I am a recovering independence addict and know-it-all. 

I want to have all the answers, do everything on my own and never have to ask for help.

I grew up as an only child, and my parents were pretty controlling. 

So I either struggled until I figured things out myself, or someone swooped in with their agenda and took over.

There was no differentiation between being helped and being controlled. I couldn’t ask for help, and keep my selfhood.

So if I couldn’t get help and maintain my dignity and agency…I’ll keep my dignity and agency, thank you. 

And I thought I had to know everything. Love and approval from the adults in my life depended on me proving my intellect. I still feel the scars of this every day. 

So here I was, thinking I have to do it all on my own, know everything, and not let on that I can’t and I don’t, because it was too threatening. 

I was fighting upstream and burning out, carrying this heavy burden alone. 

We have an individualistic culture that reinforces this conditioning and keeps us lonely and depressed. In 2022, after a powerfully healing group retreat, my blinders came off. I could suddenly see how lonely my life was. I lived alone and I worked alone. And I live in a country that rewards those things as status symbols.

Feeling interconnected is THE NUMBER ONE THING that’s healed my depression and anxiety.

If deep down, you don’t want to receive (it’s too disempowering or scary or you feel undeserving) it blocks the flow of energy. I’m guessing you know how good it feels to give. What if you couldn’t because no one ever received?

It makes me cry to think about how much goodness and love I was blocking.

This was also the way I approached helping others. 

I was still carrying the conditioning that it was too shameful to be helped or to learn. That it somehow invalidated my ability to be a helper. I wasn’t strong or smart enough if I needed support. 

But, I also believed in the help I was giving, it felt incredible to be trusted to offer it and I was seeing the results.

This was the deep, invisible paradox of how I was living. And why I kept burning out. And why I was exhausted. And why I was unhappy.

And if I think my job as a coach is to give so hard I deplete myself, run my clients’ lives or give them all the answers, what am I really doing? Disempowering them. Trying to prove something to myself. Replicating the harm that was done to me.

It’s my job to show them their dignity. Empower them to ask for help. Uncover the wisdom their own bodies hold.

Life is so much more beautiful and easier and funner when we surrender, put down whatever baggage we think we have to hold, and receive the mysteries of life that we are a part of.

Thank you for choosing to receive this.

The more open we are to receive, the more we receive.

It’s pretty simple. So leave some room and ask for help. You deserve it.