It's Okay To Ask

It's 2021. A crisp, late afternoon in the middle of August. We’re having a decent summer. There are people and their pets strolling through the park. And there I am, sitting on the grass in the shade, listening to the ring ring of a suicide helpline.

Hold on. Wait. How did I get here?

I was about to turn 30 and hadn't achieved anything I was told I was supposed to yet. I'd placed a world of expectation on my own shoulders and had not the foggiest clue how to make any of it a reality. I followed the path of education laid out before me and left university with a piece of paper that seemed to close doors rather than open them, and I had very little sense of what the purpose of my life was. 

Years were spent trying to figure that out. Wasted time. And the frustration and resentment kept building while I wondered just why the hell am I even on this planet. Surely, if I disappeared tomorrow, not a soul would notice? The world would keep turning. I didn’t matter.

Fortunately, while these thoughts were becoming more common, there was a part of me very aware that something was wrong. It also recognised that while I’d been doing everything I could think of to make sense of my life, and be the adult the world was telling me I should be, there was something I hadn't tried yet. One simple idea.

Asking for help. 

Is this the part where I smoothly transition into making this about you and your journey here? 

I’m not going to dig into all the wonderful (likely childhood related) reasons one doesn’t or finds it difficult asking for help. Let’s explore some of the effects of not doing so instead.

Ruminating.

That’s a concise word which basically means thinking yourself in circles. Why did they do this? Why did I do that? How did I let this happen? I could have/should have etc. These thoughts chase each other in a closed loop. You replay every conversation, analyse every situation repeatedly and dwell on what went wrong. Your mind is working overtime. You’re more distracted than usual and it’s more difficult to focus on things.

Trouble is you’re moving no closer to a solution because there isn’t any new information or perspective being brought into this loop. 

And the resentment, those feelings of hurt, anger or bitterness that just linger. Small grievances irritate when you might have previously shrugged and let it go. You find yourself mentally keeping score and withdrawing from emotional/physical intimacy. A wall goes up between you and your partner(s) and a filter settles over your eyes. You start perceiving the negative in everything they do - including kind actions, or attempts to re-connect. You’re finding it hard to enjoy what ought to be good moments. It feels like there’s a gnawing hole between you and your partner(s), and it's growing.

There is an accumulation of feelings that haven’t been expressed. Perhaps you’ve no idea how to express them.

Finally, there is the resolution - or a lack of it. When you leave it for long enough:

• You find that fights start over any little thing because you've lost track of what the original problem even was.

• Intimacy (physical/emotional/sexually) declines over time. It requires vulnerability and you don't feel emotionally safe enough.

• You are more stressed. Unresolved tension weighs on your mind and drains your emotional bandwidth, and whether you recognise it or not it is impacting other areas of your life.

• Patterns becoming habitual. Whether this is about withdrawing into yourself, self-talk that chips away at self-esteem or repeating the dance of attack/defend with a partner. Repeat something enough times and it becomes your new ‘normal’.

All of that is probably tiring to just read. Now imagine living it.

Well, maybe you don't need to imagine. As clever as I may seem boiling it down to three words that all start with the same letter, there is a lot more to this. You know, if you’re living through it right now. Is that how you want things to always be?

The point of laying out the above is to say this: the earlier you tackle a problem, the better. You are more open to the idea of change and doing something different. And especially in the case of a relationship, trust hasn't been entirely eroded away. There is still some hope.

Following that sunny August afternoon in the park, I found a therapist. The first thing I said to them was “I feel like I’m going to explode”. I left it almost too late to ask for help. 

You don’t have to. 

It doesn’t matter if you reach out to me or someone else. Ask for what you need.