No matter how tough life gets – or how poorly we are coping – most of us make the mistake of declining offers of help.
If your instinctive response to any offer of assistance is “I’m fine” or “I can handle it”, you’re not alone.
Even when we’re really struggling, most of us reject offers of help without even pausing to consider why we’re doing it and what it means for the person offering their support.
So why do we do it? The biggest motivator is probably the one that is most conscious: we don’t want to be a burden to others. ‘Everyone’s busy; they have their own problems’, we tell ourselves as we bat away genuine offers of help.
If we are inclined to delve a little deeper into our motivations, we might find less altruistic concerns at play. Perhaps we fear being seen as needy, inadequate or even pitiable? Could we be attached to an image of ourselves as ‘the doer’, ‘the giver’ or ‘the person who holds everything together’? Are we worried on some level that we’ll accrue a ‘debt’ we can’t repay if we let people do us favours?
Whatever is behind it, the habit of rejecting help is one that we should try to break. When we decline genuine offers of support from people who care about us, we not only make our own lives harder, but we deny our loved ones the opportunity to alleviate the pain they feel when they watch us struggling. We also deny them the pleasure that comes from satisfying one of our most beautiful human urges: the need to help those we care about, or those we see suffering.
One of my friends has a disabled child. My friend’s mother can’t babysit the child because she can’t lift her. Instead, she cooks a lovely meal for my friend’s family every Monday and Wednesday afternoon and delivers it in time for dinner. My friend accepts the meals with gratitude not only because her mother is an excellent cook, but because she knows that her mother feels driven to demonstrate her love in a practical way.
Another problem with rejecting help is that it reinforces the sense of isolation we feel when we are overwhelmed by life. If we can accept help – whether it’s a shoulder to cry on, a lift to the doctor or pot of soup – we will find that it strengthens our bond with our helper. This is because accepting help, which is tantamount to saying “I need you right now”, makes us vulnerable, and vulnerability is at the heart of meaningful connections.
So, next time you find yourself about to reject an offer of help without even considering it, try to stop yourself. Instead of focussing on how uncomfortable it feels for you to accept help, focus on how wonderful it feels for the other person to give help.