Fear of Asking for Help

Have you ever worked on a problem at school or work and realized that you were in over your head?  Perhaps you didn’t have enough time to figure out the solution and the deadline was approaching?  Or perhaps you didn’t have the subject matter expertise to solve the problem.  Maybe you didn’t have the technology required.  What do you do in these cases?  Do you ask for help?  Or do you plod along for hours trying to figure it out on your own, only to miss the deadline and feel like a failure?  If you don’t ask for help, is it because you are stubborn, proud, confident?  Or are you afraid to admit that you need help?  Are you afraid to seek out someone who might know something which you don’t?  Are you afraid that you will look like a failure and you will be ashamed and never live it down?

The fear of asking for help is something very real, and something which I know quite well.  As a child, I was known as one of the smart kids in school so the thought of asking for help was absurd.  My classmates expect me to have the answer.  And if I didn’t have the answer, I believed that the school would be talking about it for days.  This was the case all through my education, even in graduate school.  I didn’t want to appear stupid by asking someone to help me.  But I also didn’t want to be called on by the professor when I didn’t know the answer.  Consequently, I was pretty much a nervous wreck during much of my graduate school career. It still happens at work too.  Even though I am part of a team, I feel like I need to pull my own weight and take care of my own assignments.

In a 2008 article entitled How To Ask For Help, (http://drdeborahserani.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-ask-for-help.html) Dr. Deborah Serani discusses the following myths about asking for help:

• It makes us look vulnerable.  Actually, it creates empowerment.
• Holding things in and keeping personal issues under wraps keeps us secure. Actually, it connects you with others and helps you see that not everyone has all the answers.
• It bother others. Actually, most people feel good when they help others.
• Highly successful people never ask for help.  Actually, asking for help is how they became successful.
• I am a giver. I don’t like when others help me. Actually, everyone deserves a helping hand.

Just remember this: When asking for help, appeal to people’s self-interests, never to their mercy or gratitude.