Help! There’s no way I'm asking for help

When something happens that is too much to bear, you probably turn to someone for help. If a person is available and ready to listen, it’s likely you’ll feel better fairly quickly. But if there isn’t anyone to turn to, or they’ve got too much to deal with already, then counselling can be a really important place to turn to when you are distressed.

But it isn’t necessarily as easy as that!

Sometimes you have a battle with a part of yourself; a part which won’t let you ask for help. Perhaps you think you should only rely on yourself or that you are weak if you ask for help.

This seems to me to be a real problem for a lot of people who are in distress or suffering.

You want help but you won’t let yourself have that help because it means turning to another person. Turning to another person means having to trust them. But if there’s never been anyone to trust, then how can you turn to someone and ask for help?

So what do you do?

Mostly you carry on doing what you’ve always done – eating, drinking, smoking, yelling, screaming, crying too much.  

Counselling looms on the horizon as a possibility… It's something you’ll do someday but not yet! You can't afford it! You haven’t got time! The therapist will probably be nuts!

So you carry on with the eating, drinking, smoking, yelling, screaming, crying too much. Too much for your own good! 

Something in you feels that if you go to counselling you are doing something that is for your good. When you make contact with a counsellor your hope is that it will be good and do you good.  

However, these ideas about getting help are at odds with your experience, which tells you that other people are no good and that they don’t work for your own good. In that case it’s not surprising you don’t trust other people; it’s not surprising you don’t trust the counsellor. Can you come to counselling when you can’t even begin to trust the counsellor?

With a professional, fully trained counsellor or psychotherapist you get a space to explore your hopes and experiences. By getting to know yourself and trust your thoughts and feelings, it gets easier to know when to trust another person and who to turn to for help.