Why is it So Hard to Ask for Help? Unpacking 4 Common Psychological Barriers

I recently had NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg on the Finding Mastery podcast. The conversation was epic. In my opinion, he is the best of us, in every way, and his approach to life is worth studying. Before he was the pilot of the SpaceX Crew-6 expedition that spent six months at the International Space Station, Hoburg worked with Yosemite Search and Rescue, responding to emergencies within the national park. He is an incredibly capable human on all fronts. During our discussion, he talked about aboard the International Space Station, he had to put aside his desire for self-sufficiency and learn how to ask for help, for the overall betterment and efficiency of the team:

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“The hardest thing to do and the best thing you can do for your team is to ask for help, because they all want to help. You're actually kind of being a jerk if you say, ‘I got it, I'm good, no problem,’ and then you sit there working while everybody else wants to eat dinner and they have to watch you work. It's not that you need the help, but it's in the interest of the overall group experience and what’s best for the team.”

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Of course, not all instances of asking for help can be boiled down as simply to, “Go faster, eat sooner.” But my conversation with Woody got me thinking about how many of us have difficulty asking for help and what the origins of that reluctance might be, because in most instances, asking for help can make us more efficient, open our minds to new ways of thinking and help us learn. In the long run, if we’re able to look in the mirror and admit what we’re not good at, or when we’re overwhelmed or simply inundated, the help of others can make us stronger and better versions of ourselves.

Here are four reasons I believe asking for help is difficult and how to think differently about each of them:

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1. Fear of Vulnerability

Asking for help is often equated with vulnerability, and vulnerability with weakness. We all have an inner life and an external projection. The external projection is how we want people to think of us, and it's usually not intentional. Over time, initially built as a subtle protection mechanism, we create a mask. We build armor. We develop an ego. We have an idea of how we would like the world to see us, and often, our internal world doesn't align. We want to be seen as capable and strong, but often, we struggle. So, we choose to hold up the projection rather than allow the world to see and know our true selves.

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A Different Perspective: Be More Dimensional

Being dimensional means embracing all the components of your character. Yes, you are strong and capable, the way others see you. But you also have other parts that are really practical, and in this situation, more hands on deck would be great. You also sometimes get scared and could use someone to talk you through it. Doing the internal work to understand your strengths and areas in which you are still developing sounds very black and white, but it helps you to acknowledge where and when you need support. While acknowledging those other parts of yourself does require a certain level of vulnerability, it does not diminish any of the other parts. And being vulnerable and stepping out of your comfort zone also requires courage. That is strength, not weakness.

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2. Your Identity is Tied to Your Performance

A performance-based identity is, by definition, “I am what I do, and how well I do it next to you.” If your self-worth is wrapped around your ability to accomplish a task or complete a goal, and your ability to perform hits some sort of threshold, it is going to be very tricky for you to ask for help. Your primary interest will be in preserving your identity at the expense of accomplishing whatever it is you need to accomplish, because you crave the approval and acceptance of other people. And with that mindset, asking for help opens the door to rejection.

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A Different Perspective: Tap Into Your Purpose

Those with a purpose-based identity think, “I am in service of something far larger than myself.” If you view the accomplishment of the task at hand as benefit to the greater good of your family, your company, or the world at large, it is a lot easier to ask for help than it would be if the purpose of the task was to get yourself a promotion. People who are free from their performance-based identity usually don't have problems asking for help. If you discover you are primarily performance-based, it can be beneficial to decouple your sense of self-worth from your performance outcomes, and instead, lean into the identity freedom of being in service of something larger than yourself.

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3. Fear of Criticism or Embarrassment

Many of us have a history of being traumatized, shamed or belittled for asking for help, or of being made to feel lazy or incapable. Because of this trauma, even the most well-intended and constructive feedback can feel like criticism. So, we say nothing when we hit roadblocks, and spin our wheels, getting nowhere.

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A Different Perspective: Embrace the Opportunity to Learn

If you have done the work first, and really pushed yourself to the edge of your ability and can’t find a way through that friction, that is when external perspectives can be most beneficial. If you’re not playing the secondary game of managing your image, you’re actually playing the game of getting better. Professional athletes are a great example here. They have internal tuning forks; they know when their jump shots or their running strides feel on-point. But they are also incredibly open to external tuning forks. They want a coach to say ‘Hey, that might have felt right, but your elbow or your foot was in the wrong position.’ In many cases, outside perspectives are necessary to lead us toward mastery. Legendary coach Nick Saban summed it up nicely when he said, “If you’re an average player, you want to be left alone. If you’re a good player, you want to be coached. If you’re a great player, you want the coach to tell you the truth every day.”

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4. A Desire to be Self-Sufficient

There are a lot of mad geniuses in the world who don’t want other people’s opinions to corrupt the purity of their problem-solving journey. They believe all the unlocks they are seeking exist within themselves and that if they stay in the friction long enough, they will uncover them. There are also a lot of people who are not mad geniuses but would like to be thought of in that way. Neither group of people will typically seek or accept outside help.

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A Different Perspective: No One Does it Alone

Those who really understand what it means to do something special deeply embrace that the extraordinary is too big, too multifaceted and too dimensional to consider doing alone. We need each other. Even individual sport athletes have support teams. And it goes far deeper than the transaction of simply trying to achieve something special. We are social beings, intricately networked and woven together. We rely on each other to both survive and thrive. In that spirit, most people want to help. In fact, they’d love to help. Helping others makes them feel good and purposeful and accomplished, and in a way, not allowing them to benevolently provide you with support or be close to you in that way is, in fact, selfish. Sometimes, allowing another person to share something they’d love to share, or to be in your service, can help you unlock your greater potential.??

With Fire,

MG

P.S. - This awesome conversation with Woody Hoburg will release on March 27, 2024. Don't miss an episode, and subscribe to our newsletter HERE!