Staying Motivated

Is it difficult for you to ask for help or support in your life? I feel like it's very hard for me to ask for support. I hate asking for help. I found it difficult recently because I just recently discovered my support needs. Just to bring myself to that point of vulnerability and honesty. It can be really difficult to ask for help when we need it. We can potentially feel like asking for help exposes that I have a weakness or there's something that I'm not fully capable of doing on my own. For whatever reason, it just, I can't, I can't do it. I can't bring myself to ask for help. When we're feeling more down or having more worry, we can almost see ourselves collapsing inward. But when that load is taken off of our shoulders, we can find ourselves standing up more straight and being able to take a full breath. It takes a lot of weight off of my shoulders when I realize I don't need to be perfect. I've just experienced how helpful, encouraging, and life-giving it's been to not just rely on myself, but the community around me. When we're asking for support, these could be things that we ask for in our day-to-day lives. Even with customer service, someone was getting upset with me because I was getting confused and I had to say, I'm so sorry I'm not, I'm really not trying to be difficult. I'm on the spectrum and I really would just need you to just further explain this to me. I needed my roommate to help me pay my rent one month just 'cause things were so caught up. I'll find myself calling my friends a lot and just say, "Hey listen, I have this situation. Can you just listen to me?" Not even necessarily needing to gimme an answer or solution, but just being an ear to hear. At times when you're asking somebody else for help, they may actually say no and that's okay. Part of this process is really in being able to ask for help and support and then trying it again. Well, you didn't need this before. You didn't ask for stuff like this before, so why do you need it now? And then I think, am I being ridiculous asking for this? The next step that we take is asking somebody else or looking for ways that we can still get that person's support, but maybe being flexible in what we're actually trying to get from them. I need support, so I will ask for it if I need to. Sometimes it's scary, but you know, just do it. Be okay with asking people for help with the possibility that they might not be able to help. You know, you can't fault other people for not being able to help you when you ask for help. So this next exercise will teach you a technique that can help you with that....