Why has asking for help become a standstill? It looks like an old western movie where a person is pointing a gun but on the opposite side the enemy has become people from their past, their brain chemistry, or the environment they have lived in. Most of the time the villain manifests its power in mental illness it flows into every inch of a person. The phrase mental health can become such a stigma. The stigma of "you need attention" or "you did this to yourself" when in reality it come completely out of nowhere or from someone else. The stigma can be so overwhelming that people that even understand a disorder do not want to seek out help. For the longest time I thought "how can I be broken?" I am supposed to be helping someone. When I pictured my standoff I envisioned myself and my brain standing on the other side. I began to distract myself from the other side and place my energy elsewhere. It was a temporary band aid over a wound that had started from my biology, moved into my environment, and manifested itself in a person.
My standoff manifested into me in some spanking new chaps and the opponent being a person from my, now, past. This person was tall, nasty, and the embodiment of what my anxiety, fear, and abuse felt like. For a long time I blamed this person for me needing to seek out help. I blamed them for being hurt, I made excuses for myself and who I was. Although, that person put scars on my heart it was my standoff that I needed to heal from. Before the standoff was a standstill I could never fight. Changing the person I was fighting made space for me to shift it from a standstill to a nice drink and talk at the bar. I never fully helped myself in the way that I would help a client or even a friend. I simply just excused everything I was preaching thinking that if I let it slip that I needed help that people would not come to me for help. That if I let clients know I went through struggles too they may undermine me. However, this was not the case. I withered away under stress and anxiety and became what I would be equal to a tumble weed whistling by. I became the stigma instead of the exception.
Taking this western analogy to the next step I withdrew my weapon and withdrew my blame. I sat down and forgave myself and the person that created the unhealthy environment I found myself in. The sun danced again and I was able to see the rainbow that had always been there waiting for me. I sought out help in therapy, in medication, and in ways that I never thought I would've. I did not only place band aids on my past but I fully sutured it all and created a space that was solely my own progress. A place where I could not blame or appreciate anyone but my own self and in this I found faith, happiness, and understanding. I found forgiveness for the person that manifested my disorder and a freeing of peace and stillness. My client's have found connections in my pain and solstice in the place they are in. Asking for help is always scary, embarrassing, and maybe a little bit awkward (at least for me) but it is so worth it. It is worth knowing that you did it. That your past abuser, your biology, your environment shifts. That you GROW through what you have GONE through. The standoff is over and you can go back to the life desired for you, ask.... just ask and receive the unexpected answers of the helper needing help.