You don’t need to wait until things are really bad to ask for help

There’s a strange rule many of us seem to have created for ourselves about asking for help: things have to be bad enough first.

Not just difficult. Not just tiring. Not something that has been quietly bothering you for months. Properly bad.

Until then, we carry on. We go to work, get everyone where they need to be, reply to messages, remember birthdays, buy food, put petrol in the car and generally give a very convincing impression of somebody who has everything under control.

Nobody is particularly concerned about us. Sometimes that includes us.

Because when life is still functioning on the outside, it can be remarkably easy to dismiss what’s happening on the inside. I’m just tired. It’s been a busy few weeks. Other people have much more going on. I’ll see how I feel when things settle down.

And my personal favourite: I’ll give it a bit longer.

Quite how long a bit longer is, nobody knows. But we can be very committed to it.

Coping and feeling okay aren’t necessarily the same thing

I think this can be particularly difficult when you’re someone who is used to getting on with things. Other people may not realise you’re struggling because, well, things are still getting done.

You got through the meeting. You made dinner. You went to the birthday party. You answered the email. You smiled when somebody asked whether you were okay and said, “Yeah, fine thanks. You?”

So clearly you must be fine.

Except perhaps your mind won’t switch off when you finally get into bed. You’re becoming irritated by things that wouldn’t normally bother you. You keep cancelling plans because you simply cannot face another thing in the diary. You’re questioning yourself more. Things you used to enjoy feel like effort. You’re permanently waiting for the point where life feels a little less relentless.

Nothing is necessarily falling apart.

But you don’t feel quite like you.

And I think that matters.

We’re very good at moving the line

When we’re deciding whether what we’re experiencing is “bad enough”, we often start comparing. Well, at least I’m still working. Other people have proper problems. There’s nothing actually wrong with my life. I should be grateful.

Perhaps you are grateful. You can love your family and still feel exhausted. You can have a good job and still dread Monday morning. You can know that other people are going through difficult things and still acknowledge that you are finding something difficult too.

Those things can exist at the same time.

The problem with using “bad enough” as our measure is that the line has a habit of moving. If you’re still getting out of bed, perhaps it isn’t bad enough. If you’re still working, perhaps it isn’t bad enough. If you still laugh sometimes, perhaps it definitely isn’t bad enough.

Before you know it, you can have been living with something for months because support belongs, in your mind, to some future version of you who is struggling considerably more than you are now.

“I should be able to sort this myself”

This one comes up a lot, especially when you can’t quite explain what’s wrong.

If something obvious has happened, asking for support can somehow feel easier to justify. There’s a reason. A thing you can point to. But what if there isn’t?

What if life looks okay on paper? What if the only explanation you have is, “I don’t really know. I just don’t feel like myself.”

That can feel terribly vague when you’re considering talking to somebody. You imagine you’re supposed to arrive with a neatly prepared summary of the problem, preferably with supporting evidence and an agenda for the first session.

You don’t.

In fact, not knowing exactly what’s wrong can be part of the reason for having the conversation in the first place.

One of my clients, Beth, described knowing that things weren’t right but not knowing what to do next. She was new to therapy when we began working together and has since described major shifts in her mindset, particularly in her relationship with herself.

That is Beth’s experience, rather than a promise of what somebody else will experience. But I think there’s something important about where she started.

She didn’t need to have worked everything out before asking for help.

There isn’t a prize for managing alone

I sometimes wonder what we’re hoping to win.

You’ve been worrying about something for six months, sleeping badly, questioning yourself and feeling increasingly unlike you, but you’ve managed it entirely independently.

Congratulations?

There isn’t actually a medal.

Asking for support doesn’t automatically mean you can’t cope with your life. Sometimes it simply means you’ve recognised that coping isn’t the only standard you’re interested in anymore.

Perhaps you’d like things to feel different. Perhaps you’d like to understand why you keep responding in a particular way. Perhaps you’d like to trust yourself more, spend less time worrying or have somewhere you don’t need to be the person who has everything sorted.

None of those things require a crisis.

There is an enormous amount of life between “everything is wonderful” and “I cannot do this anymore.” That’s where many people actually live. They are functioning. They are coping. They are doing what needs doing.

But something is costing them more than it used to.

Perhaps that’s where you are.

And perhaps instead of asking:

“Is this bad enough for me to ask for help?”

there’s a more useful question:

“Would I like something to be different?”

What if I don’t know what I’d say?

This is one of the biggest barriers I see. People imagine getting in touch and immediately having to explain themselves.

Where do I even start? What if I get upset? What if my problem sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud? What if I don’t really need help?

Before long, we’ve managed to overthink asking for help so thoroughly that we need a little lie down from considering it.

You don’t need a speech.

When somebody comes to work with me, I don’t expect them to arrive knowing exactly what’s happening, why it’s happening and what needs to change. If they already had all of that beautifully worked out, we’d have considerably less to talk about.

We can start with what you do know. Maybe that’s, “I’m tired of worrying about everything.” Perhaps it’s, “I’ve lost confidence in myself,” or, “I’m coping, but I don’t think I’m actually okay.”

It might simply be:

“Something needs to be different and I’m not really sure where to start.”

That is enough for a conversation.

You’re allowed to start before breaking point

You don’t need to prove that you’re struggling enough to deserve support. And you don’t need to wait until life becomes unmanageable before you pay attention to something that has been quietly telling you it isn’t right.

Perhaps you don’t need help. Maybe that word itself feels too big.

So ask yourself something else instead:

Would having somebody in my corner be useful right now?

Would it be useful to have a conversation where you don’t have to protect anybody else from how you’re feeling? Would it help to understand yourself better? Would you like to look at what you want to be different rather than continuing to wait and see whether things improve on their own?

You might decide the answer is no. That’s okay.

But if the answer is a quiet, persistent yes, I’d pay attention to it.

Not because I can promise what will happen if you ask for support. Not because something terrible will happen if you don’t. Simply because you don’t have to reach breaking point before the way you’re feeling is worth taking seriously.

And if you’ve been telling yourself you’ll “give it a bit longer”, it might be worth asking yourself how many times you’ve already said that.

If you’d like to talk, get in touch and we can arrange a conversation. You don’t need to know exactly what you want to say, and you don’t need to explain your entire life in the first message.

We can start with where you are now.

Jx