255. why it’s so hard to ask for help (and how to start!)

Apr 17

listen to this episode:

if your mental health is getting worse, but asking for help feels like too much, this episode is for YOU.

in this solo episode, i explain why so many of us can be reluctant to open up about our mental health before breaking down the techniques you can try to be more vulnerable.

by the end of this episode, you’ll learn how to lower your anxiety around asking for help– because vulnerability is the key to recovery!

i talk about:

why i didn’t ask for help when my mental health started struggling
how our environment + upbringing shape our mental health
the impact of depression on our self worth + anxiety
using exposure therapy to try actually being vulnerable
a communication technique that helped me open up to my parents
easier ways you can practice being vulnerable on a regular basis
choosing the right people to share with + setting clear expectations

mentioned:

ep.254

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About She Persisted

She Persisted is THE Gen Z mental health podcast. In each episode, Sadie brings you authentic, accessible, relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness. Expect evidence-based, Gen Z-approved resources, coping skills (lots of DBT), insights, and education in each piece of content you consume. She Persisted offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: the problem isn't that you don't want help

it's that

being vulnerable

and accepting that help

or asking for that help feels like too much.

Hello, Hello and welcome back to She Persisted We just did an episode about why people push others away or refuse to accept help when it's being offered and this episode is the other side of that conversation.

For the person who is struggling, who knows that they should probably open up and accept help and be vulnerable, but doesn't because it feels uncomfortable or exposing, or you don't know where to start. This is for you. So by the end of this episode, you're gonna have a way to approach vulnerability approach, asking for help.

In a way that feels doable and not overwhelming.

Last week I talked about how my relationship with my parents really changed when they shifted to validation

rather than problem

Sadie: solving and catastrophizing, and the way that they responded to me when I was asking for help or being vulnerable about what I was experiencing.

Was incredibly helpful and beneficial for our [00:01:00] relationship, but their ability to respond effectively was only as good as my ability to actually be vulnerable and tell 'em what was going on and asking for help. And this wasn't something that I was doing when I was initially struggling with my mental health.

In fact, I was doing the opposite. I was incredibly intentional about. Not telling anyone about what I was feeling and not asking for help and not talking about what I was experiencing. Part of that was because it felt like if I told someone how I was feeling or put words to my internal experience, it finally became real.

It wasn't something that I could avoid or ignore, or could pretend wasn't there for the day. Someone else was aware of it and looking for the signs and looped in. It was no longer just something in my head. It was real. It was an actual struggle that I would have to face and confront, and that wouldn't go away if I pretended it wasn't there.

And that was really scary and overwhelming. And another part of what made it so hard to be vulnerable and ask for help was I [00:02:00] didn't really know what I was experiencing. I knew I was like exhausted and miserable and sad and misunderstood and didn't really like the things I used to And I was having a different relationship with sleep than I used to. But I didn't have the vocabulary for that internal experience of I'm depressed and here's why, and here's what's making it worse, and here's how I'm feeling today. Because research shows that when we name an emotion, when we name an experience, it tames it.

It becomes less intense. When we're able to put words to and describe what we're experiencing, it becomes less abstract and overwhelming, and the intensity of the emotion actually decreases. But our ability to do

so,

it was really dependent on our like vocabulary to describe what we're experiencing and our understanding of mental health at all.

If you don't know what depression is, if you don't know what anxiety is, if you've never heard someone talk about these experiences or the core beliefs that might be at play, then it's really hard to talk about that experience, especially when you're [00:03:00] struggling, especially when you're in it, and those emotions are so raw and painful and vulnerability feels so scary.

But in addition to our ability to describe what we're experiencing and know what we're talking about, We also have to be brave enough and courageous enough to be vulnerable and to put ourselves out there and sit with the discomfort of talking

about our

experience and let others in and ask for help,

and that is really hard, especially when it's with people in your life that you have a complicated relationship with. Being vulnerable with my parents was incredibly challenging when I was in the early days of intensive treatment. For a number of reasons. Not only did I not want to acknowledge what I was experiencing because then I would have to accept it, but I also didn't have the vocabulary to understand what it was that I was going through.

And then on top of that, with my parents in particular, there was a lot of blame. I was like, you guys raised me. I haven't had that many opportunities in my life to make my own choices and do my own [00:04:00] thing. So if I'm struggling so much to this degree at 13, this must be your fault. No accountability was happening, and the parents who are listening, it will come.

It takes time. It's very hard. It's much easier to blame. It's a much more palatable. Solution to accept that someone else has done this to you versus to acknowledge that maybe we didn't create the problem, but we've maintained it and potentially made it worse. That's really scary. And then we get into the whole shame piece.

For me, one of the biggest factors in my depression and the reasons that I continued to struggle with my depression in such a big way was the core belief that I didn't think I was deserving of love, especially from my parents. I didn't think just as a person, as a human, I was good enough for them.

And so the idea that I was gonna come to them and say, I'm struggling in a really big way, and. I am in pain all day, every day, and I am miserable and nothing has happened, and yet I am struggling to such an extreme degree

that felt [00:05:00] like making myself someone who is even less deserving of that love and support and care. So it wasn't just asking for help, it wasn't just, here's what's going on. It was, if I acknowledge this, it's real. I don't know what I'm experiencing, but I still have to describe it anyways.

I can't blame you, then that means I, to some degree, created this thing that I'm struggling with, Which is a lot of guilt and anger and blame and all the uncomfortable emotions. And also this feels like a deficit. This feels like a weakness. This feels like I'm somehow worse because of it, even if that's not the case.

And I want you guys to know that mental health challenges are a response to. environment and our lived experiences and how we respond to them. They don't come out of nowhere. These things are very treatable. These things are very solvable. They say nothing about you and your worth as a person.

If someone is in environment with a bunch of people with a cold and they catch a cold, you don't say, oh wow. They're so horrible as a person, and less than because they caught a [00:06:00] cold in an environment where a cold was going around. Same thing. If someone is struggling with a mental health challenge, if they are depressed because they don't feel connected and seen and understood and have a sense of purpose and the way that they speak to themselves is really self-deprecating and effective, and their self-worth is at a really low point, and the relationships that they're putting themselves in are just

kind of

exacerbating those beliefs, we don't say, wow, they're really a bad person.

Like they're even worse now because they're struggling with this, you say.

wow, this person doesn't have the resources and the tools and the ability to navigate the situation themselves. How can we help them through that?

But when you're struggling with depression, a lot of the times that is really synonymous with struggling with your self worth and your self image, and that was absolutely true for me. Asking for help feels really hard because it's not just sending a text or having a conversation or picking up the phone. It's admitting that something isn't okay. It's letting someone see you differently. And if you are [00:07:00] struggling with your self worth, it feels like you're letting them see a worse version of you, and it's risking being misunderstood and judged and criticized.

And so because that's a risky,

situation, and as humans we're wired to avoid risky situations, the really adaptive and normal response that makes sense is, let's not do that. Let's not be vulnerable. Let's not ask for help. Let's try and solve this alone. It makes sense that we respond that way, and it's one of the worst things we can do for our mental health.

So instead of asking for help or having that conversation or reaching out, we downplay it. We tell ourselves it's not that bad, and we wait until it gets worse.

And from the outside, it looks like you're being dramatic or stubborn making things worse for yourself. But really it's our brains trying to protect ourselves from that emotional exposure because it is a real risk. It is an intense thing to navigate.

for that reason, we are driven to avoid and reject it.

And so what really changed everything [00:08:00] for me when it came to asking for help and being vulnerable and letting others in, was understanding that vulnerability is a skill, not a switch. It's something we have to practice. It's something we have to get better at. It's something we have to learn how to do.

It's not something that

just

magically occurs like everything else in life. It's something we have to do again and again until it feels more comfortable.

We don't just wake up and suddenly tell people everything that's going on and ask for help with no problems and feel comfortable being seen, especially when we're not at our best,

and so what we do is we do exposure to vulnerability. We apply the principles of exposure therapy to being vulnerable and asking for help and being seen when we're struggling.

So when we experience a trigger, something that's uncomfortable, something that's overwhelming, our response is anxiety, it's fear, it's overwhelm, and because our brains and bodies have kept us safe and alive for hundreds and thousands of years.

We have a really adaptive response to situations that are potentially dangerous and [00:09:00] threatening and overwhelming, which is to avoid anxiety tells us to avoid, but avoiding will always amplify that anxiety. And so it becomes a vicious cycle. So when we experience that trigger, we then experience anxiety.

Anxiety, we go to our safety behavior. And that safety behavior might be avoiding the conversation. It might be changing the topic. It might be just saying, no, I'm fine. It might be engaging in a behavior that has more long-term consequences,

things that you'll have to deal with down the line. Maybe it's just avoiding sitting with the emotion at all. Distracting yourself. Refusing to sit with and fully experience whatever it is that's coming up for you. And what that safety behavior does is that it gives this short-term relief from that anxiety, but it creates long-term problems because again, avoidance amplifies anxiety. So the next time we have that trigger, the next time someone offers help or tries to have a conversation or asks how you're doing, you experience more anxiety and response.

Not only that, but you started to form a habit which is that I feel anxious, I do my safety [00:10:00] behavior. And so every time you go down this pattern of trigger anxiety, safety, behavior, you strengthen that pathway and you make it harder to do the effective thing. You make it harder to make the right choice because you're conditioning yourself to avoid every time you feel that anxiety.

Which, if you've ever struggled with anxiety in any way, whether it's social anxiety or phobia, or an extreme avoidance of one specific thing, you know what I'm talking about, where every time you avoid it, every time you're faced with that thing, again, the anxiety is somehow bigger and the situation is somehow worse and more overwhelming.

Every time you avoid that thing, your brain learns and internalizes. Okay? That was a threat. And the best way to approach that was to avoid it. I did the right thing. And if I wasn't able to sit in that situation, if I wasn't able to go through that must mean that this is really bad and really dangerous, and the way that I got rid of that anxiety was by not doing that thing.

So that must be the right choice. And because I didn't go through that thing. It must be even worse than I think it is. [00:11:00] So then the next time you're faced with that thing, the anxiety is bigger and more of overwhelming and it's easier to make the bad choice, if that makes sense.

So what do we do instead? How do we practice exposure therapy for vulnerability?

Most people when they accept that they're struggling and that they need help and that they've been avoiding asking for help, you expect yourself to go from, I haven't told anyone anything to let me explain everything I'm feeling. And that's a really huge, massive, big jump again, like we just talked about, especially if you've conditioned yourself to not talking about these things and avoiding the emotion and not addressing the conversation.

So we're asking too much of ourselves. It's too overwhelming. And one of the mistakes that we can make with exposure therapy is that if we push ourselves too far, too fast and we expose ourselves to the thing that makes us anxious and we're not able to sit with it and overcome it in a healthy way. And instead we go back to that safety behavior, we reinforce that anxiety spiral and that anxiety cycle of avoidance. And so that's what we don't wanna do. We don't want to push ourselves [00:12:00] into the deep end and then further reinforce this belief that this thing is too scary and whelm to go overcome.

Instead, we want to slowly expose ourselves to this thing that makes us feel anxious in a way that's like a little bit outside of our comfort zone, but still doable. And with time, overcome that without reverting back to square one. Uber avoidance, refusing to sit with it if we jump the gun.

So the goal is not full vulnerability. The goal is being slightly more honest than you were yesterday.

And so going back to this example with my parents, because this played out just textbook perfectly in my own life. We worked our way up to having these tough conversations about my mental health and what I was experiencing and the core beliefs I was holding that made it so challenging for me to go to them for support

and so instead, what we started to do, we agreed in therapy, we would try this out and practice our vulnerability and they would practice their validation. Was that in the middle of a conversation, regardless of what was going on, [00:13:00] I would just say how I was feeling.

So maybe we're talking about the weather and I would be like anxious and my parents agreed that when I. said how I was feeling, when I told them what I was experiencing, they wouldn't even acknowledge it. They'd be like, alright, great. Move on with the conversation. And if you are someone who really struggles with vulnerability, that is like a dream come true for someone to be like, I'm not even going to acknowledge what you just said.

We are just gonna move on with our lives as if it never happened. And so that was really effective for me to build that muscle and practice. talking about what I was experiencing and voicing to them when I was struggling. So when we were at dinner, when an emotion came up, I would say, anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, uncertain, and they would not acknowledge it, which if you're a parent, you're like, surely.

That is not a good way to respond if your kid tells you that they're struggling. . For me to practice being vulnerable and them to practice responding in this new way. This was that first step. Doing it in a way that felt doable and not overwhelming, but still slightly out of my comfort zone.

And then from there, we moved on. I would [00:14:00] say how I was experiencing, they would validate. I can see that you're struggling. I may not understand what you're going through, but I just want you to know that I. hear what you're saying and I see that, and I want you to know that I appreciate what you're going through.

Then we moved up the exposure hierarchy a bit, and my parents would ask about how I was doing, and this is what I talked about last week, where my dad would ask what my numbers were on my diary card. He wouldn't ask me to like monologue about my emotional experience and what I was going through and where I was at today.

He would say, how anxious are. How depressed are you? How suicidal are you? And I would give him numbers on a scale of one to 10, and he was able to effectively understand where I was at, validate that. But the onus wasn't on me to like perfectly describe and articulate and be super vulnerable about what I was experiencing and why.

And so we continued up through this exposure hierarchy. Getting to the point where I felt much more comfortable talking to them when I was struggling, going to them when I needed [00:15:00] help, asking them for support, experiencing these emotions, and feeling okay doing that with them.

And this is not something that happened just with my parents. It's also something that they intentionally do in a lot of DBT programs. And if you're not familiar with DBT, they have something called phone coaching. And phone coaching is a resource that is available to people doing intensive DBT, where if you are in crisis, if you are having trouble using your skills, you can text or call your therapist and get skills coaching through that moment.

Having a panic attack. I tried my skills, I can't handle this. I'm super overwhelmed. What do I do? Therapists can help walk you through it. But. Whenever I started at a new DBT program, they would expose therapist to phone coaching and there would be homework within the first week or two of, I want you to text me one time in the next week just how you're doing. Or when I would go on a visit with my parents at residential, they would tell us.

Want you to call the unit at one point [00:16:00] each day. Just check in. Tell us how you're doing. It's okay if it's not a time that you need skills coaching. But they would have us put in the reps and expose ourselves to the vulnerability of asking for help.

Because the last thing that you want to happen is to be in crisis, to be at rock bottom, and to never have asked for help before. Because it only amplifies that anxiety. You've been avoiding it. You don't know what to expect. You don't know how someone will respond. You've never tried this thing before, and now there's so much on the line, and again, it's all tied to your self-worth.

It just is so overwhelming and feels impossible to do.

And so whenever we can practice this and put the support systems in place and build that muscle of asking for help and being vulnerable before we're in crisis, absolutely needing it to get through the moment. Do that.

So I wanted to give you guys some ideas about ways you can practice asking for help. They don't feel like asking for help, but still count and work that exposure to vulnerability, muscle work your way up that hierarchy and [00:17:00] help you move in the right direction.

one of my favorite ways to ask for help that doesn't feel like asking for help but is actually very effective, is to hold myself accountable by putting myself in a situation with someone else. So I'm an avoider. And the one thing that I love to do is procrastinate. So, in college especially when I had a bunch of deadlines coming up, when I had a number of things that I had to do, and it was starting to feel overwhelming, and the to-do list was stacking up, and I started to get that point of

like,

I'm paralyzed to take any step because this is all too much.

To even begin to think about, so I'm just gonna do nothing. Instead, I would set up a study date with a friend and say, do you wanna go get coffee and work, or, I need to work on this essay. Is there anything you have to work on? We can just sit in our dorm and work together so that we're both locking in and getting our stuff done.

And you're like, that's not asking for help. Like That's just working with a friend. You don't necessarily have to articulate why you're asking for [00:18:00] something and the benefit that it's having for you emotionally to the person. You can just say, I have an exam coming up and I need to study. Do you wanna study together?

And the reason could be that you are an avoider and like to procrastinate and being with someone else will hold you accountable to start getting those things done. Similarly, you could call a friend and. Talk to them about how their day is going and what is going on in their life because your social battery's low and you're feeling isolated and not connected.

And being on the phone with someone will help combat that and distract you from what you're experiencing. But you don't need to get on the phone and say, I'm feeling really lonely right now, and no one understands what I'm going through. So can I just listen to you talk for 20 minutes? So asking for the behavior or the objective can be easier than making the emotional request set up a workout class to do with a friend. Make an appointment to call with each other. Check in on how someone else is doing, creating space for their emotions.

Focusing on the outcome rather than the emotion can be a good place to start.

Another [00:19:00] exposure to vulnerability thing that I like to do is talking about my interests and just things that are going on in my life. I've talked about this before, but I like to put the responsibility on myself to

make myself be known versus waiting for other people to pull that information out of me.

So if you meet me in real life and we're spending time together, you'll hear me talk about like Taylor Swift and things going on, and things that I'm paying attention to in news or this conversation that I had the other day that was hard or is work stressful? What's going on? What's happening?

What's coming up in my life? And that is me, whether people realize it or not, working this muscle of exposure therapy and practicing that vulnerability, it's a signal to myself that I have gone to this person before with something that was hard, and I did that and it was okay, and the world continued to turn and I did in fact not implode with anxiety.

It also means that the next time something hard and uncomfortable comes up that I do need support with. I've already laid this foundation of a relationship so it's [00:20:00] easier to go back and build upon that foundation.

And so instead of approaching this of

like.

to be vulnerable. I must share my deepest, darkest secret and biggest thing that I'm struggling with. You can share anything. You can be like, oh my God, I had such a hard conversation with a friend last week. Oh my gosh, it's so busy this week at work.

Or this crazy thing happened in this lecture. Like the exam was so different from what we were taught, and that is so not fair. Those are emotions. Those are challenging experiences. There's no reason that you can't practice this muscle of vulnerability with these like smaller scale things.

There's also no rule about who you go to and who you practice. being vulnerable with the podcast is exposure to vulnerability.

I put a lot of hours in practicing talking about my emotions, talking about my experience, sitting with those things. So if you want to journal or. talk out loud to Chachi PT or,

leave a voice memo for yourself to come back to later or write about what you're experiencing or post it on TikTok Or send a text [00:21:00] message to yourself that you'll never read later on. All of those things count. Sometimes what's overwhelming is not even what the other person will say. It's the discomfort of you having to sit with that emotion and articulate it and actually put words to what you're experiencing so you can practice doing that without someone else.

And just like I've said in so many other episodes where we talk about mental health recovery and what this looks like long term. There are so many days where I'm not doing exposure therapy. There are so many days where I do choose to avoid. I don't wanna have that conversation. I don't wanna sit without emotion.

I don't wanna confront what I'm feeling and ask for help and accept that support and actually acknowledge what I'm going through. That's okay. Again, the goal is that we're just doing this most of the time that we're on an upwards trajectory, that we're slowly but surely moving in the right direction.

We don't need to be doing it a hundred percent of the time. We just need to do this enough that we're approaching more than we're avoiding.

So I hope this was helpful. Like I mentioned, there were so many times in my mental health journey where I [00:22:00] knew I needed help, but I didn't wanna say it out loud. I didn't want to accept help. I didn't wanna confront what I was experiencing. I didn't want others to see me differently.

And what helped change that and allowed me to accept the help that I was being offered and be vulnerable about what I was experiencing. Wasn't forcing myself to suddenly magically be super open and vulnerable and accepting. It was learning how to be slightly more honest, slightly more open, slightly more vulnerable each time I had those conversations.

And when we practice vulnerability, it stops feeling like a cliff. It stops feeling like,

oh my God, I have to do this big thing, and it's incredibly overwhelming and everything is attached to this and all these big outcomes, and instead feels like a step in the right direction. And over time, the more you do this, the more reps you get in, it feels easier, it feels less threatening, and you stop doing everything alone because you're letting people in, you have more support.

And so,

like I said, the momentum of not only getting better at this internally, but having more support externally is an absolute game changer [00:23:00] in everything in life, but especially mental health.

So if you made it this far into the episode, I hope you know that you don't have to do it all at once. you just have to take that first step. And if this is something you've been struggling with, if you are an avoider like me, save this episode and come back to it next time you feel that urge to avoid rather than approach.

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