Asking For Help ~ A Life Lesson

 Today I learned to ask for help. Yesterday I learned that maybe it is okay for me to ask for help. This might seem a little crazy, but for my whole life I have - endured? - the sense that I ought to be able to do things better. It's not perfectionism at work here, but a strong sense of - I am a reasonably intelligent woman and this task (whatever it may be) is well within my capabilities - therefore I need to get organised and get it done. In elegant contradiction to my thinking, however, the thing rarely gets done on time and I suffer an inordinate level of anxiety and self-loathing over my inability to move forward with things. 

Overwhelm is an almost constant companion, or at least the feeling of overwhelm so that I feel like I cannot do things that are well within the scope of my abilities. I love to do the planning for my projects. I create lists and checklists and mind maps and calendar plans with everything mapped out ready to go. It is all easy to manage and makes so much sense to me. Then my emotions well up and I am essentially paralysed. I have thought this through endlessly and had decided that maybe I am lazy or lack ambition and motivation. We've all heard the idea that motivation is created through action; it doesn't just happen as a rule. But the real action was so slow moving and frustration with myself has meant that I spend a lot of time wanting to run away. I don't know where to or away from what but just to go! Anywhere! Running away from myself. It can't be done. The problems always go with me. 

I was the one at university who always had to apply for extensions as I could rarely meet a deadline for submission of my work. I often got High Distinctions for the work, but I was unable to start it until the deadline was so close that I couldn't possibly get it in on time. It made me a nightmare to work with on group assignments I'm sure, but my anxiety would get in the way of me actually doing the work. I would 'do it' in my head and often would sit and write it all down almost without requiring editing before submitting. The grades were good but it was highly stressful and highly inefficient. It has felt as though I was self-sabotaging at every opportunity and I am sure my behaviour has been viewed by others with a mixture of dismay, anger and disbelief. 

Words and writing are my playground. I love them so much. But to produce writing at someone else's behest is agonising to me. It is like the worst kind of torture (drama queen enters here). I spent a lot of my university days, which I commenced in my 47th year, consumed by a weighty anxiety that rode on my chest just above my sternum and radiated a dry burn with every inward and outward breath. It was exhausting and made living really hard. It was ever-present, perhaps a side-dish for my trip along Menopause Lane which coincided nicely with time at university, or a product of having to 'perform' in pracs and presentations (and the fact that my performance would be judged/graded). It was such a tough time even though I loved being at university so much. It felt to me like coming home! But I suffered so at the same time. I don't believe I ever experienced anxiety as a physical presence prior to those years, but that is how it manifested then and still does today.

One of the things that sends me into paralysis (the freeze part of fight/flight/freeze) is the need to create work in tables - like lesson plans and rubrics and term plans and so on. I produced an integrated term unit plan at uni for one course. It was 70 pages long. All tables. All fabulous. High Distinction. But the lecturer commented on the assessment that I would have to find a different way to do it or I would never survive as a teacher. I resigned at the end of 2019. 

Tables -they send me into an absolute panic and I have to fight that the whole time to try and produce something that is 'right'. I experience a massive fear of getting it 'wrong'. I can't work out what headings to put where or how things flow and relate to one another unless someone actually sits with me and talks me through it. I believe that I should be able to do these things and find it ridiculous that they are such a struggle for me. It makes no sense to me and I berate myself internally for not being able to do this easily. It is usually a logical process to follow but my lizard brain doesn't let logic in to play. So I have learned to be avoidant and to find ways to not do these jobs that were integral to my job as a teacher. 

I graduated from university with a Bachelor of Learning Management (Early Childhood) with Distinction and gained permanency straight out of university with the Queensland Department of Education. I was asked if my portfolio, which was used for my interview and application for work with the department, could be used as an exemplar for future students. Of course I was honoured and said yes. They interviewing panel told me it was the best they had ever seen. I have loads of evidence that I am capable of functioning at a fairly high level. But still I struggle. 

Yesterday I had the privilege to hear from a visitor about some professional development she had done the day before around ADHD and ADD. As she described what kids with ADHD go through, it sounded just so much like me and the challenges I have managing and organising my written work that I have to believe that this is what I have been dealing with for most of my life. The penny dropped. I don't need a professional diagnosis to know that this disordered brain pattern and behaviour pattern is part of why I have been in such a difficult place. No doubt there are other factors but this is absolutely part of it. 

This is all so relevant and important to me right now as I have signed up to write a book. It is about a subject I am passionate about and I hope that it will impact positively on the lives of many children and their families. So the stakes are high. But I am not managing a mere two or three thousand word essay in this instance. It is thirty to forty thousand words and it's a lot to wrangle into some sort of order. 

The problems started right at the beginning of the writing journey when I was presented with the publishers proforma for organising the writing. It's a table. It's a form. And I fell instantly into panic mode and there I have stayed for the past nine months. I have copious mountains of notes, both physical and digital. I have stacks of reference books around me. I have everything I need to put this book together but the anxiety over those proformas has meant that I have stumbled and fumbled and agonised my way to the point where I have twice asked for 'extensions' or moved the dates for editing and publication believing that more time will solve the issues but no. It has not and still I sit surrounded and confounded by the inability to organise it all. Fear not if you have paid in advance for a copy of the book. It is still happening and it will be a better book, I promise you, for the process that I'm going through. 

So today my life has changed, due to that simple conversation over a cup of tea yesterday. Today I gave the publishers a call for help. I haven't asked for help before because I felt like I was at fault and that I should be able to make sense of this thing and get it organised. I know what organisation looks like so I couldn't understand why it was so impossible for me. Today I have understood that I need to step back and put into place some simple tools for organising my way forward. A chat on zoom with a very helpful staff member reassured me and we moved the dates yet again. The difference is that I will be keeping in touch regularly and asking for help if I'm feeling stuck or overwhelmed again. I thought it would be foolish to ask for help and that I would look stupid. I thought that no one would understand what I was going through. But having a sense of it being my 'wiring' and that actually I am okay and not 'faulty' or slack or lacking some basic component has allowed me to be vulnerable enough to ask for help. 

Tonight I am breathing easier. It is not an easy thing to write a book. There are millions of books out there written across history and thousands more are being released every year I'm sure, but still it is not an easy thing to do. This book has asked me to write it. It would not let me alone. It is taking me on a journey of personal growth and discovery that I could never have imagined. Maybe if I'd known I would not have started. Ignorance is sometimes bliss. Tomorrow is a new day and I am feeling confident to move forward again. 

The funny thing is that I would always encourage others to ask for help and to seek professional help when they need it. I in no way see it as belittling or demeaning to ask for help. Please if you need help with something ask. Please if you seem not to be able to figure out things that other people can do in a fairly straightforward way, be brave and ask for help to work it out. My fear was looking silly for not being able to work it out for myself but in the end I look silly for not accessing help a LOT sooner. It was available to me all along. I only had to ask. I hid behind changing deadlines to try and make myself figure it out on my own but I needed assistance, even just to talk it over to make it less of a weight on my shoulders. 

That is a big confession and I hope it might help someone out there that is trying too hard on their own. I envy people who are able to ask for help easily. I hope this is a good lesson for me too, to start to work more with other people and to not be afraid of that. I still don't understand fully what goes on with my brain, but I do know that I would have walked away from this project, ashamed and defeated, if I had not asked for help with it. 

A perhaps interesting aside: so many people have told me they cried when they watched the film The Notebook. It didn't move me in that way. I wept when I watched A Beautiful Mind. I understand the madness of trying to organise thoughts and information. I don't think I'm crazy at all. I just needed a little help.

Friends, family, be patient with me. Even at sixty-two I am still trying to grow up and figure out just who I am. I appreciate you all and thank you for reading  me. 

With love

Kerry <3

PS Here is the book - available for the pre-release price of $23.95 including postage, if you wish to order  https://tinyurl.com/superpowerlunchbox

Ponderings 2016

I came across this stream of consciousness writing today. I had not read it since I first wrote it back in 2016. I've waded through it today and tried to make it more readable. The original was not capitalised and it was comprised almost entirely of fragments. Perhaps it might have worked as poetry? My use of phrasing and punctuation is victim of artistic license, alas, but I encourage others to ponder these questions too. I don't have the answers but they are things that need to be pondered. It is our privilege to ponder in this way, is it not?

Where does one begin to tell a story? Stories all begin at the beginning of time and none of them will end until the end of time. Things that happen in between those two extremes are but snippets. None of them complete in themselves but always, always part of the bigger picture. And we become so enamoured with those snippets. They take on the importance of the whole story; the appearance of the whole story. Yet there is always more to add… more coming or more that came before. Does everything, every happening take on a special significance in our lives just because we decide it is so? Such is the power of our minds, our brains, that we can take a tiny insignificant thing; a word spoken, a sideways glance, and endow it with such mammoth weightiness in our lives. Yet all are as nothing if we choose to make them so.

This simple fact gives us a great deal of say in how happy we are with life. We can choose to put some apparent enormity in terms of human relationship or human communication into the box marked 'nothing'. Then it can be closed in, made to disappear into the ether as it were, as a lantern floating silent into the night sky. Higher and more distant with each passing breath, until it disappears from sight, perhaps even from memory. Ah such power we have. But do we use it? Some of us perhaps and some more than others, but I think it is probably true that most of us are unaware of the power this gives us…or at least we forget. We forget to use it even when we know it is there.

Ah such silly creatures we can be. We are mostly so engulfed by what is happening around us that we forget. Who we are and what we are capable of. What our true talents are. Instead we fuss and worry and ruminate over vast tracts of 'nothing' in our lives. He said. She said. They think. They want.

Hang on! What do you want? Do you want to give your life away like that? Do you want all your power to lay dormant while you waste your energy trying to justify your own thoughts and inactions? Or your actions or the actions and presumed thoughts of others? Seems a bit of a waste really doesn't it? 

What if you actually stopped a while and thought about what you are made of? How really amazing it is that you even exist in this time and moment and that you are so much a part of everything else as everything else is also a part of you in some way. If you can accept that every story begins at the beginning of time and that it ends not until the end of time then is not every single thing a part of that?

What if you could really comprehend that and begin to see that it is all really a magic symphony being played out by the energies that exist. You play a part in it all. Your thoughts, your actions are all part of the whole. But the whole is so immense that how can you rightly place such significance in your ruffled feathers?  Your offence at not being invited? Being passed over for a job or a part in something? For not winning the prize? It is part of the experience. How often do things that seem so bad, that we believe are the end for us in some way, turn out to be catalysts for some new happening that we might then call a blessing?

We experience tragedy in our lives and see it in the lives around us. How do we determine that something is a tragedy? Is it determined by the magnitude of hurt, physical and emotional, or by perceived ripple effect? The ‘what might come next’? We tend to create futures before they have a chance to happen. Have you noticed that? We create six possible outcomes and experience all the worry and emotional response to those outcomes before anything has happened beyond the present moment. From there we create our own distress and pain. Is it possible to live life any other way? To take back, not so much control but, our birthright to be just part of it all and not the centre. Not the focus but just a thread in the great weaving of life; a tiny fine thread amongst millions, no billions of others. Weaving this way and that, in and out of each other. Worrying, wondering. Wandering. Sigh.

How can we make sense of being part of a world in which we are both so big and so infinitesimally small? How can we internalise the knowing of both so that we can live in a way that is more comfortable. Disease. Dis-ease. It is rife. We are uncomfortable with our beliefs about ourselves and about life. 

We compare ourselves with others who have done more or less than us. And determine our personal worth in accordance with our discoveries. We compare ourselves with others who have more or less than us, and determine our personal wealth in accordance with our discoveries. We compare ourselves with others who inhabit different bodies, who are fatter, thinner, browner, yellower, pinker, taller, shorter, fitter, less fit, and determine our value in accordance with what we discover. We compare ourselves with others who have more education or less education than we have, and determine our capabilities in accordance with what we discover. Who chooses the rules we use for working all this out? And why do we follow them so willingly? Blindly even. 

How often do you question your first responses to others? Do you assess, judge, decide what others are like and where they fit on this constructed hierarchy we use, in comparison to you? Do you treat each person differently in accordance with what you discover when you do that? I suspect that most of us do without giving it a second thought.

It’s a big deal when people say they treat the cleaner, or the janitor, with the same friendly greeting as they give the CEO. But isn't that the natural thing to do? Does it make a difference who? Could it be that the janitor is more worthy of a respectful greeting than the CEO? In some cases perhaps… I will not make a judgment here. These are my thoughts and ideas. Make of them what you will. But is it really some level of self-interest that causes us to differentiate in this way?  We almost invariably give more respect to those that appear to have more power than us; perhaps because that is the position we would like to be in ourselves one day. And it seems to be true that you must be 'in' with the crowd you want to identify with, especially if you are not yet where you want to be.

But it's all so small, so worthless. Because your story, though it goes back to the beginning of time and follows through to the end of time, isn't going to make a difference! Because in the end, if there is indeed an end of some sort, there will be nothing as it has been deemed by both science and religion that there was nothing in the first instance. How foolish we are to think on these things and to worry ourselves and waste precious resources chasings ghosts and rainbows. What if we could slow down enough to see just how crazy it all is?

I know we can justify our position from this and that point of view. But that is all it is. A Point Of View. Change your glasses, change your lenses and see things differently. Can you do that? Would you do that? 

Is physical comfort the most important thing you can aspire to? It’s a big question. It is the thing most of our lives are dedicated to if you really examine it well. So what do we need to be physically comfortable? A measure of fitness, a measure of food and water, a measure of freedom from biting insects and a physical barrier between us and the elements, a measure of warmth. With these things we can then sit and ponder life. But what of those who spend their whole lives, day after day, missing out on these? Are they less than those of us who have it all? To have attained or to have been given what are perhaps the most basic needs for human life or at least tolerable human life. Many have not these things. No access to them and no hope of gaining them. What is life like for those people? What is it like to not have seen television or the internet or a mobile phone? I question this only because these things have become so ubiquitous in our society. It’s an attempt to get you to think. For many of us life comes to a standstill if the power goes off or when the internet is down…or even sluggish. We tend to live in our own world and expect that even if others have lives that are different to ours in some ways that they are just as comfortable.

Do you really think that is true? Have you ever stopped to think about it? What makes us live so thoroughly invested in our own welfare to the detriment of others? Why are we unwilling to acknowledge, or worse even consider that we might play a part in their discomfort with our insatiable desire for more comfort? What can we do to shift this? Is it indeed necessary? If everything is part of everything else, is my discontent with so much perhaps somehow also their pain and suffering from lack? Does it even matter? Can I make any difference?

It is all so big. It is all so orchestrated by those 'at the top'. I cannot judge them. I have more than I need. Life is not always easy but if I only took what I needed it probably would be. I am tired. I have a headache. I am tired of thinking and of things being so unfair. I am tired of the glitz and glamour and sparkle that are used to dress the world up to be something that perhaps it ought not to be. The Plastic Fantastic.

I am tired of laminating things - of putting plastic over paper that would rot to become soil if I left it be. I am tired of computers and the constant pressure of needing to pay. Pay. Pay someone. Pay the council. Pay the electricity company. Pay the phone company. Pay for fuel for the car. Pay for clothes and all this stuff that really only puts a barrier between me and life and living. It is time for change of some sort. It begins with me.

I have been sitting at the computer all day waiting for what? Outside the sun is shining. Outside the birds are singing. Soon the rains will come and there will be no sun for days, and I will have missed this opportunity.

Be kind. It is all you.

Kerry 

Postscript: The irony that I have played with this on my personal laptop and will upload it using my personal wifi and that I am sitting on one of the five chairs in my room which I inhabit alone - all 30 square metres or so of it...does not escape me. I am grateful. I am also deeply sad that there are such inequities in our world. I am curious to see how you will respond to this. Perhaps you will think I am mad?