Dependence and independence, Part 2
One issue that I obviously left out of my last post on this topic is the issue of... well, I guess of overuse of others. I know I have had the experience of a friend or family member leaning too hard on me, asking for support I felt unable to give. And clearly, that is to be avoided.
No, I am not contradicting what I said yesterday. If I am the one asking for help, then it is clearly my responsibility to ask carefully. I don't ask my friend with three pre-schoolers to clean my house. But it is probably fine to ask her to pick up a couple of things for me if she is going to the store anyway.
I try to give considerable thought to what I ask from whom. I do not want to burden my friends and family, but I definitely need their help. So a big part of my responsibility is to be thoughtful, in all meanings of the word. It's obviously in my best interest on many levels not to exhaust my support system.
Before I ask for help, I do a mental exercise. I try to match the request very carefully to the recipient. I try to piggy-back my requests to what folks are doing anyway. I ask myself whether there are alternatives to asking for help. For instance, do I really need to have or do whatever it is? Is it important enough to burden my support system?
It's not a perfect system, but it seems to work for me. And, one interesting thing has happened to my friends and family. Not only do they now anticipate things that I might need help with ("Do you need me to pick up anything for you?"), but they have learned that it really is OK to say NO. And they do. Often they will try to help me figure out another way ("I'm not going to the grocery store until next week, will that be soon enough?"). And that process stretches both of us and makes us feel like problem-solvers. And, as a certain TV personality says, "That's a good thing!"
Related Topics: Can Alternative Medicine Help Your MS?, MS In The Workplace
Technorati Tags: multiplesclerosis, livingwithmultiplesclerosis, MS
No, I am not contradicting what I said yesterday. If I am the one asking for help, then it is clearly my responsibility to ask carefully. I don't ask my friend with three pre-schoolers to clean my house. But it is probably fine to ask her to pick up a couple of things for me if she is going to the store anyway.
I try to give considerable thought to what I ask from whom. I do not want to burden my friends and family, but I definitely need their help. So a big part of my responsibility is to be thoughtful, in all meanings of the word. It's obviously in my best interest on many levels not to exhaust my support system.
Before I ask for help, I do a mental exercise. I try to match the request very carefully to the recipient. I try to piggy-back my requests to what folks are doing anyway. I ask myself whether there are alternatives to asking for help. For instance, do I really need to have or do whatever it is? Is it important enough to burden my support system?
It's not a perfect system, but it seems to work for me. And, one interesting thing has happened to my friends and family. Not only do they now anticipate things that I might need help with ("Do you need me to pick up anything for you?"), but they have learned that it really is OK to say NO. And they do. Often they will try to help me figure out another way ("I'm not going to the grocery store until next week, will that be soon enough?"). And that process stretches both of us and makes us feel like problem-solvers. And, as a certain TV personality says, "That's a good thing!"
Related Topics: Can Alternative Medicine Help Your MS?, MS In The Workplace
Technorati Tags: multiplesclerosis, livingwithmultiplesclerosis, MS
0 Comments:
Post a Comment