Asking for help.

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I want to post about something I was thinking about this evening.

When I was in junior high I was bullied by a number of my classmates. They would harass me verbally and physically.

Anyway, I was telling my parents about it a few months ago, and they said to me "What, that was happening to you then? Why didnt you tell us? We would have done something about it."

I said to them "Oh, I think I felt that you were both busy with work and I didnt want to bother you with it. And I didnt think you could really do anything."

But when I thought about it further, I realised that it wasnt really so much that at all. I thought back and I remembered that I couldnt really describe to them or articulate what was happening very well, I didnt know what words to use to tell them so I didnt try.

Also I remember that it basically didnt occur to me to ask for help. It was almost a theory of mind thing, like I couldn't imagine the scenario of asking a person for help, and receiving said help. It didnt occur to me at all that I could ask for help.

I dont know, that seems strange to me now. I am far better at communicating with people now than I was back then.

It was almost like I had a sort of tiny imagination when it came to people, and if something hadn't happened to me (such as receiving help with a bully)

I couldn't dream up a scenario in which that would happen, or even articulate to someone about any of it.

Confusing post I know. Anyway I am wondering if anyone has experienced similar, or also themselves had problems asking for help.

C
~

My early experiences of people were that they were the opposite of helpful. That sets up a pattern of self reliance, even when self reliance isn't reliable.

every time I have asked for help people always disappear and never help me but when others ask me for help I am always there so I just don't ask for help because I am always ignored or brushed off-happens all the time and it is very difficult for us aspies to get up the courage to ask for help in the first place and then to be ignored when you do-so I stopped asking.

I had the same problem. When you ask for help, you put yourself in a postion of weakness, you show your waekness and if you don't get the help needed, it hurts even more. It tool me a long time to ask my parents for help but when I did, they didn't really care, they think that bullyng happens, and it's just something you have to go throught. Forthermore, I was humiliated because my sister saw me getting bullied.

So if you ask for help, you ahve to make sure you ask it to the right people. Sometimes, you just don't really conceiv that there is a problem somebody could help you with. Sometimes, you are so meserable that you don't really believe that it's possible for you not to be, you just let your life be a nightmare because it has always be so. What I should have done is just refuse to go to school, going on strike. But you can be so used to suffering that you just accept it, but you shouldn't because you still want to live.

I was bullied all through high school, but it was particularly bad when I was about 14yrs. I only recall one occasion when I told my Mum about it. She said, 'Why haven't you said anything about it before?'. The truth is, I really couldn't see what she could do to help. I knew of at least one teacher who was all too aware of what was going on, but she never addressed it once. In fact, my Mum did absolutely nothing about it either, it was just swept under the carpet and ignored.

That still happens to me sometimes, where the very idea of getting help doesn't occur to me. Very strange, and I'm glad someone else put it into words for me.

Also, asking for help is a communication task. If I'm already in distress, communication tasks aren't exactly easy. And asking with the wrong tone of voice (the tone I get when I'm distressed) means I've got a hostile person to deal with in addition to my original problem.

Then there's getting the help, which involves coordinating my actions with another person, and giving them the nonverbal signals that say "I appreciate the help" rather than "hahaha I got you to do it for me sucker!", all while still dealing with my original problem which was too hard for me to handle on my own to begin with.

I have a general tendancy not to ask for help, though it is largely the result of what was offered whwn i have asked.

you're learning some theory of mind in this thread. now you can see how you've grown emotionally, and this will continue.

^ Thank you. : )

Yes I have thought further about it and I have realised that both of those are true. By the time I was 12/13 I had already had a lot of experience of people putting words in my mouth and accusing me of things, ie people telling me I had said an offensive thing on purpose. So I had an idea that people would tell me it was my fault I was being bullied.

But yes, it is more than just a theory of mind thing, that is true, it was more that life had kind of trained me that asking for help would not bring help.



I see that you get what I am saying.
I do remember having difficulty with actually asking for help, ie if I was having trouble with something at school I wouldnt ask for help, I would say "I cant do it."

Such as with my handwriting, or with sports. That was my version of asking for help but that never seemed to get me help, it seemed to get me somebody telling me that I can do it and that I need to try harder.

I wish I had just thought to say, " Look, I really am struggling here, I really need help with my handwriting." But I sort of didnt know how to say that, if it is making any sense.

Sadly, it makes perfect sense to me.

makes sense to me too

I have that problem--it's not a matter of showing weakness for me; it's about thinking that I actually can ask for help. Just before college started, my mom drilled into my head that I have to ask for help if I need it. Since then, I've been better about it.

Glad to see people understand! Yes, the more I look back on my childhood I realise that I was definitely not as high functioning as people around me seemed to think I was. I have that problem now still- people overestimating my level of AS and thinking I can handle things that I cannot, and I end up having to behave the way they want me to, and then I end up in an even bigger mess.

Some time ago I was trying to explain things to someone, and I ended up articulating it almost exactly like this. There have been many times, where I just couldn't figure out how to ask for help or what to say, even in some cases when I really needed it. So I didn't.

But as I was thinking it to try to explain it recently, I realized, like you did, that much of the time it simply didn't occur to me to ask for help. Sometimes not at all, but sometimes only after the situation became extremely urgent. For example, when I was five I broke my arm and my mom was in the kitchen cooking while I was in the living room, so she didn't see it happen. At the time, even as a little kid, my immediate instinctive reaction wasn't to cry for help or to go to my mom. My immediate reaction was just to pace around and wait for the pain to stop. It was only when it became clear to me that it wasn't going away that I went to my mom, and even then it wasn't so much to ask for help as to apologize, because I was afraid of getting trouble: the first thing I said was "I'm sorry."

I still have trouble asking people for help, and knowing how and when to do that.

I sympathize with so much of this.

Even now that I've figured this out & try to explain that I can't do a certain thing I hear "well you could if you just tried harder". It's like talking in a circle.

I hate it so much when people tell me I could do something that I can't do if I tried hard enough.

A couple of examples are there is this one boss in this mmmorpg that I play that I can't beat because you need very fast reflexes to perceive what attack he is going to use and put up the appropriate protection prayer before he lets the attack loose or it will hit you hard for half or more of your hitpoints. I just can't do it. I'm too slow and even after watching videos I can't even tell what attack he is using most of the time.

Recently riding a bike came up in conversation with a friend and they still can't believe that I can't ride a bike. They said I "never tried". I've always been uncoordinated and clumsy and had poor balance and can't roller skate either. Somewhere in my house I have some old grade school report cards with the gym teacher complaining about me not being able to do certain things. I remember before school and in early grade school falling and scraping my knees all the time.