Asking your friends for help

Not to be corny (lol who am I kidding?), but as I’ve been navigating disability this has been a very essential skill for me to build. There are lots of reasons to be resistant to asking for help, and I think a lot of us are socialized to think it’s wrong to inconvenience people. But I have started to get a lot more comfortable asking a friend to pick up a prescription or drop off a bagel when I’m doing particularly poorly. Part of it is my luxurious Park Slope lifestyle where I have a bunch of friends who are neighbors. And I know not everyone is so lucky in terms of living even slightly close to friends. But I do think a lot of us could be doing this more! There’s always so much discourse about people-pleasing, and I have a lot of ambivalence about the term (It’s definitely a real thing, but also I was accused of it so often in treatment, and I was like baby I’m just being a nice person. And like, a lot of people learn it as a way to move through the world safely, and it can be very adaptive.) BUT I will say that something I notice in my friends who are resistant to saying what they want is that it’s very useful for me when they do. Like I genuinely love the opportunity to help my friends, and it’s a gift to know exactly what they want/need. And one of my philosophies about relationships is that you’re never going to have perfect reciprocity. There are going to be times you give more, and there are going to be times someone else gives more, and of course it’s important to keep an eye on the balance, but we aren’t robots, and it doesn’t need to be a flawless economic model. You know?

Here’s a picture of me and Alien being symbiotic.