I have a confession. For a long time, I would rather struggle through something myself than ask for help.
Independent? Absolutely. Determined? Without question. Stubborn? Oh, don’t even get me started!
But there was something underneath all that determination. I was afraid that if I needed help, people would see MS before they saw Patti. And I wasn’t about to make that easy for them.
Who was I trying to convince?
Before MS, I was an athlete and a high school PE teacher. I knew how to work hard, practise and push myself. That philosophy served me well until I tried applying it to symptoms that weren’t interested in my determination.
There were days when ordinary tasks took more energy than they should have. And because I often looked fine, I could keep insisting I was fine.
So I did. Sometimes I completed the task and then had precious little energy left for something I actually wanted to do.
Congratulations, Patti. You proved your point. Whatever that point was.
Eventually I had to ask myself a rather uncomfortable question: was I protecting my independence, or was I protecting my pride?
Why is asking for help supposed to be embarrassing?
Think about it. Athletes have coaches. Teachers work with colleagues. Researchers collaborate. Nobody expects successful people to do absolutely everything alone.
But add a diagnosis and suddenly accepting help can feel like a declaration that you’re no longer capable.
Who decided that?
I had confused independence with doing everything myself. It took me a long time to understand that making my own decisions was far more important than carrying every single thing without assistance.
And believe me, I haven’t become a person who cheerfully accepts every offer of help. I’m still me.
The conversation about a wheelchair
I remember speaking with Annika, a woman living with MS in Spain, about getting an electric wheelchair. She worried about how people would see her and what the chair might represent.
I understood that concern. When something changes how you move through the world, it’s not necessarily easy to welcome it with open arms.
But what if the chair also made it possible to go places she wanted to go? What if it meant more freedom rather than simply another loss?
That conversation made me think about my own assumptions. Sometimes it’s not the assistance itself that bothers us. It’s what we imagine other people will think it says about us.
A wheelchair doesn’t decide who someone is. Neither does asking a friend to lend a hand.
I’d rather spend my energy on something I enjoy
Living with MS has taught me that energy isn’t something I can spend without thinking. Some days, I’ve got enough. Other days, I have to be selective.
So why on earth would I use a substantial portion of it proving I can complete a task that someone else could easily help me with?
That doesn’t mean I hand everything over. It means I get to decide whether the task is worth the energy it will cost me.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it most definitely isn’t.
And sometimes I still don’t want your help!
Here’s the other side of the conversation. Please don’t see my diagnosis and automatically assume I need assistance.
Ask me. If I say yes, wonderful. If I say no, please believe me. And if I change my mind five minutes later, I reserve the right to do that without a lecture!
I don’t want people making decisions for me in the name of being helpful. I want the freedom to make those decisions myself.
These days, I’m less interested in proving how much I can carry and more interested in deciding what matters enough to carry in the first place.
I’m independent. I’m stubborn. I’m Patti. And sometimes I’m smart enough to ask someone else to carry the damn thing.
Perhaps the real question isn’t whether asking for help shows strength. It’s why we think refusing help proves anything at all.
