How do you ask for help?

[Laura]

This question is probably too vague to make sense. But... like when you're in trouble and you know it, but you've been let down loads of times in the past and you aren't sure if anyone can do anything to help anyway...

How do you get yourself to trust someone?
What do you say to get them to take you seriously?

[-Kel-]

the person i went to help was someone who had been great... and honest with me in the past. i had said something about myself that wasnt negative on the surface but that she saw could be the edge of an issue. if you see what i ment. and she had words with me about it. 2 months later i needed to tell someone and i new i could trust her to be honest.

[splitimage]

Laura,

I've had a hard time with trust & asking for help too.

I can't really tell you how to gain trust in people, except by keeping to take the risk of trying. Because when they then do help you, it's an incredibly wonderful thing. Someone, once told me that if you keep doing the same things you'll keep getting the same outcome, so if you want to change the outcome you have to try something different. Thinking that way about asking for help, has helped me a lot. And believe me, between my summer's medical crap & quitting drinking I've been asking for lots of help from all kinds of people. It does get easier.

Re being taken seriously. Oddly, I've never really had a problem with this, probably because by the time I do ask for help it's immediately obvious to everyone but me, how badly I need it. But I do know that I take other people more seriously if they're straightfoward about what they are saying without a lot of drama. Hope you know what I mean. And it's easier for me to help if they have at least some kind of idea of what help they want.

Hope that helped.

--splitimage

[mallie]

I find it really hard to ask for help when I'm not sure what anyone can do.

I don't have any ideas for you, but I hear you. I hope you manage to get the help you need.

[marylou]

I go for the: just do it and be direct approach.

And usually to more than one person at a time. It is totally incrediby terrifying and I can back out of it alot. But I usually text or email (face/phone is REALLY hard for me) and I ask mnore than one person. I figure that if I'm doing it once, it's not much harder to do it a few times altogether, plus it increases the odds of a reply/positive response.

I hope this helps. If not, at least know that I hear you and can completely relate to the difficulties with it.
Take care, marylou