An excerpt from my book “Lip Confessions – THE Soul Coming-Out for Hinschauer” (publication date 2023)
SUPPORT
How do you feel about asking for support? How easy is it for you to ask if someone can help you? How do you feel when you realize that you can’t do something alone?
For a long time, asking for help was a sign of weakness for me. It made me feel like I wasn’t good enough and that I had failed alone. So I mostly left it alone and tried to handle all aspects of my life on my own. I put on the cool facade like: “It’s no problem! Everything is easy!” – and I have to admit it: I really managed a lot on my own. I always heard from the outside: “Wow, you can really do everything, right?” And over the years I have actually developed further in my desire for complete independence in countless areas.
Yes, I have no doubt that if I wanted to, I could build a decent house myself without needing anyone (except books, tutorials and Google, perhaps). I have become a master at Googling for solutions and find a suitable solution for every problem. My belief in my ability to learn has become limitless because I know that we can learn anything if we want to and I love learning new things. But honestly: it’s so tiring when it doesn’t come from joy, but rather from the urge to do everything alone. And above all it is one thing: lonely. During my training as a naturopath for psychotherapy, I learned that loneliness is one of the main factors for suicide risk and many people also feel lonely when they are among a thousand people. because they learned: “I have to fight for everything alone.” Ouch. I didn’t want that anymore.
Like most people in the Western world, I grew up under enormous pressure to perform. This is our normal. The system suggests to us that we have to be a woman and a man at the same time – this is especially true for women. But they are more likely to ask for support. That’s not possible for a man.
But what are we doing to ourselves with such thinking? I can only speak for myself and also for the many people with whom I have had contact within my work as a coach and therapist and also privately in my life: It is simply exhausting. Depression and back pain – which are mostly psychosomatic because we burden ourselves so much and shoulder ourselves – are the first and second reasons for sick leave. Coincidence? Definitely not. It seems like asking for support creates a lot of anxiety in our society. There are various reasons for this:
Guilt: First and foremost, most people don’t want to be in someone else’s “debt”. The following applies in society: whoever takes something must also give something directly. But have you ever been asked for help, did it out of joy and received nothing in return? How did that feel for you? Were you missing something in return? I believe that if we say yes to something where we actually feel no and then help, then we are missing something in return. But the fact is: many people are happy to help. Over the last few years, I have become more and more adept at asking for support without having to offer anything in return. At least the other person can say “no” and I’m often happy when I can help someone.
Often there was room for something in return later. But I have become more and more detached from the performance principle. During one of my moves – because some friends were sick – I asked strange men on the street if they would put my furniture in the moving truck for me. I was happy when they said yes because I would never have been able to do it alone and my friends were also overwhelmed by the weight of some of the furniture. The two men were my heroes and I told them exactly that.
They carried the furniture into my car in minutes without any complaint: washing machine, couch, closet, dryer… Everything was done in no time at all – and what was the return? They felt confident in their masculinity and as we cheered them on and were incredibly grateful with sparkling eyes, they actually had something in return. They continued to walk happily, with smiles on their faces and chests swelled with pride, although before they had looked listless and had rather slumped shoulders. I never saw her again.
Another example is that I asked a naturopath friend of mine to help me with my exam anxiety. She selflessly took time for me for an hour and hypnotized me. She was incredibly patient with me because the topic wasn’t that easy for me. We agreed: money doesn’t always have to be paid to friends and I could also support them elsewhere. A few weeks later she called me. She remembered that I also do advertising design and confessed to me that she had a lot of trouble with it and that it really inhibited her business and her motivation because she felt like she had to do it herself even though it wasn’t her strength. So it was with absolute joy that I designed her a beautiful new flyer for her training group and an advertisement for her workshop and we were both over the moon. We were able to give each other something that we couldn’t have given each other on our own and it created even more closeness and trust between us.
That opened my eyes. I now like to ask for support and like to pass on my appreciation without losing face. I also like to give something afterwards, but not out of a sense of obligation, but out of love. Or offer my support to people if I know they are struggling in an area that I can easily cover. However, I do not offer my help if I am not good at it myself or if I am overwhelmed in life. I allow myself to say “no” and I also allow others to say no without any problems. And I allow myself to ask for support, even if I have no idea whether or what I can give back. After all, who knows whether the other person will not receive something in return through the mere act of giving?
Giving makes many people happy. It makes them feel important and of course they are at that moment. Everyone has something different to give. Whether it’s money, love, energy, advice, a new perspective or something similar. And everyone has something within them that they would like to give and that is easy for them to give. So why don’t we allow you too? Be honest: How many times have you been offered help and politely declined it even though you could have used it?
Weakness: Deep down, each of us wants to be seen, understood and loved for who we are. But how is that supposed to work if we put up facades everywhere and answer the question “How are you?” always just answer: “Thank you, good. And myself?” What if instead we answered honestly, like: “Thanks for asking. I’m not feeling so well at the moment. I worry about how I can support my family and be there for them at the same time. “It’s too much for me sometimes.” or “Thanks for asking. I’m doing great, I just met a new man and I’m on cloud nine.”
Yes, many people back away in shock when faced with so much honesty and closeness and are initially overwhelmed by the prospect of a real answer to their “How are you?” phrase. Most people are not used to spontaneous expressions of emotion, especially if they continually rationalize away their own feelings. But my experience shows that an incredible number of people open up once we do it and that is immensely liberating. We realize that we are not alone and it often happens that people then offer us their support, or we can support from the heart and that both people open up and go home with a smile on their faces.
The need for closeness in our society is so closed off that hardly anyone notices it anymore. We have the belief “I have to be a lone fighter and no one can see me.” almost absorbed with mother’s milk. But when we begin to open up, a spark of joy for life and hope often flares up within us and those around us. Why? Because we no longer have to hide for what we feel and are. We allow ourselves and others to be seen, understood and loved for what is within us. But first we have to express it.
Intimacy is often associated with sex in society. But anyone who has ever had sex without love knows that it doesn’t really go into depth. It is an illusion and a phenomenon of our society to find closeness in sexual touch and the next love kick and never to be satisfied because we are actually looking for a different form of closeness. The book “Generation Incapable of Relationships” by Michael Nast opened my eyes for the first time many years ago. At that time I was still looking for true love and only found catastrophic relationships.
Hello, empty Tinder life. Hello, false belief that men are biologically designed to have many women. It’s as if my generation in particular were carrying out a polygamy experiment that I personally find absolutely absurd, simply because they have actually lost true closeness due to digital overstimulation, performance society and the like. But none of the people I met were really fulfilled. If I asked honestly – and I almost always do, because I have no inhibitions and am passionate about the psychology behind it – none of the polygamous people, the long-term Tinder daters or those in open relationships were really happy. Who would have thought? So what are we really looking for? What is intimacy?
The exchange about our true needs, emotions and desires goes much deeper than physical exchange. This is true intimacy. In fact, most couples experience a lull in bed after a few months because they don’t communicate honestly with each other and therefore their bodies can’t show true closeness. Then many separate in the hope that the next prince or princess is waiting around the corner and then experience the same story all over again, or they sign up for the next erotic course with Busen-Berta on Instagram Finding a new, more extreme and unusual form of sexual stimulation, only to find yourself back at the same point a few months later. *yawn*
Let’s be honest – how many people do we show our true colors to? And how often do we actually look into our own needs, desires and emotions instead of explaining them away as sentimentalism? Yes, feelings can hurt. But they cause much more damage if we lock them away. Unfortunately, when we lock away our worries and our sadness and anger, we also lock up true joy, joy of life and lightness. The result is either that we engage in some form of addiction (=seeking) to seek such strong stimuli just so that we can feel something, or fall into a serious mental illness. Most of the time our body reports this back to us in the form of illnesses or pain, which are often inexplicable even medically.
We must understand that our body has several levels. In classical medicine only the material body is seen. However, this is roughly as if we were looking at the cell phone without taking into account that electromagnetic microwaves are required for its full functionality, i.e. it receives its main function via a field that is invisible to most people.
It’s the same with us humans. We have various invisible bodies, such as the mental body, emotional body and spiritual body, which communicate with ourselves and others. Unfortunately, this realization has not yet reached everyone, although everyone feels its effects in one way or another, at least unconsciously. When someone is behind us, we feel it even though we don’t see them. Most people also know that they have a strange “premonition” or “gut feeling” or an “intuition” about something. The phenomenon of lovers hearing each other’s thoughts and completing sentences is also known to everyone. Or we think of someone and they call us.
None of these are coincidences, but rather our subtle bodies communicating with us and with each other. No esoteric mumbo jumbo, just a normal phenomenon. And just as the cell phone’s network can be disrupted, our energetic bodies can also have a disruption that we can even feel as pain. A little digression that shows how complex we are. And we can include exactly these levels in our lives in order to feel alive again.
Dependency: Uuuh. For most people it’s a really bad word. How do you feel when you hear the word “dependence”? So many people are afraid of becoming dependent when they ask for support. They see themselves as a victim who is then defenseless against the executioner because they are in his debt. This comes from very ancient times and many lives still follow it today. That’s why it’s of course important that we listen carefully to our feelings about who we ask for support and whether and what conditions the other person attaches to it.
Personally, I have found that asking for help out of neediness, laziness, or expectation, versus asking for help out of honesty, unconditionality, and ease, produces a completely different result. One attitude assumes that we simply can’t do it alone or don’t feel like it. That’s okay sometimes, sometimes it’s like that – usually when we’ve long since exceeded our limits because we wanted to do everything on our own. In my work with my clients, I have found that listlessness is often due to excessive demands from performance-oriented society or suppressed emotions and is not due to pure malice.
The second attitude assumes that while we COULD do it alone, it would be easier, more joyful, and more connecting for everyone to do it with someone else. Letting someone else into our intimate lives is a way to keep our backs unburdened. In doing so, we also give the world a gift because we protect ourselves and allow ourselves to remain in our own strength, so that we in turn are able to do the things for which we feel a calling within ourselves. So others always benefit when we honestly ask for support. Instead of unhealthy dependency, intimacy, closeness and connection arise in a healthy form.
So why not ask for support? Sure, we can be rejected. This can sometimes hurt if we carry a wound of rejection within us. But we can also notice that we are all a community and that everyone has their own individual abilities and limitations, which unite each other – like in nature – to form a harmonious network. And who knows, maybe one day we can all let go of having to do something that doesn’t suit us because we have realized that nature has provided for all abilities and we all complement each other perfectly. One can make people dream, another can manage money particularly well, and the third can cook wonderfully. Everyone has at least one gift within them that comes easily and that corresponds to their true calling. So what if we allow ourselves to do just that? Maybe then we can live in real closeness again instead of smiling at each other with clown faces and pretending that everything is great and that we can do everything on our own. It’s okay if that’s not the case. Only through this knowledge can something change for the better in our lives and ultimately in society.
Questions for an easier life:
- What suits me particularly well? What can I easily give to others?
- What can I do less well? Who do I know who can do these things particularly well?
- Who can I ask for support in which areas?
- Where do I hand over tasks and feel dependent?
- What things should I rather do myself?
- Which tasks should I hand over?
- What do I really long for?
- How easy is it for me to talk about my feelings?
- What in me wants to be expressed?