Yesterday, I called my sister in tears after a doctor’s appointment because my doctor pointed out that my blood pressure was elevated, and the main reason she could recognize that it had spiked in the last few days was likely because of stress.
“How is your mental health, Jessica?” asked my doctor. I blinked, and a tear rolled down my cheek, “I’ve been trying to manage and control a lot of things.” (aka, I have found myself fixated on trying to get pregnant since my pregnancy loss in January, and it hit me in that doctor’s office that this fixation is hurting me in more ways than one.)
On the phone, my sister, the ever-wise gift of a human that she is, pointed out a simple observation: I’m very detail-oriented and driven. This serves me well at work as an educator and in running a small business. Still, my drive, organization, and attention to detail won’t guarantee specific outcomes in my personal life, including a pregnancy that goes to term.
This reminder hit me hard, but I needed to hear it. My sister held space for me to weep on the phone; then, I called my partner to open up about the realization I had and how my fixation on looking at all the dates on the calendar, tracking my ovulation, and waiting anxiously to see if my cycle was coming or not was hurting me. We spent the evening decompressing, which involved watching something together and ordering takeout.
If I had been drinking, there would have been no discussion of my mental health with my doctor, no phone call to my sister or to my partner to share how I’ve been struggling. There would have been no space for me to be heard. I would have faced these feelings alone, and because facing them alone would have been too much to bear, rather than letting them pass or moving into action to find a solution, I would have drank to escape them. I would not have felt it was okay to ask anyone for help, falsely believing the old story that the right thing was to keep it all in—the story that many women still think is true for them today.
I was looking through writing by Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a psychiatrist who works solely with women, for a reading on asking for help. I revisited this one substack that really jumped out at me. You can read the entire piece here, but I’ll pull out the section I want to discuss in this email.
“You don’t have to wait until you’re in a crisis to get support
What if we reframed asking for support — whether it’s from a friend, a family member, or a mental health professional — as a skill we all need to build? What if receiving support is something that you can do even when you’re not ready to collapse?”
What if we “reframed asking for support” as a skill?! Oof! Okay, Dr. Lakshmin, yessss! If I go back to belief systems handed down to me both in my childhood home and from society and my culture as a Latina woman, asking for help was never considered a skill. Needing support was considered a deficit.
I was raised to think that asking for help was a weakness, which affected my ability to seek help for my addiction to alcohol. I equated asking for help with weakness, and it fueled shame. So my first major act of resistance in my sobriety journey was deciding to recover out loud and openly admit that I had a problem with alcohol. Ever since, every time I hesitate to ask for help, be it for something significant or small, I push back against the hesitation and ask myself where it’s coming from.
Usually, I can acknowledge that it’s typically thinking passed down to me that is no longer in alignment with me and move forward with my request for help anyway. I’m so glad I did that yesterday because instead of letting the circumstance spiral and worsen, I feel so much better today, and my blood pressure is reading normally as a result. 🙂
Questions for Reflection: How does asking for help come up for you in your own journey? How do you overcome barriers you face in seeking support? How is asking for help a personal act of resistance for you? What strategies have you used to overcome the blocks to asking for support?
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