Does anyone else hate asking for help...?

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Yeah I HATE asking for help. Often because I need help on really basic things and I feel like people will know there is something ... 'different' about me as a result. People expect things of me 'oh but you should KNOW how to do that I shouldn't have to tell you' Not asking for help has always been a huge way for me to mask things by staying quiet and figuring it out on my own.

Like most things it is to my advantage and to my detriment. Things can get a lot worse than needed but I also find that I find creative and interesting strategies and solutions to other things.

Doesn't help that the main time I asked for any help was with my mental health and my family was like 'you're fine. stop being dramatic. You just have a bad attitude and you're lazy'

Always!! I've also had feedback that I don't complain enough! Isn't that a good thing?!

When I was younger, it did not even occur to me to ask for help.

Now that I am older, I understand my limitations more, but I dislike discussing them - not because I am ashamed, but because they are difficult to explain so people assume I am making them up:

"No. I am not blind, but I still use Braille to read large bodies of text."
"No. I am not deaf, but I still use American Sign Language to communicate when mute."
"Yes. I have a college degree, but I still do not do self-care tasks well."

I do not look like any recognized charity cases, so I must be a fraud. But, even if someone does recognize and understand disorders like sensory processing disorder, executive dysfunction, and selective mutism, I hate asking for help, because I feel like a huge burden.

And, I do love the feeling of accomplishing something myself.

_________________
31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

Sometimes. Depending on the situation....

I don't like asking for help because it is too hard in some situations. Sometimes it's more work to try to get someone to understand what I need/what difficulty I'm having then it is to just keep trying to do something on my own without help.

I don't like asking for help because I don't trust people to help me in ways that don't amount to them just completely taking over and shoving me aside in the process.

I don't like asking for help because I like to do things for myself. (I always like to do things for myself, but this may or may not get in the way of me asking for help.)

I find it very difficult too, and it has lead to various problems.

Yes yes a million times yes.

Admittedly, my abuse history is a part of it, but I think I'd have a hard time regardless. I don't know how much is too much to expect of myself, and I don't know how much is too much to expect of others. I have no reliable way to measure what others are expecting of me, either. So I tend to expect very little from others and not ask for help much. Those times when I need help the most are times I am least likely to ask or know how to do so.

If the world were full of solid expectations and opportunity to ask for clarification without judgment, I wouldn't struggle so much. As it stands now, I just get stressed and meltdown repeatedly. As a kid, a lot of the people who were supposed to help me either brushed me off or told me to get over it, so I started holding everything in. Apparently my problems were not to be seen by anyone. Ironically, these same people expected me to deal with their problems but would not accept advice, nor would they even acknowledge the fact that they were repeatedly dumping their issues on me.

Silly Aspie me assumed that because they were saying these things to me, they did so with some purpose other than to complain.

I sometimes forget that I have the ability to ask for help if I need it. Like at work, if I'm trying to get a heavy box down off a shelf, or reach something that's too high up, I'll be struggling with it and someone will ask me, "Do you need some help?" at which point I remember that other humans exist, and that they can do things that I can't do for myself when I need them!

This used to happen to me when I worked on school projects all the time. I'd try to do it myself to the best of my ability, and it would end up looking kind of crappy, then my mom would come in and say, "Here, let me help, you can do this, this and this and it'll look really cool," then she'd help me, and it would.

As a kid I was really shy, and always embarrassed about asking for things to get my needs met. I'd stay over at friends' houses and be starving because I didn't want to tell them I was hungry, or I'd wait until they left the room, then slip into the bathroom to drink from their tap rather than asking for some water. I was even too embarrassed a lot of the time to ask my own mother for pain meds when I had a headache, for reasons I can't wrap my head around. I had a pretty miserable childhood because of this. Fortunately, I got over it 90%. I still don't like asking for things from people I don't know well, but I can do it around friends and family.

I hardly ever ask for help. I don't know why. Most of the time it doesn't occur to me.
If I were lost in a city or something like that I might ask for directions.
I would never do things like ask for help or advise on the internet.

Well yesterday after reading this thread I finally came out and asked for help at work.

I told my manager about my aspergers and told him that I struggle sometimes and that sometimes I need help but I don't know how to ask for it.

The result was a positive one and I have never told anyone about me having ASD before so it was a bit of a gamble.

I find it really difficult to ask for help. I don't know why. I'm sure it's not because I would feel like a failure, everyone asks for help. I think I feel like Im intruding, and making a nuisance.

It's one of the reasons I don't ask anyone anywhere.

Im not entirely sure. It's been so easy for me to say it's fear, but I don't think it is. Im re-evaluating where all these thoughts come from.

It causes me to keep to myself though, I make my own way to parties, or to meetings, wishing and hoping someone would offer me a lift sometimes. There was one time at a house party, everybody had left, one by one, taking their own transport. I left and the host said "haven't you brought your car?" no. "well why didn't you get a lift off someone else?" no one offered.

I come across as independent but Im not, I need someone with me showing me what to do! I was told to light a candle at Church and I was panicking but followed someone else and copied what they did.

It works the other way round too. I get the feeling that other people are very independent so I don't offer other people help either. Most of the time I don't get any ideas, but the times I do, I don't know whether I should offer help. How will it come across? Will I offend them if I do ask? Will I offend them if I don't ask? So I just try to build a reputation that I am reliable and I can be asked and wait for others to come to me instead.

But its a lonely place for someone like me who wants help and wants to help.

Oh yes.

In my case it's partly because I learned when I was young that people were unreliable and it was better to be self-sufficient (a lesson I'm now learning may not always hold true, but that's another story).

It's also because I feel highly anxious interacting with most people. Even a casual exchange of greetings can freak me out, depending on who it is and how comfortable I am with them. Having to ask for help of any kind is terrifying. I'll delay it and delay it, trying to find a way around having to do it, until I'm so stressed I can hardly breathe and it's inevitable.

Finally, I haven't really worked out a script for approaching people I need help from, so I feel like my requests or questions are sooooo awkward. As another poster wrote, I feel like I'm imposing or bothering them.

Strangely, I enjoy helping people I like.

I don't like asking for help because it's almost always brought me grief of some type or another.

People can't understand why I stumble on simple things.
People are impatient when I can't understand the way they are saying it.

Most times I would love to have help because I know it shortcuts a lot of trial and error. And, I seem to make connections to things that a lot of people don't get. And, I don't know if it's because I see something they don't, or just imagine a connection.

Very few times did I have someone actually take the time to help. Those people I really appreciated.

And, I do like doing things on my own more than with other people.