Asking For Help

One of the things that I’ve struggled with the most in my life is asking people for help. This has been a thing for me all the way back when I was in elementary school. I always felt stupid or incapable compared to my peers for not being able to do something on my own.

In ways that has carried on in my life. I do things on my own so my overworked parents don’t have to do them. Or so they get done. I am so used to doing things on my own that asking for help seems like that I am incapable. That I shouldn’t have even tried to do this thing to begin with.

Earlier this year when Covid19 came to Canada and pretty much everything shut down with people heavily advised to stay home, my depression reared its ugly head the worst it has in years.

My entire life I have suffered from and struggled with anxiety and depression, as I’m sure many of you do, or know someone who does. I managed to get by in life on my own without help from other people. Making my own coping mechanizems and internalizing all the issues I was dealing with. I know, most certainly not the best way to go about these sorts of things, but I was so used to doing things by myself that it was normal for me.

Earlier in the year I had started talking to a counclor to help me better understand my emotions and trauma. And I like to think that it’s made a good amount of progress. But when I was home all day, all the time, hearing nothing but bad news I becan to wonder what the point even was? I knew at that point something had to change, because I was back at a point of wondering what the world would be like if I wasn’t in it. Like somehow my existance is somehow tied to every bad things that has happened in my life time.

I did something that I have always found very difficult. I asked my counclor for help with this. He contacted the hospital in my town because I could not get in to see my family doctor, to see if I could get in to see someone about being on anitdepressants.

It was so strange to explain to all the people why I was there and what I was looking for. But I also didn’t feel like they were judging me for any of, they just wanted to understand. The doctor I was able to get in and see was very nice about ti too and gave me more resources to help if I feel the need to use them.

Since mid April I have been on this medication and I have been feeling wonderful. I’ve been consistently happier, more active, waking up without too much issue, and have been getting more work done every day than even on my most productive days before the medication.

It was difficult and scary for me to ask for this kind of help. It was difficult and scary for me to start talking to my counclor. But it was scarier for me to realize that I was not okay, and that I needed help, and if I didn’t get it I probably wouldn’t be able to keep going.

I’m putting this out there, not to garnish sympathy for myself, but to make a point to people out there, it’s okay to ask for help. Be it in school, or at work, or in life in general. The people who patronize you, or make you feel small for not understanding things are trying to cover their own insicurity by making you feel that way. There is no one who can help you if you don’t ask for it.

And to take away that stigma about putting artists on medication takes away their creativity, it doesn’t. I’m just as creative now as I was before. The only difference is I can sit down, get work done, and not feel like I have to hate myself into doing it.

It doesn’t mean you’re weak if you need to ask for help. It doesn’t make you any less if you need to ask for help. it doesn’t make you incompitent to ask for help. Asking for help just means you need help. That’s it. And the more people who understand this means the less of this idea there is.

Maybe I’m the only one who’s ever felt this way. Maybe everyone has felt this at some or multipul times during their lives. I don’t know. What I do know is this has been affecting my life so horribly for too long. And I wanted to let anyone out there who might be feeling the same or a similar way that it’s okay. And that you aren’t alone.

It’s not a crime to ask for help.

And with that, I think I have been long winded enough. So, that’s all I have for you today. Sorry I missed last week, it happens.

I hope you are having a wonderful day, and if it’s not wonderful, I hope it gets better. I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.