This is not meant to be an end all/be all reasoning that applies to everybody, but I have found these to be common themes in my community and my clients.
Particularly in our American society, we place so much value on “Independence”. I can do it! I don’t need anybody else! I’m a strong independent XYZ. We want to demonstrate that we are capable and can handle our problems and not be a drag.
So why am I writing about this in a less than positive context?
Relating to our Asian American experience, there are many facets where this ends up being detrimental to ourselves and our community. As a broad generalization, Asian cultures tend to be more collectivistic than Western ones, and often times this leads to culture and value clashes that create churn. Asking for help and support from the outside will make you look “weak” and “incompetent”, and yet, many times there are no experts or advocates within the in-group, leaving you hanging as to where you can look towards for advice and help.
Read the below examples and let me know if you relate.
You’re the “helper” – You had to help out in the store or restaurant, and maybe you were the one who help translate for your parents and took care of administrative paperwork. It’s not a bad thing that you helped out the family. But who helped the helper? In many contexts, it’s one thing to help out family, but how do you ask for help from outsiders (Not taught this). Even within the context of your family, there is much culturally reinforced obligation (You always have to help family), even if it means being an enabler to toxic behavior. If you’re lucky, your family dynamic is strong and positive, and interactions come from a place of love and closeness. If you’re not, you feel trapped, lonely, and not understood, and you do what you need to do to survive.
Different view: Take baby steps and choose to allow people to support you. Maybe let a friend buy you dinner, or help you assemble IKEA furniture. There is plenty of opportunity to let people in, and you can express gratefulness!
Your parents were always busy – Another common story not unlike the example above; parents working hard to make money and survive (especially immigrant family). You recognize how hard they are working and don’t want to be a bother and interrupt, but you aren’t familiar with any other options.
Different view: This is a tough one; its not like you can force people to create time, but you can do your best to try to schedule it in during a mutually agreeable time, rather than leave it to spurs of the moment.
You feel like help is “weakness” or “failure” because you couldn’t do it by yourself.
The inverse of this statement says that you have to be perfect and capable of doing anything and everything and what a load of crap perfectionism that is. Not only being unrealistic, but it clouds your ability to imagine possibility, because it limits you to the potential within what a single person can do. When was the last time you imagined what a TEAM could do? Each with their individual skills and talents in harmony?
Different view: How about taking a balanced perspective; sometimes you’ll take on challenges on your own (and maybe you enjoy the challenge!) And sometimes graciously ask for and receive help. Asking for a little help doesn’t throw you to the far end and make you a leech; gratefulness and being there when people ask YOU for help makes you a kind person.
You feel like asking for help is “transactional”; by accepting help, you are now obligated to return the favor in a relatively equal amount.
When you’re conditioned to see the world this way, you stop seeing people as people; you see them as “can they help me, or can’t they”.
Different view: Its really tough to break this cycle; one of the methods I’d recommend is to look inwardly and process: If other people saw me that way, would I like that? Given that you can only control yourself, this is often the first step towards breaking that cycle, and “being the change that you want to see in the world”.
There is just nobody you know who actually understands your needs.
Another very common situation: you were encouraged to pursue higher learning and become that Doctor/Lawyer/Engineer. You succeeded, great! But you were the first in your family to pursue such ventures (Maybe even the first to get a college degree), and so now your family may give you advice that comes from a good place, but actually has very little understanding. Such has: How can your life be so hard, you make so much money? What do you mean you are burned out; you and we worked so hard to get you to where you are, and you just want to stop? Perhaps your peers are more understanding, but they are laterally around the same page as you; what you’re looking for is somebody who could mentor you and thus, you’re going to have to ask the outside.
The reasons why I used the word “detrimental” at the beginning is that it hampers development of ideas like:
- How to be gracious/accept gratitude (How to put your ego in the backseat)
- Decoupling your ego from your needs; asking for help can be transformed from feeling unnatural to something natural. No, you’re not a leech or lazy or dumb.
- How to be open minded in that there is more than one way to go about something.
- Just because it wasn’t done your way, or at your speed, doesn’t mean it didn’t get done, and you can move forward with progress and away from perfectionism.
- You don’t minimize other people’s struggles and needs.
- The old stereotype “When I was your age I had to walk to school 10 miles in the snow uphill both ways” – all it does is invalidate feelings, and creates a cycle where you don’t recognize other’s feelings. This leads to people to stop asking for help (Why should I bother) from you and leaves more struggle on the table rather than teamwork, in additional to creating more divide instead of closeness..
- Which is a nice segue what I think the biggest idea which is: learning to live a balanced life in the middle, and not in the extreme ends.
- Life is not black and white; it’s a whole rainbow of every color and every shade. Existence is that much more enjoyable when you create the space to enjoy it, rather than fighting it with self limited beliefs.
I would love to hear your comments as well as how I can support you on your healing and growth journey! Will be writing a post with more details about how this affects your romantic relationships specifically later! Let me know if you want to read that one too