This is a bit of an update on my friend, but it goes a lot further. My friend who was getting inpatient treatment is now home and all of us who knew what was happening are so happy for them. There are still a lot of uncertain things and some things that are stressing them out about the help that they need, but it is moving forward and I have a strong feeling that things will work themselves out. A lot of things are still in the works and are not necessarily a straight path to success, but they have gotten so much help so far and so many things are much better than they were before.
I mentioned in my previous post that I was able to share what happened with a small group of friends so they could help me out. Doing that was such a huge relieve for me because I could feel like not everything was dependent on me. As much as I always want to help friends and see what I can do, I know I can’t do it alone. I do feel like I show people how much I care by helping them when I can and being there for them. It’s not the only way I show that I care, but it is a bit one. And it also makes me feel needed when I can help someone. So passing it off to another person makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. But I’ve been trying to get better about asking for help because I know that most of the time it is the right thing to do.
But at the same time, asking for help is a difficult thing for me. And it’s a difficult thing for my friend as well. I completely understand the feeling because you don’t necessarily want to put yourself out there. If you ask people for help and nobody gets back to you or can do it, what does that mean about you? What does that mean about your friendship? I understand thinking that you aren’t important enough to people if they can’t help you, even though I know that it’s not the truth. But putting yourself out there is also opening yourself to rejection which is a very scary thing.
After my friend came home, I talked to them and we decided to create a new message group that included all the people from before as well as my friend. That way, they could ask for help from people who know what happened (they have not told everyone yet and I didn’t want them to feel like they needed to do that to ask for help). So we have our new message thread going on where my friend can ask if people have recommendations for things or if they can bring them food. People have been able to step up and help out and I know that my friend really has appreciated it all.
I admire my friend for being strong enough to ask for help when they are in such a vulnerable state. It’s also something that they have struggled with in the past so working on it is such a big step. I hope that asking for help and receiving it will help them know that they are loved and that asking for help can be a good thing, but I also know that feeling that can take a long time. I don’t have the same worries that my friend has, yet I still worry about asking for help because of the feeling of needing something and not getting it. I don’t like to feel like I’m not able to get what I need so I don’t like to rely on someone else.
I should take a note from my friend and work on doing steps to being better about asking for help. I could probably use the same message group that we created for my friend to ask for help for private matters. And I’m trying to be more active about asking for help on social media, even if it’s a silly thing. For example, I needed a tripod holder for my phone and I knew I could easily buy one. But because I’m working on not shopping online, I didn’t just go to Amazon and get one. So I put it on Facebook to my friends to see if anyone could loan me one, and a friend reached out and said I could borrow theirs when I needed it. It was such a simple ask, but it also isn’t what I normally would have done before.
While I continue to encourage my friend to ask for help and to work on being there for them when they need it, I really also want to work on taking my own advice and doing the same thing for myself. I know I have friends who wouldn’t mind helping me if I just asked them to. And if they feel the same sense of being needed by helping others that I do, I should allow them to help me.
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