The difficulty of asking for help when you’re the reliable, sorted, dependable one.

Letting go of having to control everything and a very toxic habit that was hiding in the shadows and, once released, allowed me to heal

Aug 30, 2026

a woman is standing in the water with her hands in the air — Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash

Hello,

how are You, lovely You?

When you’re drowning in overwhelm it can be difficult to know what you need. You may be surrounded by people offering help or hiding because they don’t know what to do or say but the people who truly care really do want to help.

Your Identity as Reliable, Caring, Responsible, the Peacekeeper could be getting in the way of people helping you.

They may assume you’re OK or pick up the pressure you feel as a kind of armour that keeps them at bay.

Living a life of forging through and just getting on with it and not being used to people doing things for you, can leave others feeling helpless. Some will keep asking. Some won’t. Eventually even those that keep asking fall by the wayside.

But you would be the first in that situation to offer help. You would genuinely want to do something to show your love and care and to reduce the burden on them.

But it feels uncomfortable to even think about asking for help for yourself because it’s not familiar. You’re usually the one helping, supporting, listening.

Maybe you need to reassess the things you think you have to do and what’s really important and what’s not.

What is really important and what’s not?

I have two adult sons living at home and though they are not demanding and we get on and they help out and contribute in may ways to the household, they are still more people in our home who need thinking about. Who eats what? Who’s here today or over the weekend? Have they got a key if I go out? Do they need lifts anywhere?

Over the last couple of years I have stopped working my life around their needs. Instead I wait for them to come to me or sort it out themselves while I do the things I want to do.

Meet the Know It All

Being judgemental and always wanting to be right and thinking I always KNEW the answers to EVERYTHING was keeping me stuck in a never ending loop of self satisfaction and self righteousness.

And most of it was SO subtle.

Do you think like this…
It’s quicker and easier to do things myself.
Nothing is going to change the situation.
I don’t want to be needy, weak, dependent or look stupid.
I have to do it all myself.
They won’t do it like I do or as well as I do so I may as well do it myself.
And I’ll only get frustrated (resentful) and have to do it again anyway, so what’s the point in someone else doing it?

Or maybe you get snappy and irritated as you push through, push past the exhaustion and hope someone can read your mind (your mind that doesn’t even know what it wants or needs) and rescue you.

Or the frustrating thought of, it’s obvious to you what needs doing so why isn’t it obvious to them!?

The Conundrum

So you need help. You’re exhausted from having to think about everyone else. But it feels awkward, embarrassing or like you’ve failed in a world that expects more and more and more of you.

Or does it? Is it the world? Or is it you?

Where does the pressure come from?

My Coach Called Me Out!

I was deep into some grief we had found stagnant in my body.

I was surprised to find myself here because I have done a ton of work on this grief already and rarely think about it these days.

Tears dripping from my chin, salty snot meeting my top lip. At the core of this grief was a stubborn desire to be right. Again. Kindly, gently she called me out. How I was still judging and wanting justice. Still a part of me wanting to be a martyr, a victim. Not to negate anything that had happened. The crashes. My son, brother and our friend dead. But still unconsciously hanging onto the processes that took place later. The court cases. The lack of justice. The sort of things that are going on in the world all the time.

And the lack of control.

We can’t control anything really. We can plan and organise and dream and create but life will have its way. Shitty stuff happens. Joyful stuff happens. None of it is either good nor bad. It just is. How we handle it is how we chose freedom or an invisible prison.

By hanging on to the injustice, by wanting to be right, I had built myself an invisible (to me) prison that was keeping me trapped and sick. This was a beautiful gift that showed me how I was living my life.

Not many people would judge me for how I felt but this stubborn resistance to letting go of being a ‘know it all’ was nothing new. It didn’t suddenly appear when my son died either, it had been there most of my life. The tendency to say and act as if I knew things (which I often did intellectually) is riddled throughout my life. Settling comfortably into corners I had not been able to see. Comfortable and familiar yet rotting my very core because I hadn’t embodied the wisdom of what I knew.

Rotting my core because what happened in the past can’t be changed and there is no justice to be had because the truth is, I wanted them back and nothing was going to change the fact that that couldn’t happen.

Needing to be RIGHT about everything. Not wanting to appear to get things wrong, my mantra, ‘I know,’ was a protection mechanism I had been running since school.

I’m still not sure what released in me that day with my coach but something did and over the weeks I have been a lot more conscious of when I am controlling and judging. It’s so subtle though, it hardly feels like it, until I see it and WHAM!

And now, rather than try to hide it or make excuses, I immediately apologise. Trying to subtly belittle people to make myself feel better is no longer an option. Trying to manipulate people into doing things isn’t either. It can be so subtle and so nuanced and is such a habit, at first, it’s tricky to catch.

A snidey comment. Impatience. Thinking I know better. Thinking I am better than them.

Instead now, I ask without attachment to having my request happen. It gets done or it doesn’t. Sometimes I really do need help and ask again but sometimes it still doesn’t happen. I stop. I stop and I rest and I let go.

As I saw myself back at the hospital where they took my brother and our friends’ bodies I could see Karen wanted to scream and shout at the policeman who was blocking her from seeing her brother. She bottled it up. Swallowed it down. Carried it with her out of the hospital that day. Ruminated on it. Stuffed it down and tried to forget about it.

I could see she needed to be held. Not judged. Not have it explained. Not told to be quiet or stop crying. To be held.

So I held her. I let her cry. I held her until I saw her leave the room.

And I am holding all those people that I previously judged too. Not outwardly. Not deliberately. But as a protection mechanism to hide my own soft, fragile shell which created a hard, jagged refuge on top of a castle that I could sit on and quietly pretend I was sorted.

Judging to Nurturing - what do you really need?

What do I need right now? I notice I am pushing through trying to get this written so I can get it out to you on Sunday.

I’m judging myself internally and not stopping right now to rest which is what I really need to do. Putting myself under pressure and the pressure is coming from me and only me.

STOP!

Pause…………………

Ahhh… where was I?

I stopped for a few minutes, had a cuppa, did some stretching and got back to it, feeling more refreshed.

Since I started releasing this old habit of having to control everything and being the know it all, that I unconsciously believed was keeping me safe, I have begun to heal. The pain around my body has reduced by about 80%. I am more flexible and going out for walks every day. I do a powerful yoga practice a couple of times a week to build strength and muscles. I am enjoying foods I haven’t eaten for years. I have been out for a meal and drank ginger beer! I have a clear vision for my future that I am creating now. I have become clear about the core elements that make up Karen and I am living from them, from my Essence.

What matters most is to live an aligned life, connected with and living from our centre. The only way to do that is to keep connecting back to ourselves, our heart, our essence while dissolving the past hurt and creating a lush future in the present now.