6 Reasons Why We Might Fear asking For Emotional Support
I am often contacted by parents explaining the difficulties their adult children are experiencing and asking if I can help. My first question is: Does your son/daughter want help? As much as I would love to help, I cannot if they are not on board.
Help in any form can only be requested by the person in need of the help. Support unasked will be rejected, the person who initiated runs the risk of being resented. As is the case with alcoholism, the addicted person will not change their ways unless they desperately desire to do so and reach out for guidance. No matter how much their loved ones might want to do it for them, we just cannot.
So why are we so scared to ask for emotional help and guidance on a planet that is lived and experienced through our emotions?
First let us have a look at what emotions are and why we experience them.
Our emotions are a chemical consequence of our conditioned thoughts, and our reaction(s) are an attempt to avoid or enhance these beliefs that stem from the conditioned thoughts.
That is a mouth full. So, what is emotions? When all is said and done, emotions are a release of hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine by the hypothalamus and serves as guides towards growth.
How can that be?
What we experience as negative emotions is situations that highlights our areas where we need to work to enable us to grow emotionally - insecurity, anger, self-respect, and many more. The action that plays out to release these emotions within us, is only that - it is a story that is playing out in our subconscious from past experiences. Specific emotions will get triggered because we feel in the moment that we might not be heard, seen, disrespected, or any other disempowered reaction. The question is: How can I grow from here to enable me to not be so dependent on outside recognition or validation?
Our positive emotions are an indication of where we are within our own strengths. We feel that we can master a task, we are in an environment where we feel safe because we know our strengths, it is activities that gives us joy. Again, while we are busy in these stories where we feel loved, respected, joy, happiness the question should be, what is it now that manifests in these emotions for me? Why am I feeling strong? What was triggered within?
It then becomes clear that our emotions are our roadmap to finding who we perceive ourselves to be, what we are doing here. Once you know your worth, self-love, self-respect and all your other strengths, you are no longer needing outside forces for your inner happiness, contentment, and joy. You no longer allow yourself to be in positions where you feel disempowered. You are ready to walk away from circumstances and people who cannot or will not respect you. That is what our emotions are - indicators of where to grow.
Because we live in a society that avoids acknowledging that these emotions are something we experience because of conditioned thinking within and that we must own up to our ownership, it has nothing to do with the world at large, it is difficult to admit that ‘I am different to the larger whole and that I need help because I am struggling’. Even our positive emotions can be limiting - if you can only be happy when your child, lover, spouse, are happy, then you do not own your happiness and you should find it within.
Our emotions are within, this is where we experience our life. The labels we choose to carry - I am anxious, I am depressed, I am weird - are labels we grab onto so our inner world can make sense to us as we experience it out on the world stage. Our emotions do not bob around like ping-pong balls outside of us for the world to see - we trigger and experience them within and then we have the choice to either master the hidden disempowerment or to blurt it out to the world through our actions - rage, fear, etc.
So, why do we not ask for help for something that is assisting us in indicating where we might want to grow?
1. Introvert. Many people do not like to share their inner thoughts and feelings with other people. It has nothing to do with being insecure, they just do not like to speak about these inner ‘secrets’. The fact that they have an introverted personality does not mean that they do not go through the same turmoil as the extrovert. In fact, my opinion is that perhaps the extrovert has a faster release of the emotion than the introvert with less suppressed emotions. It does however not mean that the extrovert is more likely to ask for help - the good old ego plays a crucial role here.
An introverted person would prefer to analyse the issue within, observe others, and sometimes decide it is better to just ‘forget’ about it. The desire for privacy is so great that the thought of sharing something so personal in fact might create even bigger fear. This is part of a vicious cycle: The introvert does not talk, the people around them think they okay because they do not talk, the less the introvert talks. They do not want to burden people with their troubles but might open up if someone takes the time to talk to them.
You are no burden. You are valued and you have a huge role to play – introverted or not. Your smile and your willingness to help, are needed by other people. Please be kind to yourself.
2. Fear of Rejection. What if they say I am silly, I am only imagining it all and they snigger at me? Even worse, what if they say I am overreacting? The fear of rejection is one of the great fears that we hold - because by nature we are pack animals. Unfortunately, we reject ourselves daily by believing that we are not good enough - without our knowing it, it is now a reality for us. With rejection comes the possibility that we might have been conditioned not to ask for help because ‘people only care about themselves’. We also believe that we cannot afford it and although in some instances the financial cost might seem high, the result of the investment is unmeasurable as you are free to follow your dreams, look at your ‘problems’ differently and in a way that will empower you.
Often, we reject ourselves even before we ask for help. You are not irrational, you are not ‘strange’, you are deserving of living the best life you can, do all you can to live that life.
3. Fear of Change. This is a problem people struggle with every day - we do not like what we experience or have in our lives currently, but the fear of change of moving into the unknown is debilitating. Think how difficult it is when in an office setting a new system is introduced, or at home when your trusted appliance breaks and you have to purchase a new one. Humans generally do not take well to change. Because we really fear the unknown, change is another huge fear. We fear change because we are not secure within ourselves - who will feel secure if you constantly tell yourself you are not good enough?
If we change, who do we become? What will my daily life look like - I know this life? It does not work for me, but I know it. Familiarity is the trap.
You are not the same person you were a year ago, 10 years ago, at birth. You are changing all the time, make sure the change is to your benefit.
4. Fear of my Secrets. Things happen to us, or we did things, in our past of which we are not proud. Sometimes these things also hurt, and we might even be ashamed. It is not an easy task to spill your secrets to a stranger. Depending on what the ‘secret’ is you might have unresolved trauma and I want to state it clearly: science shows that unresolved emotional trauma will eventually represent itself as a physical illness. You might want to push it down as hard as you can, it will show up somewhere else - it is like a slightly deflated balloon that you try to squeeze into your hand and close your fingers around it, it always pops out.
Another result is that the longer you stay within the story of the secret, the stronger you make your conditioned thoughts about yourself - limiting beliefs. And every time you think about the ‘story’ your subconscious will instruct the release of the hormones, which will bring on your emotions and your will reinforce the limiting belief. Stuff happens, not being blaze about it, but stuff happens. What happened does not define you, it is what you decide to believe about yourself because of what happened that defines you. And this belief you absolutely can change.
Your secrets need not be exposed, only the limitations that resulted because of those secrets.
5. Feeling Unworthy. Through our continuous self-criticism we diminish our worth. Our worth is directly linked to our self-love. We must come to understand that to love yourself does not have to mean that you are selfish. It will appear selfish to the people who no longer have a hold on you, but do you know what, that is their problem.
Consider for a moment that you can only teach math once you understand math. The same for anything else. So how can you truly express love if you have not experienced it internally, never being dependent on another person or object to give it to you? When we link love to an external factor, we are busy with a business transaction - I give and show love and then I know I will get ‘whatever’ from you. That is an exchange. It is conditional. You ‘love’ ice cream because of the enjoyment you derive through your taste. Very difficult to know and experience that taste if you have never held an ice cream and ate it. If we have compassion for other because of ‘what they bring to the relationship’ you are busy with a business transaction - an exchange.
Only once you know what it takes from you to love yourself unconditionally - patience, compassion, joy, peace, etc. - can you give it unconditionally to the world. When we look at the world currently it is truly clear that we are not ‘loving our neighbour as ourselves’. Remember you are experiencing this world within - without is a reflection of the stories you tell yourself within.
You are worthy - you might only have forgotten for a little time.
6. Fear of Failure. It is often expressed by clients that they are scared that nothing will work and that they cannot be helped. We are so hard on ourselves every day, that we believe that we cannot succeed, and that other people will give up on us. On top of that we think that our ‘problems’ are trivial or that the problem is so huge, that there is no ‘cure’. Failure has been sold to us as something that is not acceptable. What if I told you that there is no such thing as failure. There is only resistance to change and that resistance results in refusal to learn, stubbornness to make the changes, procrastination due to the fear and the security of ‘knowing here where I live now’.
You cannot fail, you might only choose to take longer to learn the lesson.
Often you will read that you go to a dentist for your teeth, a mechanic for your car, so why not to a psychologist or a transformation life coach for your emotional state? Because we think we are our emotions, we identify as the emotion, and we are scared. We also think we know how to work within with ourselves - by golly I know myself.
We are all here to learn, to grow, and to love of which love is the greatest. Start loving yourself first. Give yourself every opportunity to become love.
Sue Leppan
Transformation Life Coach
NLP Practitioner
Qualified Energy Codes® Facilitator
Qualified BEST® Practitioner
