Never Easy: How Do You Ask for Help?

It can be a lesson in maturity learning how to be ok asking for help. Truly ok; not the kind kind where you can’t look them in the eye when you ask. In our culture, it can be seen as a sign of weakness, and when you sustain a spinal cord injury, it’s hard to overcome this is a big way.

But even the walkers (not the zombie walkers) of the world eventually need help. Say you were moving a piano, you would need help. We come out of the womb needing help; it’s just a fact of life, and people with spinal cord injuries can become experts at it.

From a sassy school teacher who has no problem asking for help (and giving it too) to a few guesses as to why the jerks of the world don’t like helping is, here are three videos showing that asking for help should be the last of your worries in life.

Video #1: Sassy Texas schoolteacher tells it like it is for TEDx

In our first video, we get to listen to an amazing speech by Angela, an elementary schoolteacher from Houston, Texas, born with SMA, also known as spinal muscular atrophy. She was born requiring assistance, even more than the average baby, so when she chose her career as a schoolteacher, she didn’t even think twice about needing to ask for help.

In this video she made for TEDx called the “Art of Help,” Angela discusses how good she is at asking for help, but even more importantly why it’s important for society that we all become good at it. We need help whether we realize they’re not, end we all must come to terms with this. Finally being ok with asking for help can be quite uplifting.

And even better, Angela also discusses why able-bodied people need to be learn to be ok with accepting our help too, and to stop underestimating us. Got that?

Check it out: Angela discusses “The Art of Help” for TEDx

Video #2: 4 reasons why people avoid helping us

For some ruminating about why certain people don’t like helping us, this video from Lawerence, a middle-aged man with cerebral palsy, will definitely shed some light on the subject. In his video, he profiles four main reasons he feels certain people don’t like helping us.

While 99.5% of people will help him when he asks, the .5% that are left certainly make you wonder.  He believes the .5% don’t like helping because a) They don’t know what to do b) They can’t hear us, c) They are a narcissist or d) We are using unintentional unwelcoming body language.

Watch: Disability Concern – Asking for help

Video #3: People need people. Period.

Our third video meanwhile is all about the importance of getting over your fear of accepting help. So many people, disabled or no, are afraid of this, and it can really put you in a pickle. We don’t want to be weak or appear any less independent than we already are. After all, in rehabilitation this is what they stress :/

However at the end of the day, people need people, and recognizing this can save you a lot of emotional stress, instead of agonizing over the notion that your disability is somehow holding you back in life each time you ask for help. After all, we could heal, and become healers ourselves to others like us one day. Help is a fact of life.

Watch: Don’t be Afraid to Ask for HELP – TWLOHA

It truly is an art form…asking for help, and we know it’s not easy asking for it. The good news is that it gets easier every time you ask for help. All you have to remember is that people are usually more than willing to lend a hand; all you have to do is ask.

How do you ask for help? Intro line?

Watch the videos!

– TEDx speech by a woman wc-user on the “Art of Help”

– Disability Concern: Asking for Help

– Don’t be Afraid to Ask for HELP – TWLOHA