Asking for help is self-love as a survivor of childhood trauma and abuse.
Asking for help is self-love as a survivor of childhood trauma and abuse.
The challenges of navigating trauma are not meant to be burdened alone.
Many childhood trauma and abuse survivors are scared to ask for help or have an "I can do this on my own" mentality. The reality is that in order to continue to see progress or even get started we have to leverage our communities, teams, and those that are willing to support us. This episode is a little longer than usual as I really wanted to drive home some key points about how I implemented asking for help into my life and how through doing so everything changed.
You can listen to the full episode here.
I think there are a few places in which we can take a look at our lives and come to the realization that asking for help is actually not a sign of weakness. Take this thought into consideration, if you made it this far on your own then the chance that you are going to have an exponentially better experience based in allowing yourself to step into being assisted in life must feel like a promising venture. Right?
We often hide our needs as child abuse survivors because that is what we are taught in youth. We may have found ourselves hiding the truth to protect our abuser or worse hiding our own actions when we needed safety. We hear this time and again that “no one knew” that anything bad was happening in a house of tragedy and pain. We know as people with first-hand experience in abuse that those bad things didn’t see light due to the fear that came along with the continuation or increased levels of abuse.
How do I ask for help as a trauma survivor?
Ask yourself this question, as an adult what value does seeking help bring me? The idea for many child abuse victims is laid rampant with the idea that no one can help us and that we have to figure it out on our own. Imagine for a second that asking for help was a in-line with self-love/care. What I mean by this is that when we step into a place that we allow others to help us with our physical, mental, and emotional help we are taking care of ourselves. It’s almost impossible to grow alone and if growing is a cornerstone of taking care of our well being then it would be fair to say that asking for help goes hand in hand with that concept.