Difficulty Asking For Help

Many adult children from toxic homes find it difficult to ask for help. In this episode, Lisa A. Romano the Breakthrough Life Coach who specializes in adult children of alcoholic issues, codependency recovery, and narcissistic abuse, explains why so many adult children have such a hard time asking for help.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about why so many of us have a difficult time asking for help.

First of all,

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for wishing to find your light and let it shine.

And as hokey pokey as that sounds,

It's true.

There is a light that is inside each and every one of us,

And most of us don't know where it is or we don't know how to find it.

And that's what I hope that you take away from these sessions,

Tools to help you find your internal light.

I wanted to do a session around this idea of having a difficult time asking for help because so many of us struggle.

We struggle with being able to identify even when we recognize we need help.

If you have been in a relationship that was toxic or if you have had toxic parents,

As in the case when we are raised by alcoholics and or those who are addicted or those who have mental health issues that are not being taken care of and or addressed.

If you are raised by a narcissistic parent,

Then you can suffer from even recognizing that you need help.

Many of us who come from these types of homes,

Who develop codependency,

For instance,

Who develop a sensitivity to the fear of rejection,

Who struggle with imposter syndrome,

We don't even know that we're in pain.

We are so used to pretending that we're okay when we're not okay,

That we're missing all the internal signals that actually are designed to alert us to this idea that you need help.

In my own case,

I remember driving myself to the allergist's office in a severe,

Severe asthma attack.

I don't remember what brought it on,

But I was suffering from anxiety and panic at the time.

My body was covered in rashes.

I started to have severe migraine headaches to the point where my arm would go numb.

My lips would go numb.

I'd have this aura.

My vision would start to change and I would get an aura in my field of vision.

Sometimes I experienced tunnel vision.

It was really scary.

So my body was reacting to the stress,

But you know what?

I didn't even know I was in stress.

Living in stress had been a way of life for me and because I grew up in a home that taught me that what was going on inside of me was wrong.

It was like perpetual gaslighting.

You shouldn't feel that.

You're crazy if you feel that.

That's wrong.

Who said you can think that?

Who said you could say that?

Who said you could eat that?

Why are you eating that?

Why do you think that?

No one thinks like you.

It was constant gaslighting.

And so living in that type of a stressful environment was just a way of life.

So I didn't know that I was as sick as I was when I drove myself to the allergist office that day,

Which is really frightening to think that we can be so physically sick and not even recognize that we need help.

So why do so many of us then avoid getting help or have such a problem asking for help?

So I want to address that.

If you are the grandchild of an alcoholic,

That means that you were raised by adult children of alcoholics,

Which means that your parents' parents were alcoholics.

If you are the adult child of an alcoholic,

Obviously you know what that means.

If you are someone who grew up in a dysfunctional home where you felt invisible,

You felt ignored,

Then this will apply to you.

We do not have to come from alcoholic homes to identify with the idea that we have the symptoms of someone who is an ACOA or an adult child of an alcoholic.

If you have come from a dysfunctional home and you feel like you have a difficult time asking for help,

I strongly urge you to look up any information that you can get your hands on that has to do with ACOA issues,

Adult children of alcoholic issues.

My guess is that you will resonate very much with what you find.

Learning about ACOA issues changed my life.

I was well into my mid-30s and never understood how my parents' childhood impacted me and how my parents who were raised by alcoholics,

How my parents' childhood caused them to become the parents that they were with the belief systems that they held with the codependent and in my humble opinion,

Narcissistic dynamic that they had,

How their childhood affected my childhood,

My brother's childhood,

My sister's childhood,

And how that would even affect how I parented my own children.

So I am the grandchild of three alcoholics and my children are the great grandchildren of alcoholics.

And I can tell you that the consequences of my grandparents' drinking continue,

Especially with my son who struggles,

In my opinion,

More than my other two children with symptoms of codependency.

So I wanted to do this session primarily for people to help them understand that there's something wrong when we don't acknowledge that we need help.

And we need to address this in ourselves if this is us,

If we have a difficult time saying I need help.

So we can't fix a hole in the wall that we can't see,

Right?

I can't,

I cannot,

Cannot use tools in a shed that aren't there.

I don't,

Or I can't fix something unless I know something's broken.

And this session is about bringing to light what's broken,

Bringing to light why it's broken and helping people who are listening who may identify with it say,

Wow,

That sounds like me.

Maybe there's something I can do about it because that's you discovering the wall,

The hole in the wall,

And offering you tools for how to fix it.

So number one,

One of the reasons that we have such a difficult time asking for help is because we grew up feeling that neediness would be seen as a weakness.

And I wrote a list here.

So neediness or needing is seen as a dependency and thus as a weakness.

So being raised by adult children of alcoholics or being raised by alcoholics,

We got the sense that if we bothered our mother or we bothered her father,

That meant that we were broken.

We got the sense that we were just born and we should just figure it out.

Many of us who are grandchildren of alcoholics or adult children of alcoholics,

We're not emotionally nurtured.

We may have had a warm bed to sleep in every night.

We may have had our meals taken care of.

We may even have gone to private schools.

But there was this disconnect between us and our parents.

And that's not the way it's supposed to be.

There is a natural dependency that a child has on a parent,

But a parent who is dysfunctional,

Who is emotionally immature,

Doesn't know how to bond with the child and foster a healthy level of dependency.

So we get the sense growing up that it's wrong to depend on our parents.

It doesn't feel safe to do so.

We may have learned that when we did depend on our parents,

They let us down.

We may have learned that when we did ask for something to eat,

We were mocked.

We may have learned,

And this is one of the ways that I learned,

I remember being at the family table and reaching for a second potato.

And my mother saying to me,

Who said you could have the last potato?

Maybe someone else wants the last potato.

And I remember thinking,

Oh,

It's wrong for me to need or want that last potato.

So it's safer for me to not need or not want that last potato.

So I'll just pretend I don't want that last potato.

And that was really a theme in our life.

And my mother was unaware that that's the way she was.

She was unaware of the consequences of the way that she spoke to me.

She didn't have a clue.

And I think that those of us who relate to that type of a story,

There's great benefit in connecting the dots to our past.

When else did that type of a narrative show up in your life?

When else were you taught that it wasn't safe to need?

I remember our mom saying,

So let's look back then it was the JCPenney catalog.

And she'd say for Christmas time,

You guys sit down and pick out a couple of things that you want from this JCPenney catalog.

And you pick out a couple of things from the JCPenney catalog or the Sears catalog back in the day.

And then you'd hear something like,

Well,

Of course you would want that.

Of course.

Well,

You only think about yourself and that's a very selfish thing to want.

Of course she would want,

Did you have any idea how much that costs?

And so you get the sense that it's wrong to want,

Even though you've kind of been coaxed into wanting,

It's still wrong to want.

So it's not safe to want.

If it's not safe to want,

And it's not safe to need,

Then how safe is it going to be for you to need help?

How safe is your brain going to feel when you are confronted with being sick and needing someone to pick up the kids?

You don't ask for help.

You schlep yourself out into the snow and sick as a dog,

And you go pick up the kids and you never ask for help.

Even though there might be three or four people that you could call,

You have been trained over and over that it's bad to ask for help,

That if you need help,

That's a weakness.

So that's one reason that you might be struggling with having a difficult time asking for help.

The other issue that we have is that we associate needing help to mean or to signal to other people that there's something wrong with us.

If you can't figure it out,

There's something wrong with you.

And so how safe is it for someone who's been raised in that type of a home who got that message that,

If you need me,

There's something wrong with you?

Because you should be able to figure this out on your own.

Now how does a child learn that message?

Well,

A child learns that message by the way the parent responds to them needing them.

I remember my brother calling my dad and my brother has always helped my father with whatever it is that he needed.

But I remember the time my brother called my dad and said,

Hey dad,

Mind you,

My dad was retired.

Can you help me with this,

This boiler that I'm having issues with?

And my father's typical answer was now you want me to stop what I'm doing and help you now Jesus Christ,

Right now I got to stop what I'm doing just to help you.

Say that once or twice to a child or give a child the idea that you needing their help is going to elicit that type of a negative response.

And that child stops asking you for help.

When a child asks a parent to help them tie their shoes and the child is ignored or the child is made fun of,

What do you need me for?

Don't you see I'm busy?

These types of comments signal to the child and give the child the message.

It's not safe to need you.

And so this doesn't go away.

This becomes a product or the fabric of our subconscious mind below the veil of consciousness.

We're operating by what has been downloaded into the subconscious mind and the frightening thing and the very sad thing is we don't even know it.

We don't even know that as wives and as husbands,

As friends to other people that we're operating with this system,

That we don't feel safe enough to ask for help.

And we don't even know that's a thing,

Nor do we know why it's a thing.

Another reason so many of us have a difficult time asking for help is that parents who let's say you had a parent who was more of a helicopter parent and you had an issue and they just rushed in there.

They just rushed in there,

Very typical of an ACOA to just get very,

Very flustered and want to solve the problem,

Just solve the problem.

And so when a parent sees that you're struggling,

What makes them anxious and they just want to solve the problem because ACOAs have a very difficult time managing stress.

And so we end up getting very,

Very flustered and we just want to eliminate the problem like right away because it reminds us so much of our chaotic childhoods and feeling out of control.

And so when your child is upset and if you,

For instance,

Are an ACOA and you rush in there to fix the problem,

Then you deny the child the right and the ability to work through a very normal life issue,

Which ultimately we all have to learn how to cope.

So parents who are fixing their children's problems because of their own anxiety,

Their own need to clear the table because they can't deal with that type of anxiety.

They feel safer when they're in control and there's no issue at hand.

They're hurting the child because the child feels that it's wrong to ask for help.

And they also learn to feel that it's wrong to have a problem.

And if it's wrong to ask for help,

It's wrong to have a problem.

Then children may pretend that there is no problem.

They go into denial.

If a child gets a sense that presenting mom or dad with the problem makes them anxious,

The child learns to suppress the need for help.

That's another issue.

Another reason we might have a hard time asking for help is when a parent withdraws.

So let's say you just,

Your normal everyday experience is that your parents are indifferent.

It could be because they're chemically addicted or they're gamblers or they're just toxic or they're love addicts or sex addicts and they're in their own head with whatever it is that they're addicted to.

They're disconnected from you emotionally and spiritually,

Sometimes even physically.

They cannot show up for you because they're lost in space.

Now that's not your fault.

You are naturally attuned to wherever your parents are.

You're following their vibration.

You're trying to keep in step with wherever they are.

But children know when mom and dad have left the building.

They know when mom and dad are not able to spiritually connect to them.

And that will make a child feel like the parents have withdrawn and it will make it very difficult then for the child to ask for help because there's no contact there.

There's no connection there.

And so if your mother or father is naturally indifferent to you and you feel ignored,

It's going to be very difficult for you to trust this person with your need for help.

You just won't do it.

They'll just feel foreign to you.

The way I describe it in the road back to me is that when I needed my mother,

I wouldn't ask her.

I always felt like there was a pane of glass between me and she.

I just couldn't connect to her.

And it took me decades to realize it wasn't me.

It was just my programming.

And my programming came from my environment.

And my mother,

The way my mother mothered me was how and why I was wired the way I was wired.

So when your parents ignore you,

This is another reason that it could be very difficult for you to ask for help.

You're not being attuned to when parents aren't picking up on what you're feeling and you are crying or you're upset and you don't have a primary caretaker saying,

Lisa,

What's wrong?

Why are you upset?

You don't have the opportunity to explore your emotions with a safe person.

So parents who aren't attuned to you,

You're really being taught to stuff your emotions and to pretend that you don't need help when you actually do need help.

Another reason that we have a problem asking for help is that we don't feel justified asking for help.

We can't justify our pain.

So in other words,

Like if you have parents who just act like emotionally abusing you is okay and this is just the norm and there's a no talk rule and we're not allowed to talk about what happens in this house.

And let's say mom washes your clothes and mom's home every day and dad goes to work every day.

There's a lot of disconnect in the family,

But because you can't point at anything,

You can't say my mother drinks and that's why I feel disconnected from her or my father is abusive towards my mom and that's why I can't connect to him.

Like when you can't connect to something and you can't point at it,

Yet the pain you still feel emotionally abandoned.

You still feel like you fear rejection.

You still have tremendous self doubt and you still pretend that everything's okay when it's not and you can't make the connection,

Then you don't feel like your pain is justified.

You walk around in so much pain,

But you can't acknowledge it and you don't feel like it's justified.

I was in so much pain and I thought that I needed my ex-husband to say,

Yes,

You have the right to go into therapy.

How I was and the way that I was was so ignored.

That's an issue.

If you have tremendous anxiety,

You're in pain and we need to get to the bottom of where is this anxiety coming from?

What's been stored in your body?

What happened to you?

How did you perceive your reality?

Forget about what everybody else tells you.

What is your internal perception of your experiences?

Do you live in a state of fear?

Because if you're in a state of survival and you're stuck in a state of survival since childhood,

You're not thriving.

Your brain is going to continue to send you messages that something's wrong.

Even if nothing's wrong.

If you're in a state of survival,

That's what's wrong.

To get out of a state of survival,

We have to ease into the experiences that created this anxiety in you in the first place.

Takes time,

But that is ultimately the path that we have to take.

So lots of times we suppress our pain because we don't feel our pain is justified.

We think that we needed our mother to say,

Yes,

I hurt you.

Yes,

I abused you.

Yes,

I was abusive.

Yes,

I was dismissive.

And until our mothers admit or until our fathers admit that this is how they treated us,

We feel stalled.

Like we don't feel like we have a right to say,

This is the pain that I'm in and I need help dealing with this.

So we don't ask for help because we don't feel like our pain is justified.

There's also another reason that we have a difficult time asking for help is that we fear that our asking for help signals disloyalty to our family.

Now if you grow up in a family and you know that your mom's stressed,

She's working three jobs and you know dad's stress from whatever's happening,

You as a child are very attuned to what's happening with your parents or with your primary caretakers.

If you're adopted out,

You might feel guilty that you have parents who adopted you.

You might feel like an obligation,

Right?

This is very stressful for a child.

You might feel that asking for more or telling the truth or saying,

You know,

I just don't feel like I belong.

Something's off.

Like you might feel that just telling that truth is disloyal to the people who are taking care of you.

So you might feel so dependent upon them that acknowledging your own pain to you makes it feel like possibly you're being disloyal.

So that'll make it difficult for you to ask for help.

Another thing that it's important to recognize is that when we live in a constant state of stress,

It's just constant stress.

Like we can't control mommy's rage and we can't control daddy's drinking and we can't control our sibling.

If you've been living in a state of survival and you eventually develop this sense of helplessness or powerlessness,

Like nothing ever works,

No matter how often you complain,

No matter how often you ask for help,

No matter how often you cry,

Whatever it is,

Nothing works.

You just feel helpless.

You eventually develop this idea that there's no use.

There's no use in trying.

There's no use in telling people how you really feel.

There's just no use.

And so you stop asking for help.

If you are the adult child of an alcoholic or the grandchild of an alcoholic,

Or if you come from a home where your parents were in a codependent relationship or even a codependent narcissistic relationship,

Or you have been gaslight gaslighted by,

Let's say a narcissist who has convinced you that you can't trust how you feel.

You may have a very,

Very difficult time asking for help because you don't trust what's happening inside of you is valid.

And so I encourage you to explore these ideas.

I encourage you to understand that asking for help does not mean that you're weak.

Asking for help does not mean that you're broken.

Asking for help means that you recognize that you are worthy of the support and the help that you need to find your light and to let it shine.

So I hope that this has been helpful and I hope that you continue on your self empowerment journey.

I hope that you continue to spiritually grow and I hope that you never stop growing or stop healing from codependency.

Namaste dear one.

You are enough.

Bye for now.

Reviews

Absolutely helpful this session, and great examples shared by you to understand and connect the dots, big thank you for sharing it 🫶🏾🫶🏾☀️☀️👌🏾👌🏾

I love this, thank you

After moving to a new house I really discovered the power to be able to ask for help 🤪 thank you Lisa for putting it into words 🙏 much love 🌹

Every talk I have listened to so far has been so well said- so easy to follow and understand.
Thank you for helping me see clearly, things I didn't realize but am now aware of. Healing has been made easier because of your dedication to share your personal experiences and the wisdom you have learned because of them.

Wow! Learned à LOT from this! Thank you Lisa💕🙏

Namaste 🙏

Very insightful talk! I definitely understand this so much more. Thank you so much for your time! 🙏