Asking for Help

I was a bossy kid. No doubt about it. Looking back at myself as a child, there are so many snapshots of me yelling, crying, or even lashing out physically when things didn't go my way. I always wanted to be in charge and be the leader. I remember a specific moment in high school, after a heated argument with a peer during a school event when I finally realized just how awful I was. I thought, "I wouldn't even be friends with me. Why would anyone else be?" From that moment on, I started intentionally seeking opportunities to stop and reflect and listen to others. I made it my goal to do as much as I could for as many people as I could. When I catch myself taking over a conversation or task, I stop myself and apologize when necessary. I feel as if I have a lot more self-awareness as I get older and have been happy with my progress. 

Last month, though, I felt I was falling back into my old habits again. I was lashing out at my students when they didn't follow directions. I was dominating conversations with my siblings. I couldn't figure out why I was doing this and was getting frustrated with myself. I realize now that I was overwhelmed. "When people are stretched, their coping skills start to fray" (Rising Strong, Brene Brown). With graduate classes and new duties as reading liaison at my school and teaching an extra period each day and volunteering for different committees, I was attempting to do so much that all my previous methods of dealing with stress were thrown out the window. Why was I doing all this? What was the point? I think I just got "sucked into proving I could, rather than stepping back and asking if I should--or if I really even wanted to" (Brown again!--this chapter really resonated with me). I was pushing to be the best and it turned me into my worst. 

Why couldn't I just ask for help? I wasn't willing to give in and admit I needed it. I even had offers! Friends and colleagues asked me if they could help me in any way. They saw how stressed I was, but I couldn't even give up a teeny tiny slice of control to have them help me with one thing. I was making the same mistake I always made as a kid, just in a less obvious way. Instead of bossing people around to get my way, I was taking everything on so I could do it my way independently. I think I was worried that if I wasn't able to do everything, I would be perceived as somehow imperfect or "not good enough." In Rising Strong, Brown presented the idea that we might not be as truly generous  and helpful to others as we think we are if we are repelled by our own need. It's a two-way street. There aren't givers and receivers. We should be working to build a world in which those two things go hand in hand.

-Offering help is courageous and compassionate, but so is asking for help.-Brene Brown 

Stuck in the Middle of the Line

On Wednesday, I showed up to the airport in Mesa, Arizona to find a line of people all the way out the door. I trudged along, lugging two bags for an hour before arriving in the other side of TSA. While unpleasant, this incident wasn't the worst possible outcome for me since I'm a rule-follower and made sure my dad got me to the airport 2 hours before departure as instructed. Other passengers weren't so lucky. At 6:00 am, dozens of people stood in the seemingly never-ending line while watching the screen flash "boarding" by their flight number. Panic ensued. It was one of those moments when you saw the true character of complete strangers. A girl behind me began to bawl and physically shake. She kept repeating over and over that she couldn't miss this flight. Another couple began to take out their frustration on employees, blaming them for messing up their entire day. The anxiety in that line was palpable.

The truth is all of these people had made a mistake. They had showed up less than an hour before their planes left. It is a simple miscalculation. They probably had no idea how long the line would be. I sure didn't. But instead of problem solving, they broke down. Instead of owning up to this mistake, they blamed others.

We have all been these panicked people in the line with no end in sight. Maybe not literally, but we have all made an error, miscalculation, slip-up, or really big mistake and feel stuck in it. My parents used to always say "It's not the end of the world," but we all know that in that moment it feels like it. You made a decision, something went wrong, and you feel trapped. I started off this year reading the book Rising Strong by Brene Brown and she talks about how we often skip over this "middle" point when telling stories. We talk about the decisions we make and we talk about the results, but we glaze over the feelings/actions of the middle.

For example, I recently wrote a blog about how meaningful it was for one student to show they cared about the book I gave her, but I never shared how awful I felt last year when students threw handwritten notes in the trash without more than a glance. I write blogs all the time about things I learned at work or meaningful moments, but I rarely share the tears shed in the car after all the terrible days or the days that I snapped a student who did nothing wrong because I was frustrated with how things were going. Those things have to happen. They are part of the process of growing up and learning, but for some reason we only share the "perfect" moments, setting ourselves and others up for impossible expectations.

This "middle of the line" sharing doesn't just work with bad decisions. In fact, it can be a huge problem when sharing good stories. After I lost a lot of weight last year, many people asked me what I had done differently. All weight-loss stories have a before, a decision to change, and an after. We rarely talk about those moments in the middle when we are desperately craving a cookie or when we feel left out when everyone is going out to dinner or when we super hangry and sore and tired. We don't talk about those 3 months when we didn't lose a single pound. Those are realities though. Those are the moments when we are stuck in the line without sight of the end.

I meant to start my first blog post talking about resolutions, but I was looking at last years and feeling pretty bad about not accomplishing any of them. But I'm determined not to make let the bad decisions I made last year end the goals I set out to accomplish. I'm still standing in the line and it isn't really the end of the world. I am going to catch that flight. I am not going to blame others or break down. I'll keep working my way through the line, even if it moves very, very slowly.