Asking for Help is Great – But is There Also an Obligation to Offer It?

By Rachel Puryear

We all know that it’s very helpful to ask for help. It lets others know what we need when they might otherwise have no idea, and it gives us a chance to practice being assertive. Certainly, people should ask for help more often – and many don’t, quite to their own detriment.

At the same time, does that mean that there’s no obligation to ever watch out for others in distress, and notice that they might be struggling, and offer help that wasn’t initially asked for? Maybe. Let’s explore this.

One child offering a helping hand to another child on the ground. By Annie Spratt.

The Drowning Analogy:

Did you know that people sometimes die unnecessarily from drowning, because many people have an incorrect understanding of what drowning looks like?

Bear with me, please – I promise that this ties in with my original point.

Many believe that a drowning person will thrash and scream for help, and that it will be obvious that they are distressed – but that is a deadly myth, sadly. Instead, drowning is very subtle – it’s quiet, difficult to see, and often isn’t obvious to onlookers until it’s too late.

A person actively drowning cannot yell for help, because they aren’t getting enough air to do so – and they may be fully under the water, and hard to spot to an untrained eye.

What Does Drowning Have to Do With Anything?

The point is that sometimes people who need help, even desperately, won’t always ask for it – maybe because they cannot, or because they don’t know how or feel like they should not.

On the one hand, it’s good to encourage asking for help, and doing so practices assertiveness. However, that doesn’t mean that noticing someone is struggling, and reaching out to them, isn’t also very valuable and important. Not everyone is good at asking for help, even if they really need it.

People who have trouble asking for help are often themselves givers, people pleasers, natural helpers, and those who feel bad about troubling other people – even if they would do everything they could to help another person in need, in a heartbeat.

That doesn’t mean you need to infantilize such people – but checking in on them when they’ve gone quiet or are showing signs of struggling, even if it turns out they’re actually fine, will likely mean a lot to them. Even if they don’t ask for much, they still most likely appreciate being noticed and thought of by others.

Of course, drowning people physically cannot call for help, while givers and people pleasers are capable of doing so – even if there are reasons they often do not. Nonetheless, their reasons for not asking for help more do run pretty deep, and the point is more about noticing them even if they’re not as dramatic and demanding about it as many other people are.

But What If They Refuse My Offers of Help?

Then you should most likely honor that refusal, and respect their wishes. You usually cannot help someone who does not want to be helped. But then, at least you tried. And deep down, whether they ever admit it or not, they may still appreciate that you at least noticed something was going on with them, and cared enough to make an effort to reach out.

Thank you, dear readers, for reading, following, and sharing. Here’s to both asking for help, and also looking out for others who may need it but are unable to ask for it. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” and subscribe, if you have not already.

Check out my other blog, too – Free Range Life, at https://freerangelife.net.

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