Are you able to ask for help?
I don’t mean like “Please help me find the nearest Woolies,” or “Help me fix my TV remote.” I mean those moments when the world feels like it’s too much, you can’t breathe, and you need a hand to pull you up.
Of course, it is best to ask for help long before you get so overwhelmed that you feel like you are drowning. But my question to you, and to myself, is: are you courageous enough to ask for help?
I am a big fan of therapy, psychology, shrinks, counselors, going to the “feelings-gym”, having a couch confessional, attending a mind-maintenance-meeting or popping in for a mental-massage. In fact, I think everyone needs their very own person to debrief with regularly and to be an independent witness to their life.
I’m proud to admit that I have “my very own person”. I met her quite by chance. In 2021 we had a patient, Gill, who stayed with us after a traumatic surgery, after an awful cancer diagnosis. While she was with us we realised that her husband was even worse than the cancer diagnosis! He was simply ghastly. He dressed in terrible two-tone outfits, was loud, demanding and a chain smoker. He was also obviously abusive, and while she was here, she found out that he cheated on her. (Luckily Gill was loaded, and so was her daddy, so leaving him was simpler than it would have been if she were financially dependent on him).
Gill googled the best therapists in the area and found Dr DB who is a psychologist about 1km away from us. The only problem with Dr DB is that she is always full, totally in demand and a bit of a legend in the area. Somehow Gill managed to get a once-off appointment.
Let’s pause the story here. The time between making the appointment and the actual appointment was a weekend, and this weekend turned out to be even worse than the two-toned-chain-smoking-husband. (It was winter of 2021…, and South Africa was in the grips of the Delta Covid wave), Early on the Saturday morning, I got to the lodge. It was busy, it was freezing, and it was chaos! Just about all our patients were recovering from Covid. We were running up and down with oxygen concentrators in our PPE and, just to add to the chaos, we had a photo shoot that day!
Suddenly, a man arrived at our reception. He walked in and asked if I had seen his sister, Jane. Jane was one of the best neuro-physio’s in Sandton, and we worked with her often. We had not seen her since the previous day and I told him this. Jane’s brother then pointed out that her car was parked on our pavement and that she had been missing for 18 hours. I walked with him to the car but could not see anyone. Once we got closer and looked through the window we saw Jane. She had reclined her seat and was lying down. Her thick red hair was spread around her like a halo, and she was the colour of a porcelain doll. The door was unlocked so I yanked it open and I tried to feel for a pulse. Her icy wrist was enough to tell me she had died a while ago.
Jane worked in the ICUs during the first Covid-wave. She was traumatised and overwhelmed. We are not sure if she was trying to commit suicide or if she had an accidental overdose. Maybe she had an underlying medical condition that killed her. We will never know. Whatever the reason, the fact remained, an absolutely beautiful, gentle, clever and caring young woman was dead.
Would things have been different if Jane had asked for help?
The Saturday unfolded with the police arriving to investigate foul play, the funeral parlour arriving to collect her snow-white body, her family arriving in drips and drabs and staying most of the day. By the next day, we were forced to cope with the next set of challenges, and so we carried on.
Now, let’s circle back to Gill’s appointment. The two-toned-husband convinced her to stay in the marriage and that he needed her to check out of the lodge immediately (read, he was scared she’d leave him if she stayed). And so, the highly coveted once-off appointment with Dr DB became available. After the weekend I had had, I thought it might just be serendipity that this fell into my lap, and off I went to see the famous Dr DB.
To be honest, I was very excited to go for therapy. I thought it would be like stepping into a candyfloss world where you would lie down on a couch and indulgently talk about yourself with a fat cuddly woman with a blue-rinse and glasses perched on her nose. I thought you could blame your parents for everything that was wrong with you and then skip out of the appointment, never to return again.
I was in for a rude awakening!
Dr DB was nothing like I was expecting. She is younger than me (I was officially insulted), she’s a size 8 (is this even legal for a shrink?), she is professional, well-spoken, whip-smart and to the point. There is nothing cuddly and cosy about her. In fact, she is so toned she could have been a personal trainer.
I sat down and was grateful it was a once-off and that I would never have to come back. Fifteen minutes into my consultation however, she had me hooked. Her approach really worked with me. She did not suffer fools and she would not allow me to hide behind humour or let me manipulate the conversation. She was just what I needed, and when she told me she did not think once-off session would suffice, I wholeheartedly agreed. We had work to do.
I still see her bi-monthly, and have even almost forgiven her for not being in her eighties or wearing pink cardigans.
Most people in our line of work see “a person”. Sometimes it is a social worker, a counsellor, a grief coach, a clergy member or like me, a psychologist. Different things work for different people. Some folks need someone they can relate to: same age, culture and language. Many staff members who grew up in single parent households are hungry for male guidance and prefer an older father-like figure like a pastor. Some people prefer a more esoteric vibe, with counsellors sporting long beards, dressed in flowing colourful robes, and incense curling through the background. The social workers we refer to, whose services are covered by medical aid, are not only brilliant at unpacking your hurts, but also provide wonderful, well-balanced and practical solutions.
I used to think therapy was a luxury. I now believe that it is an essential part of living, like oxygen or water. Therapy keeps us soft and pliable, enabling us to keep showing up for our patients, families, loved ones and strangers. Sessions with ‘our person’ are not about being broken and needing fixing, but about the refusal to do life in survival mode, refusing to armour ourselves with narcissism, sarcasm, denial, emotional shutdown or bristling defensiveness. We can and should be brave enough to sit with what hurts and let someone look us in the eye and help us find a way through.
So I’ll ask you the same question I keep asking myself: are you courageous enough to ask for help?
Some questions this story left me asking— for myself, and maybe for you too:
- Are you able to be vulnerable enough to ask for help — before you collapse?
- How often do you say “I’m fine” when you’re anything but?
- Do you have the financial independence or practical support you would need if you had to leave a situation that is harming you?
- Have you become so isolated that you no longer have access to “a person” — someone who really knows you?
- What armour do you use to keep people from seeing your hurt: humour, anger, busyness, withdrawal, denial or passive aggression?
- If you keep coping the way you are now, can you live with the cost it may have to you — and to the people around you?
- Can you name who “your person” is, or what it might look like to invest in becoming someone else’s?
- If your best friend felt the way you do right now, what would you want for them — and what stops you from offering yourself the same care?