Asking for help

When something shows up multiple times in a short period, I pay attention.

I had planned to write next about an inspiring experience I had in California last year, but alas, I get little say around here when I’m surrendering to my higher Self.

Instead, it was a conversation around a breakfast table in Santa Fe last weekend that lit the lightbulb for me. My best friends reminded me of something I’d learned many times before but had still forgotten: the importance of asking for help.

And then I recognized that this theme has been showing up everywhere—in my work with clients who are too overwhelmed to enjoy the lives they’ve worked so hard to create or who are drowning in workplace expectations, in friends approaching big life decisions, in my own journey of navigating uncertainty. The message is clear: we need to talk about asking for help.

Higher Self vs. Ego Self

Before we dive in, a quick note on the terms “higher Self” and “ego self,” which I’ll be using here and in future writings.

When I speak of the higher Self, I’m referring to our inner knowing—our intuition, the part of us that is always loving, supporting, and guiding us toward our highest possible path. In contrast, the ego self is another essential part of us that has one goal and one goal only, and that is to keep us alive, otherwise known as safe. Staying safe is a really nice thing! I’m not trying to walk into oncoming traffic or put myself in unnecessarily risky and dangerous situations (although, to be fair, I have participated in some things like bungee jumping that bring this point into question.) But sometimes, the ego gets a little carried away and perceives things that are simply uncomfortable as life-threatening. In its pursuit of safety, it rules out anything that looks, feels, or smells like growth and expansion.

We all know that to grow, we have to get uncomfortable. Think about building muscle in your body—you have to actually cause micro-tears in your muscles to stimulate the growth of more tissue. If you’ve ever worked out, you know that causing those micro-tears is not comfortable. Inner transformation works the same way. To evolve, we have to expand beyond our comfortable stories and beliefs that keep us exactly where we are.

But the ego is not concerned with you having strong muscles or an expansive life! It just wants you to stay alive, and if you’re breathing, the ego is kicking its feet up, sipping a piña colada, celebrating its job well done. You’re breathing right now, aren’t you? So why change a thing?

Unfortunately for my ego, I’m obsessed with growth. I’ve spent the last fifteen years learning to discern between these two inner parts of me so that I can live following the path of my higher Self and not my ego. Here’s one thing I’ve learned:

The ego’s voice is loud, insistent, and relentless. “You can’t do this.” “You’ll fail.” “People will think you’re weak if you ask for help.” Anything to get you to not put yourself out there and take a risk. It’s the voice that shouts and refuses to be ignored.

The higher Self, in contrast, is quiet and gentle. A whisper deep within: “Breathe. You are capable.” “It’s okay to ask for help.” It’s the voice that feels comforting and calming and right.

To hear my higher Self, I spend a lot of time in silence—meditating, walking, traveling, or doing chores without entertainment like music, audiobooks, podcasts, or phone calls. I find that if I don’t create enough space to listen during the day, my higher Self wakes me up at 3 a.m., insisting I grab a pen and write. Lucky for me, I got the message over morning tea that this is the most important topic to write about next.

If you’d like me to dedicate an entire piece to the ego and higher Self, please let me know by responding to this post. There’s much more—for example, the origins of these ideas and the fact that I’m talking about them as if they’re something or someone separate from us when, in fact, they’re not.

The Courage to Ask for Help

Now, back to asking for help.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the hard stuff in the world because, well, I’m alive, and my eyes are open. Wildfire victims with no insurance still required to pay mortgages on homes reduced to ashes. A friend of a friend’s early emergency c-section paired with COVID, leaving her unable to use stairs, making her home unlivable and her new baby unvisitable during the earliest days of its life. The pervasive loneliness so many people feel, even surrounded by friends or within romantic relationships. The unrelenting and unfathomable realities of war, plane crashes, and systemic injustice.

I keep asking myself, “What do people DO?” How do we move forward?

The answer reveals itself the more I ask to be shown. We ask for help. And we receive it—from each other.

It’s not insurance companies putting profits aside or government policies that end war and make us safer. Nope. It’s our micro-communities. It’s our neighbors offering their extra space to live in until we figure out where to rebuild. It’s our co-workers switching homes so we can heal without stairs. It’s a phone call with a loved one. It’s a friend feeding us when we can’t function enough to feed ourselves. It’s strangers donating to go-fund-me’s, coming together to memorialize lost lives, and collective grieving.

We are not meant to do this life thing alone. But somewhere along the way, we became convinced that we are. In our modern-day culture, where everyone is taught to be independent, self-sufficient, and super capable, the notion of receiving is often frowned upon.

The truth is that asking for and receiving help is a vital part of living an expansive life— which is, of course, the perfect cue for the ego to get involved. You might recognize some of the following from inside your own internal dialogue…

“Asking for help is a sign of weakness and neediness.”

“Receiving help is disempowering.”

“Having to ask for help means you aren’t able to cope with the demands of life.”

“Asking for help will make you feel ashamed, guilty, and burdensome.”

“You don’t even know what kind of help you need.”

It’s easy to fall into these traps.

My Own Surrender

I remember when I was working for a company, overwhelmed by my ever-growing to-do list, working after work and up at night making mini-lists in my head. (If you don’t already know, I’m a list addict.) The stress I took on was saturating my life. I wasn’t taking care of myself; my sleep was suffering, and I was close to tears anytime someone asked me how I was doing. At the time, my ego had me convinced that asking for help at work meant I was a failure. That I didn’t know how to handle my job, I would never get a promotion, and most of all, there was no one at the company who had extra time to help me, so I might as well not even bother. I believed that it was more work to figure out what help I needed and who to ask than to keep my head down and chip away at my list. I suffered for longer than I’d like to admit until the whispers of my higher Self became screams.

When I finally did ask for help, my boss told me, “I can’t help you if you don’t raise your hand and tell me you need help.” At the time, it felt like a punch in the gut. How could they not see that I was underwater? But it opened the door to reassessing how things were structured, taking things off my plate, and recruiting willing coworkers to help out, all resulting in my feeling like I could breathe again.

In a plant medicine ceremony in October of 2023, I needed help. It was my first time in a setting like this, inside a hand-constructed geodesic dome in the middle of the woods, angelic singing voices drowned out by people vomiting into buckets on either side of me, the smell of incense and tobacco filling the air. My own inner demons flashing before me on an imaginary movie-theatre-sized screen that I couldn’t look away from. The feelings were too much to bear. I help others feel their feelings for a living. I knew I needed help. But I lay on my padded mat feeling like I was going to explode while an inner voice told me to ask for help. I struggled in silence for what could have been five minutes or five hours, I still don’t know, until I finally gathered the courage to raise my hand. I remember physically lifting my arm, finally ready for the guides to notice me and come to my aid. But the singing went on in the dark dome, and no one saw my hand. My inner voice got louder and told me, “You need to use your voice.” (No, it is not lost on me that this isn’t the first time I’m sharing with you that my intuition is telling me to use my voice.) I opened my mouth and called out, and one of the three incredible guides appeared at my side. She slowly but firmly placed a hand on my shoulder, instantly grounding me. And then she held my head in her hands as I let it all out. I sobbed in a way I truly didn’t know I was capable of. With the strength of her support and a few encouraging whispers, I faced all the things I had been so terrified to face. The resistance dissolved, and the sensation of energy moving through me was liberation.

The ceremony was multiple nights and life-changing in many ways, which perhaps I’ll dedicate another post to, but one of the greatest lessons I received was in the strength it takes to ask for help.

In both of these life experiences, the wisdom is clear—help is there waiting— but you have to ask for it. Ironically, for most of us high achievers, the hard part isn’t doing it all; it’s admitting that sometimes we need help.

When we allow ourselves to receive, we are actually acknowledging that our lives are deeply interconnected to each other and the world we live in. Once we can accept and surrender to this, we release our grasp on trying to control everything ourselves, and the experience of feeling relieved, calm, open, strong, and connected is right there, available to us.

I’m in a challenging phase of my own journey—a year and a half without the income and benefits I had become accustomed to or a home of my own. There’s uncertainty, discomfort, and moments when my ego tempts me with a million reasons why I should throw in the towel and slide back into a more “normal” life.

But when I get quiet, I can know with complete and utter certainty that this is what I’m supposed to be doing— that I’m exactly where I need to be— and that that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be hard sometimes! I do my best to honor the feelings that are real without getting attached to them or their stories (refer back to French child on the beach), and sometimes, I’m still learning, but I ask for help.

Do you know how good it feels to know that you’re exactly where you need to be? I want you to know this feeling. To feel aligned with the work you’re doing and the way you’re living your life. I want you to feel proud of how you’re choosing to spend this flesh ride on earth. And I really, really want you to know that you don’t have to do it alone.

Don’t let reading this post end here. Take a moment to reflect. What do you need help with right now? Who can you ask for help? Does someone specific come to mind? Is it the universe or your own higher Self? I am telling you right now— it’s okay to ask for help. So what’s your plan?