Okay so you know that moment where your shirt gets caught in the door, or you trip over something, your grocery bag breaks on your way inside, or you’re in the middle of taking care of the baby rushing dinner and you drop everything all over the floor and now need to clean it up while the baby is crying... okay maybe not the last one specifically but you get the point.
We all have that moment where everything is yelling at you to slow down and take a second but the responsibilities are all telling you otherwise, you can’t slow down when you have to be a mother, a wife, a friend, cleaner, organizer, chef, Therapist, and the list goes on... but when is it the time when we finally say okay.. I submit I ask for help.
Why is it so difficult? Where does this innate feeling of having to be so independent come from? Maybe it came from childhood where the praise and validation came with being the daughter that was “Successful and had it all together”. But what people didn’t see behind the 3.9 GPA, or the 3 jobs, or the excessively clean house to a debilitating fault, was a girl who just needed someone to help or share the weight with me.
Sitting here I can’t say that it would have been accepted, but sitting here, overstimulated, overwhelmed and breaking down has me in a space where maybe this doesn’t have to be that hard? Maybe I can just take the help... but I guess the next thing I’m wondering is, where are all the people offering it? Have I pushed them all away with all of my “success”. Breaking the stigma, the ones that seem to have it all together, they have weight too they just appear to carry it well.
Reach out to your strong friends, just because they give you the “I’m good, or the everything's fine”, doesn't mean it's not a rehearsed response or a defense mechanism. The stigma of being a therapist and not being able to have your own mental health or life struggles is also unfeasible. Holding a space for all of my clients as well as myself only sometimes adds on to my own heaviness.
But this is where that moment of frustration turns into a kick of the container on the floor, a door slam, a swear, or an irritated attitude towards someone who's trying to talk to you where we need to take a step back and recognize that we are human and we will always have those moments that can test our patience, but maybe those moments wouldn’t be so bad if I remembered I don’t have to do a million things at one time, I just have to do one.. And if for that one moment, I’m a Mom, or a chef, or a Therapist or a wife but I can also ask for help.
So here I am taking a step back, focusing on the moment, breathing, and I guess... Now would be the good time to ask for help.
