Not Able to Ask for or Receive Help? It Might be a Trauma Response

Getting Needs Met – Asking for & Receiving Support

Do people wonder how you do it all?

Are you often praised for your Herculean efforts in life?

Do you find it hard to ask for or receive help?

If any of these apply to you, you might be suffering from a trauma response developed in childhood.

Physical or emotional support is often withheld by emotionally immature parents, who may be repeating a cycle that began when their own needs were not met. In some cases, parents don’t support their children because they are overwhelmed by situations including:

• Substance abuse
• Fighting with others
• Overworked – many hours at a job or multiple jobs
• Medical issues
• Mental health issues
• Overwhelmed by life’s stressors, multiple children, etc.

When their children express needs or feelings, emotionally immature parents respond with:

• Hostility: “What do you want me to do about this?!” or “Look at what you have done to yourself!”
• Shame: humiliating for having emotion by mocking them.
• Punishment: “If you cry again, I’ll give you something to cry about.”
• Blame: “You’re always so selfish!”
• Quid pro quo: Offering help in exchange for doing something for the parent. “I guess I’ll take you to the soccer game, but when we get home, you’re cleaning this whole house.”
• Minimizing: “You’re fine, it isn’t that bad.”
• Dismissing: changing the subject or ignoring the need.
• Silent treatment: Ignoring that the child even exists.

There are many different ways for emotionally immature parents to reject a bid for help, but the result is always the same, the child is damaged by these interactions and is learning – having needs isn’t safe.

Testing the Waters

Parents are checked out, and when children express an emotion or need, it can go badly. But, kids don’t stop having needs just because their parents aren’t available. Children develop tentative ways of asking for help, testing the waters and gauging reaction.

A child needs a ride to soccer practice after school. In an emotionally healthy family the child asks outright, “Dad, can I have a ride to soccer after school today please?” It’s safe to ask for this need to be met.

In an emotionally immature/unhealthy family, the child might mention the need as a statement, “I have soccer after school today.” Or drop an unassuming question, “So what are you doing after school today dad?”

If the child is lucky the parent will take the bait and help them with a ride. If the parent is in a bad mood, and answers, “I’m going to stay on the couch today, I don’t feel good!” Then the child hasn’t actually asked for help and has dodged the parents’ rejection or bad reaction.

Another passive way of asking for help includes an escape clause. This might look like, “Hey dad I have a practice after school today, but if you’re too busy to take me I understand.” When someone is expecting their ask to be denied, this option can help can soften the blow.

Avoidance

Some choose to avoid help altogether. If you don’t ask for help, you won’t be met with hostility. As adults, these individuals tend to do everything on their own, not ask for help and over-achieve, because they have learned at an early age, no one is coming to help. These qualities are appreciated by their families, because it gives the parent even more space to be unavailable. This message is reinforced with comments like:

• I don’t know how you manage to get it all done.
• You always come out on top.
• You’re just so great at…
• We always knew we didn’t need to worry about you growing up.
• You’re just so responsible.
• I don’t know what we would have done without you.
• Thank goodness you’re not like _______ (sibling with needs that were attended to, because they had to be).

Children from these family systems are conditioned to deny their own needs and not ask for help. In adulthood, these individuals might get angry at a partner for being sick or hurt, or try to hide their own pain and suffering, because they received negative and abusive messages about needing care as children. Because of this, they often find it impossible to ask for help or break the cycle.

How to help

If you know or suspect someone has a hard time accepting help or showing emotion, you can support them by:

• Offering something tangible: Set a time when you will visit AND follow through, without expecting anything in return. For instance, “I’d like to bring you a meal over tomorrow night at 6pm. I’ll drop it off on your front doorstep.”
• Frame your help as a statement, “I would like to come over to help,” not a question, “Would you like me to come over to help?”. Individuals who can’t express their needs also have tendencies to have people pleasing parts of them that will want to reject your help in order to save you from the burden of helping them.
• Verbalize what you are seeing: “This is way too much for one person. No one should be asked to do all this. I know you can do this all on your own, but I don’t want you to.”
• Hearing these verbalizations can be validating and gives permission to think and do things differently – you are releasing them from the pressure of doing it all on their own.

At the same time, it is important not to:

• Praise their heroic seeming efforts. The person is likely struggling with the workload.
• Ask if they need help, they might not even be able to tell you.
• Use phrases like, “It’s ok to ask for help.” This may be a direct contradiction to what they learned growing up – for them, it wasn’t and isn’t ok to ask for help.

If any of this resonates with you, I recommend reading, “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,” by Lindsay Gibson, PsyD and, “How to Do the Work,” by Nicole LePera, PhD.

To continue or begin your healing journey, you may want to GET STARTED with one of our therapists who are trained in childhood attachment wounds and healing from emotionally immature parenting.

Be well,