Asking for Help
Weird, deformed world in which stressful, overflowing agendas have become a status symbol. With all its consequences. And taking good care of yourself, protecting yourself and asking for help when that status symbol grows over your head, instead, is seen as weakness. Again, with all its consequences.
One million Dutch employees have a burnout…
One million Dutch employees are being bullied at work…
That smacks of correlation.
And of work stress not simply being related to working (too) hard and workload. But at least as much, if not more, to the work atmosphere, the ways of working and leadership, mutual relations, the ways of handling conflicts and the like.
And when that goes to the detriment of your health, it is taboo to raise incorrect treatment and ask for and receive help to get everything back in the right perspectives… It should not get any crazier!
As an exceptionally experienced expert in Workplace Bullying/Mobbing, getting through it and over it, I can assure you that the opposite holds true! Choosing yourself, standing up for yourself and seeking help is the best thing that you can ever do for yourself and thus the smartest thing to do! Taking (back) the responsibility for your life. Analysing everything, putting it in the right, true (!) perspectives, resolving and letting go of underlying issues and healing the damage suffered. Rising stronger, healthier, happier and immune. What more do you want? Try it!
Offering & Giving Help
The other way round it is not any easier to offer and provide help. However well-meant and proved by experience.
You easily run the risk of implicitly judging people if you want ‘to help them’, implying that there is something wrong with them. You might talk them into things that they are not (fully) aware of or not (yet) ready for. That Workplace Bullying is still such a huge taboo reveals the shame surrounding it. You feel “weak” because you are the target of it. Then you have to “admit” that you are being bullied. And then “weakly” ask for help… Does no one understand how awfully brave you really have to be to actually draw the line and ask for help despite all these misperceptions?
The same holds true for Self-realisation and Awareness as solution to the problems. Everyone has to follow their own path and development process. One has to be ready and be open to possible suggestions and encouragement. Otherwise it will be like giving advice not asked for.
The only option then is to provide information, knowledge and insights from experience that may be helpful. Information that may prove useful to escape from that vicious cycle of denial, anxiety, shame and feelings of guilt. By that first step alone, standing up for yourself and asking for help, you will immediately see everything taking a different turn for you. Making ‘the unmentionable’ subject of discussion is liberating. By protecting yourself in this way and taking better care of yourself, you will grow stronger and resilient. External help is by definition more objective.
You can assist and encourage someone in this process but only when desired and specifically asked for. As mentioned before, by providing information, knowledge and insights from experiences. It is up to the person in question to do something with it. Hopefully it can give people that specific push needed to actually take that step and choose yourself.
Jobs, money, possessions, those are just material things that can be regained (if you want to). Your health, psychologically and physically, still is far more important. Protect yourself. Choose yourself.
The tranquillity, the freedom, the bliss and the fitness that it ultimately brings are hard to describe.
What is clear though is that you will laugh hard about illusions such as the opinion of others about your “busy busy busy-overflowing agenda-status symbol and your tough hanging in there” supposedly being more important than your health and wellbeing.
Maartje Rutten, The Hague, May 13th, 2019