Won’t You Please, Please Help Me

When I worked as an Executive Assistant at a mental health facility I was still grappling with chronic health issues that led to me needing to take time off on average every couple months.  Sometimes it was a day.  Other times two or three. Every so often it would be an entire week.  The reality of a cyst rupture for me can be exceptionally painful and leave me completely immobile.  Often in the first few days I am sick to my stomach repeatedly and can’t keep anything down, I run a very high fever, I bleed quite heavily and the cramping and stabbing pains can at times quite literally make me see stars.  There is very little sleep to be had during these experiences.  I end up dehydrated, dizzy, exhausted, often covered in an itchy rash, particularly on my face, and an absolute train-wreck emotionally. Everything makes me cry; not like a little, but sobbing uncontrollably.  

I’m used to it…I’ve been doing this since I was 18, but I can’t say it’s ever gotten easier.  

While at first my bosses were supportive and sympathetic, as time went on they (mostly one) clearly lost patience with the situation and were much less understanding.  In some ways, I got it, I wasn’t there and sometimes that was inconvenient; being available to support these executives was my job.  But it was also very disheartening because this was not something I could control.  I did everything my doctors told me to; I took the medications and did the monthly ultrasounds and the procedures to keep things as in-check as I possibly could.  And when I did have to take time off I was glued to my phone from the couch, or bed, or the hospital waiting room…I’ve been answering emails from a gurney on the way to have an emergency D&C (a dilation and curettage procedure is when they scrape out the lining of your uterus.)  When I returned to work (always before the doctor would have liked me to) I would work 10 or 12 hour days for a week after to catch up or “make up” for my absence.

The bottom line?  There was no one to do my job when I wasn’t there.  If I wasn’t able to do it, well then, the job just didn’t get done.  Asking for help wasn’t encouraged or supported in that facility; a MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY, where people came specifically to get HELP for their addiction, trauma, and other mental health issues.  Instead we were told that this was a calling…that we served a higher purpose and we just needed to dig deep and try harder; AKA gaslighting.

For years I loved my job there and did feel that I was serving a higher purpose.  I didn’t mind the long hours or the making up the time or being “needed” even while I was running a fever of 103 and waiting in a hospital room to find out if I would need surgery or just have to wait this one out.  It felt good to be NEEDED…I liked being the ONLY ONE who could do a job.  I felt special and important.

But as time went on and my boss was increasingly hot and cold with me around my health, the veil of specialness started to lift and I began to see things for what they were…sure, maybe I wasn’t the right person for the job if I couldn’t be 100% reliable, but NO ONE, in any job, should be THE ONLY ONE who can do a job.  Everyone, absolutely EVERYONE, is going to need help at some point.  Companies, families, social circles and communities, all of them, no matter what type of group we are talking about, cannot leave things so that if one person isn’t able to perform their usual role the whole thing falls apart.

But this “suck it up and push through mentality”, it wasn’t just the message being sent at that company I worked for, it is generally the message we receive everywhere.  We idolize the people (women in particular) who can “do it all” and make it look easy; we roll our eyes at the people who complain and can’t keep up to the same standard.  We judge people’s reasons for taking time off or saying no to things, or whether or not they have “enough” stress to justify their complaints about how exhausted they are.  Often when we are asked to help we judge whether or not the reason for asking is valid enough.

But the reality is this, we all experience life completely differently.  Even when we go through the exact same situation as another person they will come out with a vastly different reaction to what they experienced.

When people experience a loss of a loved one, some take time off to be with family and grieve and take it easy, some are better throwing themselves into work and not thinking about it, some are somewhere between those two.

When work gets to be very busy and stressful, some people put their heads down and just focus on it endlessly until they are done, others get so overwhelmed they stall and can’t move forward. (I actually do both…completely stall and don’t know where to start, then once I get past it work like a mad woman at the expense of everything else.)

When our personal lives are a real challenge because of relationship struggles, or family drama, or maybe a rebelling child, some of us can’t focus on anything else and need time to deal with that before we can be positive contributors anywhere else, some people don’t miss a beat and you’d never even know.

There is no right answer. We are all different.  All of the ways we can cope have different pros and cons.  What is common throughout all the healthy coping skills you can learn though is that we all need to ask for help sometimes.

I’m the first one to admit that I often just do things because it’s easier than trying to teach someone else how I want it done.  Or that because I’m so picky about how I want something done, anyone elses way isn’t good enough.  Or I’m embarrassed about how picky I am so I don’t want to shine a light on how fussiness.

A good example?  Laundry.  I am cheap when it comes to buying clothes.  I think partly because my weight has yo-yo’d so much in my life and also because when I was young my mom always made us save and think about purchases before making them so I have a lot of appreciation for my things.  Regardless this has made me a bit (ok a lot) meticulous about how I do laundry.  There are only two humans in the house and when I do ALL the laundry in one weekend there is likely to be anywhere between eight and 12 divided loads – everything is divided by colour (white, colours, black, grey/brown), then there’s some loads more based on material (jeans/thicker pants, workout wear, wool/delicate) and then the larger towel and bedding loads (sometimes several different loads for dog towels, our shower towels, gym towels).  I also have blankets over almost all our furniture (#dogmomlife) and periodically have a couple loads of those to do too.  And after all that you need to know which detergent, treatments, boosters etc, go with each load, the machine settings I use depending on fabric and detergent type, and what goes in the dryer vs. what gets hung or laid flat to dry (spoiler alert, I hang A LOT of stuff) and what setting on the dryer for which type of clothing.  It’s overkill.  It’s obsessive.  It 100% means no one can help me do the laundry aside from making sure it gets into the hamper and down the basement…but I cannot let it go.  I cannot stand to see clothes get needlessly ruined or worn out prematurely when I could have saved them with a little more care.  So I accept that this is the hill I’m gonna die on…BUT because I do take so much care with this then I might need help with something else…like help folding, putting socks together, carrying it up and down the stairs (mostly cause I’m accident prone haha), remaking beds or recovering furniture.

I can’t do everything.  There isn’t enough time in the day and the way we’ve set up the expectations for how we do things in this part of the world was based on a model where one person was home, not out needing to earn a living, doing everything that needed to be done to keep a house and the other person went to work and paid the bills.  Think about it, are you still trying to accomplish everything your grandmother did in her home while also going to work every day?  Ya, you probably are.  But you’re probably beating yourself up about the fact that your house isn’t spotless like hers was…when she had more than 40 more hours in a week to care for that home. (Side note – I know not all grandmothers were stay at home moms; one of my Gramma’s was a single mom before being a single mom was a “social norm” and she had to work and live paycheque to paycheque to support her and her daughters.)

I really don’t have any advice for making asking for help easier or to make it feel less uncomfortable.  Unfortunately the world is how it is and the feeling that we are failing somehow by asking for help is very deeply ingrained in a lot of us, and being reinforced constantly for many.  But I will absolutely tell you that the best self-care thing you can do for yourself is to learn to ask for help when you need it; without guilt, shame or judgment.

There is no prestige in burnout.  There are no medals for the person who single-handedly carries the most without sharing the burden.  None of us are doing anyone any favours by only ever doing things for people instead of helping them to learn to do for themselves…we’re probably actually doing them a disservice because, like in that job I had, if you suddenly can’t be there to do for them, they won’t be able to do it without you.

If you are a chronic helper, if you just always want to do for others because it feels good to be needed, it feeds your ego to be the only one who can do everything, or even if you just don’t want to spend the time trying to teach them to do for themselves, consider if you might enjoy your life more if you weren’t being run ragged and you had more time for yourself…consider how often you lament about not having “me time”; to relax, watch TV, workout, get a good night’s sleep even.  Is it really that you CAN’T or is it that you aren’t asking for help?  Help your family, friends, co-workers, whoever, might actually be happy to give.

 “You teach people how to treat you by what you allow, what you stop, and what you reinforce.”

Tony Gaskins

You might not need help with everything…but you definitely need help with some things.  And guess what, the people who help you, are going to need help too.  That’s the beautiful thing about it; when you ask for help you make it ok for people to ask you too. And that give and take – the working together and compromise and camaraderie – that comes with sharing a burden with others is much more fulfilling and worthwhile than the frustration and isolation that comes from going it alone.

Take it from The Beatles and ‘open up the doors’; I promise it’s worth it.