Brené Brown, Shame & Asking for Help

Why don't I just ask for or even accept the offer of help?

Note: 

I wrote this several years ago and I have gotten better at this, but I still need to keep a post-it note above my monitor: 

I've been listening to an audio book by Amanda Palmer entitled "The Art of Asking" and she has put squarely in my sights the question: "Why can't or don't I ask for help? Even from the people who I love and who I know love me?" Although this is a question I've been wrestling with for years, my engagement in the Debtors Anonymous 12-Step program as well as my reading of the works by Brené Brown over the last few years has helped tremendously in gaining some ground to find my answer to this.

The answer at this time is a series of logically related statements:

• I'm a smart guy, I should be able to figure everything out.
• If I can't figure something out on my own, try harder. Read and research more. 
• If I screw up or fall down, pick myself back up and try again. "You can do it!"
• If I am unable to solve the riddle, put together the puzzle, or finish the job then there must be something wrong with me. 
• Maybe I'm not so smart after all.
• If I can't do something all by myself, I feel ashamed (Case in point was when a neighbor came by yesterday and offered to help me with the tent. I kindly put him off, saying I thought I could do it myself. Which I did. And I lost the chance to get to know a neighbor and develop a helping relationship.)
• Sometimes I feel deeply ashamed and then when other people begin to question my capabilities I start to also question them. 
• If I am not worthy, why would anyone help me? How can I survive the intense anguish of not getting help when I need it? So why ask, when I am pretty sure no one would ever want to help me (cue the violins). 

This can lead to a process of spiraling down in a vicious cycle of reviewing my recent attempts along with their subsequent failures (skipping over the everyday list of actions done quite competently if not well), my long and storied (to me, anyway) history of failed attempts, feeling quite ashamed about it all, wondering if I could still find a solution to the current crisis, questioning all of my offered solutions (and eventually even questioning my underlying cognitive processes) and finally even my worthiness of being able to succeed. This can take place over a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few months. At it's worst, I allowed myself to question my worthiness as part of my second marriage and which was a direct result of my inability to reconcile my first divorce / marriage failure with myself as a competent human being.

So, standing back and observing this from a place of relative sanity, this seems just crazy. But when I am in the middle of it, it is terrifyingly real. And what am I doing these days to help myself?

Well, I finally accepted the fact that I was unable to take care of money rationally with my current operational and conceptual framework around spending, so going to DA meetings regularly has helped tremendously. This has done a few things: one is that I have a safe place where I can share my struggle and everyone understands the lack of control I have over debt & spending - there is no shame to it; two is it gives me the chance/opportunity to ask for help - not that I've done much of that so far, but it is an expected part of the program; three is it has highlighted the major role that shame has played in my life - how it has motivated me to do better (so as not to be ashamed of myself) and how it has pulled the rug right out from underneath me. 

This last point is where Brené Brown's work comes in. I was captivated by her TED talk, fascinated that such an obviously intelligent & well-spoken person could feel shame. And then I was intrigued that she was able to tell a story that helped me grok my own shame without feeling more shame about the shame, without the spiraling down I was so familiar with.