Humans 101
The Know-It-All’s Guide to Asking for Help
Or, how I learned I don’t have all the answers — and never did
I don’t know exactly why I was allergic to asking for help. I think part of it’s cultural — America loves people who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And part of it I learned in my family, the motto of which should read, “I CAN DO IT MYSELF.”
In other words, I didn’t realize there was something wrong with not asking for help. To me, never admitting I needed help was normal. If I didn’t understand something, I’d figure it out. If I was feeling something, I’d deal with it by myself. Even things like instruction manuals were only for the weak… and I wasn’t about to be weak. This explains why I’ve wasted what probably adds up to actual weeks of my life I’ll never get back faffing about with flat-packed Malm products before surrendering and cracking open the instructions.
Looking back, I now realize my aversion to help was incredibly shortsighted and self-defeating. I spent a lot of time feeling bad about things I shouldn’t have felt bad about. I also listened to internalized narratives that told me to value things I actually think are shitty, like the American myth of rugged individualism.
