Stubborn pride

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Whilst there is nothing wrong with a good measure of independence better to swallow your pride and accept you sometimes need help, and support, than to struggle unnecessarily through stubborn pride.

Of course accepting you need help and support and getting it are two different matters. It's possible to accept and be aware you need help and support without getting it.


Mental health services can be notoriously bad at giving help and support.

Thoughts welcomed.

Accepting that you need help is one thing. Asking for help quite another as it puts you in a very vulnerable position. Especially if the help is not available or substandard. Asking for help, to me, is surrendering part of the control to someone else. I am not always willing to do that.

That's an interesting point about fear of loss of control.

I think anxiety can deceive you into misconceiving it as pride... sometimes the latter is more easy to accept as a fault than the truth that you may just be really scared. My parents created a terrible scene years ago after telling me point blank they'd arranged a home visit for me with some therapists (without my consent or foreknowledge); it ended with me standing on the roof, which was very awkward, all in all.
Overall, I've found overcoming my mind's self-aggrandising tendencies to act independently (when in actual fact it's a seething wasteland in need of serious work), a very difficult thing to overcome; stubborn pride is pretty much the worst obstacle between going nowhere and going somewhere.