everything, you can’t be expected to know everything.

Be respectful of their time, you are asking them for their time in whatever way it is, even if it is just to respond to an email, so be mindful of not writing a super-long email, maybe make it short and to the point as a first point of email: explain the situation and be respectful of their profession, if you are asking for professional help. So this friend of mine who gave me this EFT session, she is kind of a coach and mentor, she does all kinds of things, but this is one of the things that she gets paid for from clients. So I was mindful of that, she was basically giving me professional help for free. Now I have done the same for her in the past and that is why I felt okay doing it, but be respectful of their time and be respectful of the fact that you are maybe asking them for something for free that other people would pay them for. So be willing to offer something in exchange if you haven’t built up credit with them and I don’t think that friendship should be a quid quo pro, like I do this for you and you do this for me, but there should be a give and take. If one person is always asking for something and never giving, be mindful of that, be mindful of how that exchange has been. I know that I have let a lot of credit build up with people because it is very easy for me to give but not easy for me to receive, so that is why I felt okay asking them for it.

Also know what you need from them and be specific. I said: hey you offered me an EFT session, can I please have that? Do you have time to help me with that please? And know what you don’t need, maybe you want a coaching session, maybe you don’t want advice, maybe you just need someone to listen, maybe you don’t want to know what they do. I don’t know, know what you want, know what you need, and conversely know what you don’t want and what you don’t need, and be specific when you ask them for their help.

And know who to ask for help. I remember when I sent out that email 15 years ago, like I said, with the credit card debt, I kind of made a list of the top five or six people that I thought could help, who would know and I just sent it out. As I said, some of those people were wiling to help and some of those people were not. I think some of those people were freaked out by the request and thought I meant something that I didn’t mean. But interestingly, the person I least thought would be helpful was the most helpful person and I remember just being, really just so grateful that this person who was a friend, but not a super-close friend, really stepped up to help me. And there have been times in my life where people in my life when people have been not really good friends, I don’t want to say minor friends, but not close friends, and even acquaintances, have stepped up and helped me in ways that have just made me so grateful. So when you are making your list of people that you are going to ask for help, expand that list to people to anyone who might have the knowledge or skill or whatever, because sometimes people step up and help you in ways that you think: my god, I did not expect that from them. So how to ask for help… that’s my advice.

How to know if you need professional support rather than support from friends? Again, I am really lucky, in that I have a lot of friends that are therapists and counsellors and do all that kind of healing and wellbeing stuff. So, my friends are also professional mental healthcare people — I think most people don’t have that kind of friendship group — so if you have normal friends with, oh god I almost said jobs…! If you have normal friends that have non-healing professional jobs like doctors, well doctors are healing people… so if you have people like lawyers and accountants and you need a mental health question or support help you might need to ask a professional and you might ask friends for a professional reference. But be aware that your friends, if you are having really big mental health issues, deep depression, or other mental health issues, your friends might not be qualified do deal with that, they probably won’t, so be aware of the magnitude of what you are asking for from your friends and be aware they may not be able to help you in the ways that you need help and be aware that you might need professional help. So with that credit card thing, the friend who helped with her sister gave me professional help and her partner was able to give me practical help with what helped him. With legal help, if you have a legal issue that you need help with you are probably going to need to hire a lawyer or at least ask a lawyer friend what they would suggest in terms of who you should hire. But there are big things like legal issues, mental health issues, that you will probably need a professional rather than a friend, unless you have lots of doctors and mental health care professional friends. But be aware that your friends might not be able to give you the help that you need. I think that is always important to have in your help, they might not want to help you, but they might not have the expertise to help you so be aware of that when asking.

So how to accept help when it is offered to you? My friend that helped me offered me help about ten days before I actually accepted the help, so there was a delay. It wasn’t like she offered it and I was like: yes, please, thank you. It took me a while for me to accept the fact that I needed the help and that it was okay for me to accept it. So how to accept help when it is offered to you and you are not good at receiving? Start off by looking at why it is difficult for you to receive help. And this is something, whether or not you need help right now, if you know it is difficult for you to receive, look at that, pause this podcast or look at it when you get off the podcast. Journal on it, reflect on it, talk about it with a friend: why is it so difficult for you to receive help? What are your beliefs around you receiving help? Do you believe that it is better to give than receive? Do you believe that you are worthy of receiving help? Are you deserving of giving help? Do you not want to bother people? Do you feel like you would be bothering people by accepting their help even though they offered it to begin with? Do you believe that accepting help is a weakness? Are you willing to be vulnerable and accept help from these people that have offered it to you? Are you in denial of needing help? Do you believe that you have to do everything on your own – you have to be superman/superwoman? What are your beliefs? What are your limiting beliefs around you accepting help? What are your beliefs that make it difficult for you to accept help from people even though you need it? Ask these questions of yourself whether or not you need help right now, I think it is really useful to explore this.

For me, I think a lot of times I really like to be self-sufficient, I really like to do stuff on my own and I don’t want to bother people. I don’t have that belief that it is better to give than receive however that is how my life functions, I am really good at giving and not really good at receiving. There may be some self-worth issues there, there may be some beliefs that I am not worthy of receiving help. But I do believe, I think that my basic beliefs are that I have to do it on my own and I don’t want to bother people – those are my main things.

So I would like to suggest that you ask yourself those questions and remember to help others. Again, it is not a quid pro quo, but I think when you help other people you build up credit not just with these specific individuals but just in general, I think that I have been so helpful to people that other people have been very generous with their help with me, in terms of offering, even though I don’t always say yes. I think when we have that attitude of helping others, it just builds up good energy in the universe and makes other people more likely to offer their help to us, so help others, offer your help. If you see people needing help offer it if you know you can help.

And finally, make a list of supportive people in your life and make a list of how they can help you, I haven’t done this yet and I am going to do it this weekend in my journal. So I kind of have a mental idea of people who have helped me in the past, people who have offered to help me in the past, but as a result of just texting with friends – last week I was texting with a friend and I was saying: oh I just haven’t been feeling well lately, I have been feeling kind of down, she said: know that I am here to talk to you if you need it, I am here to help. People will step up and offer it, if you express the fact that you need help. So make a list of the people who are supportive because also not everyone in your life will be supportive like this, sometimes we have family members that aren’t great helpers. Sometimes there are people we think are friends, that we consider to be friends, but aren’t really… they are better at receiving than they are at giving. So be honest about the people in your life and make a list of the people that are supportive. And reach out when you need to, really get good at evaluating whether or not you need help and I encourage you, if you are having a rough time, reach out for help, because it can make a huge, huge, difference, you don’t have to suffer on your own, you don’t have to suffer at all, you can get help before it becomes sufferings.

So I hope you found this episode interesting and useful to get the help that you need if you need it and please drop me a line and let me now what you thought. You can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

Thank you so much for listening and if you have any ideas for podcast topics please email me and let me know. I love receiving suggestions for topics from my listeners and those are often my favourite topics. So please send me any ideas you have I really find them useful and interesting. And remember to visit: https://hollyworton.com/356 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you so much for listening.