Why is it so dang hard to ask for help? What has happened in this world that we have become so self-sufficient that we no longer allow our friends or anyone to do for us?
Well, I think there are 2 sides to this peculiar coin. “Heads” says we should be our own determiner. We should be independent because true independence means you’ve “made it” in this world. You don’t need anyone’s help. You can make it on your own. But all you need to bust that bubble is a situation where suddenly you can no longer “do” for yourself. You can’t zip up your pants, you can’t even get them on in the first place. You need help. And there you are at “Tails” – you are flipped in need on the other side of that coin. Now you have no choice but to ask for help or founder by yourself.
Why is it that most of us feel shy in asking for help? Could it be that we fear looking weak, stupid, inadequate, incapable, or less than? Or maybe we fear being refused and thus looking vulnerable and embarrassed that we even asked in the first place? Perhaps even though doing it ourselves causes huge inconvenience, we still think no one can do it better. Sometimes former experience has created the fear that asking for help will lose us any control over the matter. In those cases you end up with someone who won’t stop helping you and you end up buried in obligation.
One thing that suicidal people do seemingly routinely is ask the very people for help who cannot give it. We have a tendency to ask those who have never been helpful in the past but who we think should help either from familial obligation, reciprocation or some other duty or debt. We forget or refuse to acknowledge that past performance is the best predictor of future results. We habitually repeat the same hopeful yet humiliating routine expecting there to be a change in the people who continually shame and blame us. It’s uncanny but I’ve discovered it to be a universal pursuit among suicidal individuals.
Probably the next most universal thing that happens, not exclusively with suicidal people but with almost everyone, is the use of sideways comments when requesting help. Sideways comments are ways of saying things without actually verbalizing them precisely. You hint yet circumvent the real meaning by making cryptic or euphemistic comments. I’ve asked for help from a supervisor before by saying, “I’ve had all I can take”; “I can’t do this anymore”; “I’m at my limit”; “I just don’t care anymore”; “I’ve had it”; “I can’t take it anymore”, and many more like that. Simply because I could not say, “I need help, please help me.”
This supervisor did not recognize as true supplication my trite statements made in desperation. I explain in “Just Because You’re Suicidal Doesn’t Mean You’re Crazy: The Psychobiology of Suicide” that suicidal individuals most often ask for help in a particular sideways offhand way. We make comments that sound like extreme frustration but do not confirm true dilemma. People write off our statements also because we are more than willing to let them do just that. Almost at the very moment we release the words, we feel like we might have made a dreadful mistake. Letting the words out is opening yourself to shame and blame. The doom dawns immediately and while wanting to suck the words back in, we let you believe they were said in off-handed hyperbole.
When people ask for help using sideways comments, they really can’t achieve the help they want because no one recognizes the request. This is the sad part. No help is forthcoming because the appeal is essentially written off. In this way the suicidal person unknowingly contributes to the conspiracy of denial around suicide. In addition, the veiled comments that scratch at the surface of hope for relief from suicidality also obscure the chance of it.
Those who have never contemplated suicide develop a pervasive denial that anyone actually could. Compounding that, it also seems that people are not willing to hear more than what is explicitly said for fear of what might be asked of them if they do. Until the development of the Jensen Suicide Prevention Peer Protocol (The JSP3), aside from conveying the person to a mental health facility, no one knew on a day to day basis expressly what to do for someone who is suicidal.
In other blogs, we discuss how to defy and overcome the conspiracy of denial and pick up cues to the real meaning behind suicidal sideways comments.