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For health reasons, etc., I had to ask for the understanding and help of the people I worked with. It was not easy to open my mouth than I thought, even though it was a much wiser choice for everyone to clearly communicate my situation and coordinate things in advance rather than ruining my work and myself following suffering alone. Sometimes it felt more difficult to ask for help than to grunt alone. It is said that we live by helping each other, but why does asking for help feel so awkward?
This may be partly due to growing up in an environment that culturally discourages asking for help. In fact, there have been studies showing that people in Eastern cultures find it difficult to seek help and feel much more indebted when they ask for help than people in Western cultures.
Conversely, I’ve been told that Americans, more than people from other cultures, seem to see it as their right to seek help, especially when faced with an unavoidable situation, such as an illness or disability. Therefore, it was a story regarding making a request with confidence and, on the other hand, even when other people asked for it, without much repulsion.
Of course, that doesn’t mean they feel free to ask for help without any debt. However, it is relatively small. In my case, I thought that I was more familiar with an environment in which I was branded a loser if I had to persevere through hard times and somehow persevere on my own, even if it was difficult, and then fall out.
Then, an acquaintance teacher told me, “The reason colleagues exist is to help someone when they are having a hard time, and it is neither shameful nor wrong to ask for help.” It was a story she knew in her head, but when she heard it in person, she somehow became more courageous and was able to take the necessary procedure only recently.
When I thought regarding it once more, the biggest reason I was hesitant in the end was “I thought people around me would see me as an incompetent and whining person.” The moment I sought help, the fear that my weaknesses would be exposed and that I would lose my hopes was ingrained in my heart.
Of course, it is natural for the fear of being seen as a weak human being and the embarrassment that comes from having to tell the inside and outside of me, etc. In a society dominated by the tacit rule of never appearing weak, it’s not difficult to say something weak. As a result, many people cannot overcome the wall of fear and embarrassment and fail to seek help even when there is someone who can help.
Unfortunately, many people are unaware of the existence of these barriers. It was only following going through a series of processes that I realized that seeking help was more difficult than I thought. A study by psychologist Vanessa Bones at the University of Toronto found that people, especially those in “helping” positions, are less aware of the existence of these difficulties and thus do not effectively increase their chances of asking for help.
The researchers had people read a message from the perspective of a ‘mentor or boss’ or ‘new employee’ telling them to ask for help whenever they were unsure. One was a message to ask questions or to ask for advice, don’t worry that you might look stupid and incompetent, and to keep asking for advice even if it’s awkward. The other was a message that asking for advice would help improve performance. The researchers asked them to rate which of the two messages would help new hires more likely to seek real help.
As a result, those who thought from a supervisor’s point of view rated that the message that there was a real benefit in asking for help would be more likely to ask for help, whereas those who rated it from the subordinate’s point of view did not shy away from helping than the message that emphasized the benefits of asking for help. They evaluated that a message asking them to ask for it would be more effective. Those who were in the position of the person asking for help decided that reducing their fear and embarrassment regarding revealing their weaknesses would increase their chances of actually asking for help.
Embarrassment is, in many cases, a feeling you feel when you think you are doing something wrong that deviates from social norms. If you calculate the cost of failing to get proper help because you are afraid to ask questions that you do not know well at school or work, it will not be small. It would be good to see if there are cases where they cannot even ask for simple help for this reason. There is no need to be ashamed, we all face difficult situations in which we have to ask for help at some point in our lives, and it would be nice if we might tell each other that this is a natural thing, not your fault or mine.
※Related articles
Bohns, V. K., & Flynn, F. J. (2010). “Why didn’t you just ask?” Underestimating the discomfort of help-seeking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(2), 402-409.
※ About the author
Park Jinyoung. He wrote “I, a decent person the way I am” and “To me who doesn’t love me”. She is constantly communicating with readers through books that are easy to understand and empathize with psychological research that is useful for life. She works online under the pseudonym ‘Gignon’. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Social Psychology at Duke University, USA.
