Problem asking for help?

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I tend to find that when I do ask for help the help I get just isn't that helpful. I'm not sure whether this is because I'm not very good at communicating on an emotional level, but it usually winds up with a lot of frustration on all sides and generally makes things worse. I am learning that in my case it is not "good to talk".

I have a lot of issues with asking for help, and it's so tangled up in so many things I still haven't been able to fully deconstruct it. Big issues I've identified were:

* I didn't know that help was available
* I didn't know how to ask
* I didn't realize I needed help
* On occasions when I asked for help, the help I received was useless or worse than useless

I knew I had a lot of difficulties, but the thought of therapy never crossed my mind until I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and even then talking about lifetime failures that I really needed to talk about never crossed my mind.

I remember as a child asking for homework help and getting useless responses from both parents. It always came down to "You're smart, you can figure it out."

More recently, when I was writing, I was also on a chat server with other writers as well as friends and people only peripherally involved - it wasn't a professional hub, more of a casual/friendly place where professional stuff got discussed. I would ask for assistance with particular bits of research/information and often people would turn it into a joke for several minutes, and this could trigger meltdowns (if one was already on its way), or help one along. I had trouble understanding the difference between friendly and malicious teasing (and still sometimes do), which was the problem.

What it came down to is that I have had a lot of trouble asking for help because of not knowing I could or knowing how, or being discouraged by past attempts apparently blowing up in my face.

I've tried to start a thread similar to this so many times over the past several months.

As a kid, I became very nervous over approaching people for help, in fear that I'd say the wrong thing or stutter and embarrass myself. What helped *tremendously* were the use of scripts. I'd write the questions down in advance and then read them out to the teacher, so I would know exactly what to ask.

Now, I still have trouble asking for help for a differnt reason...I don't want people to think I'm stupid, or feel that I am wasting the other person's time. This, I have yet to figure out.

I have problems asking for help in real life and even in the mmorpg I play. That is part of the reason I hate forced interaction activities in the game. I'm amazed that people in the game that I don't even know will just walk up to me and demand that I give them money, lend them valuable items, or guide them and hold their hand all the way through a quest.

In real life my mother never liked asking people for help because then she would owe them. I may have learned that from her.

Another reason that used to keep me from asking for help - I didn't realize people did so at all.

As a whole though, the big reason is not knowing how and needing it to be done right. I actually had a meltdown earlier this month that really bothered my boyfriend because I didn't know how to ask his mom (someone I'm on good terms with, know well and who I knew had an answer) advice on sewing my weighted blanket. He kept asking me why I didn't just say "Do you have advice on this?", I didn't really have a good answer, but was replying that I didn't know how and didn't want to be a bother or interfere with anything and wanted to get asking right on the first time.

Nope, not at all. That's their job.

Not usually. I remember a spesific teacher with a spesific mouth odor, which made me hesitate.

Seriously: No. But sometimes for various resons (maybe the most common is tiredness), I hesitate.

Pretty much every school report had "should ask for help more" on it for me. Just felt I would be wasting the teachers time or in a way insulting their teaching skills for me not being able to understand what they were trying to teach.

Oh, this just occurred to me...

TheMatrixHasYou, perhaps you are not so bad at asking or help as you may think. After all, you did just start this thread, and this thread is, itself, asking for help (from us)!

:D

Hmm, I never found it difficult to ask questions regarding course material. I could always come up to the appropriate teacher and ask "how do I solve X?", etc. If I find out that one teacher is usually not helpful, I start asking a different teacher. I also ask tons of questions in class. The only time when I have a problem with this is when I'm tired. I usually just can't get myself to say much in that state, period.

I usually try to refrain from asking questions until I figure out things on my own, but sometimes I get stuck and it becomes much more efficient to ask a question to a person who knows the subject, as opposed to trying to find an answer online (and then typically get derailed and start doing something else instead).

I don't usually ask for help, but if someone offers to help I might say yes. Part of it is that I sometimes feel stupid asking for help, especially in class when I struggle with something that everybody else seems to understand, so I suffer in silence.