Asking For Help
Asking for help might be the hardest and scariest part of the healing process. Most traumas are out of our control. Trying to handle it/manage it on our own gives us an illusion that we’ve regained some of the control we felt was lost. But that’s all it is, an illusion. It’s possible that for a time, managing on your own works, but trauma has a hard time staying managed without being properly processed. For me, my version of asking for help was letting my trauma and hurt seep out on everyone that I love, and come out sideways. Every cut I made, lie I told, drink I drank, and drunken call I made was a scream for help. No one knew that though. I was asking for help in all the wrong ways, the chaotic ways… because that’s what I knew.
Asking for help means admitting help is needed. For me, that was part of the struggle. It took me a long time to genuinely admit to myself and accept that help was needed. After admitting to myself that help was needed, I still had multiple reasons that I couldn’t or shouldn’t ask for/seek help. My brain was amazing at making me believe things that weren’t true. Then my therapist systematically debunked every reason.
I thought asking for help was me giving up control. I didn’t realize at the time, but I never really had control. My trauma and PTSD symptoms had control. When I was coping with alcohol, alcohol had control.
I thought I was too far gone to be helped; there was just too much. Link by link, though, Footnotes was instrumental in unchaining me from my past with the right trauma therapy.
I thought getting help made me weak. It was very quickly pointed out to me I had already survived what could have killed me. Any amount of reaching out for help while surviving was courageous because it was the opposite of submitting to death. Everyday living the life I was living, without asking for help, was me submitting to death. Deciding to live and deciding to heal went against every fiber of my being. That is strength. That is brave. You can do it.
I thought by seeking therapy I would have to relive the trauma I already survived, and I had promised myself I would never have to go back there. Through trauma therapy, however, I learned I didn’t have to relive it: I just had to come to peace with the impact it had on my life and beliefs.
The struggle that took me the longest to realize- about asking for help- was the fact that healing was scary. I had lived in a chaotic brain and body my whole life, and the uncharted waters of living in peace was terrifying. Peace sounded appealing but when I first felt it, it was so foreign, and the unknown is scary no matter how good for you it might be.
I need help.
Can you help?
Help me please!
Those three sentences, as small as they might be, can have the biggest impact on your future if you just take the leap. As scary as it is, that leap is so worth it!
“I thought by seeking therapy I would have to relive the trauma I already survived… I learned I didn’t have to relive it: I just had to come to peace with the impact it had on my life and beliefs…
just take the leap.” -JJ