Help

I recently overheard a man say, in a critical tone, “Oh he needs all the help he can get.”

I wondered why would it be bad to need help? Don't we all need all the help we can get?

When we are babies we need a lot of help. Then as we grow, we start to figure out what we can do on our own. This feels good. We like the feeling of exploring and trying and learning how to do things. When we try something on our own, we figure out our own capacities. A person can't know their own capacities until they try to do something. We may climb a tree all the way up and all the way back down. Then, we may climb another tree and this time get stuck, and need help getting back down. So, part of growing up is learning when to ask for help, or learning independence and interdependence.

We live in a culture where independence is highly valued. Which, of course, in many ways is great. The problem arises when independence becomes overvalued and becomes what has been called hyper-independence. Some say that hyper-independence is a trauma response.

When a child faces circumstances that are unpredictable and adults who are unreliable this can be very traumatic. Such a child learns they cannot depend on the grown ups, so they become fiercely independent. This can sometimes be a matter of actual survival.

So later, when the child grows up, they may find that they don't know how to ask for help. They don't have practice. They may be embarrassed and see it as perhaps a failure or a weakness that could be exploited. Both personal and collective hyper-independence can lead to desperately painful isolation.

What can be done to heal such trauma, so that we can enjoy both independence and enjoy interdependence? As a psychotherapist, I practice cognitive behavior therapy because it works. CBT is a powerfully effective method practiced all over the world that helps people to suffer less. So, the initial help we receive from CBT is the knowledge that we can heal.

The next help we receive from CBT is knowledge about ourselves. CBT is based on the fact that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviors, not external things, like people, situations or events. In other words, how you think about something determines how you feel about that something, and then, what you do about that something.

Yet a very important factor is that we don't always know what we think about something! This is because we have a subconscious part of our mind and a conscious part of our mind. Running through our subconscious are automatic thoughts. These can be very beneficial and help us do a lot, like we can be climbing a tree and thinking about what we want for lunch. We don't have to consciously think put hand here, pull foot up now. In other words, our automatic thoughts are helping us without us even knowing we are having them, and that s great. Unfortunately though, we also have maladaptive, negative automatic thoughts running through our subconscious that are not helping us.

So the first step in CBT is to identify these negative automatic stressful thoughts. People have a lot of stressful thoughts about help. One of the most common is: I will look like a fool if I ask for help because I should know how to do this already at my age.

Once we have identified our stressful thoughts, using CBT the next thing we do is to question them. There are only two things you can do with a thought: believe it or question it. When we question a stressful thought, we are using metacognition. We are thinking about thinking. This is something else we learn from practicing CBT. We don't have to believe our thoughts! Is it true that asking someone for help makes you look like a fool? No, of course not. In fact it may be just the opposite. Asking for help may make you look smart. Help may be more efficient and that is smart.

So, help is ultimately a new perspective. It is helpful to see in more than one way. The incredible thing about this experience is that when we see something differently, we feel differently. We feel better. Seeing differently is healing. It gives us choices. We ask for help when, and from who, we want to, if we want to. Our subconscious isn't fixed.

A social support system is fluid, ebbing and flowing, with the events of life. There are times in life that naturally require more or less support. Connection to others can honor individual differences that allow for separateness and healthy independence. We all have different capacities, and so we do all need all the help we can get.