asking for help when you believe you ought to know

I know it's been a while since my first blog. My last piece was a rant about my anxieties around some very real concerns that our country is running headlong into Fascism. This post is going to take on a more personal note because I've realized that the only way things can possibly get better for me is if I make a big change, so...I'm going into therapy.

It's very hard to ask for help when you think you ought to know. Ought to know what, you might ask? Well, my friend pretty much everything. I pride myself in being really smart--able to work my brain around problems, especially intellectual and emotional ones. I'm typically the friend people come to for advice, the person who can help parse out the nonsense from the facts and help straighten things out. But i've been having a really hard time lately and it's all snowballed and gone out of control. Endless hours of tv, lots of food, hardly any exercise all the typical stuff you do when you don't feel great. But then recently, in the past few months a fog of hopelessness and cyncism came in so thick I could no longer parse of the nonesense from the facts for myself. 

But the reason why I'm writing this article isn't just to vent about the quiet isolation i've been grappling with but to voice the intense shame I've felt at admitting that I need help. I know this isn't PC but it feels awful. I feel like a big, crazy, messy failure. As I try to build a name for myself as an activist, public speaker and sex educator, increasingly I feel the need to always appear perfect. How can I purport to be an expert at anything if I don't always have it together. You might then ask me another question. But Jazz, you wouldn't expect your friends and family to be perfect all the time now would you? And the answer is, kinda yeah I would. I like people who have their shit together, who are fun, motivated and positive (if also skilled in sarcastic conversation). I can't help but to have been indoctrinated by the Mary Poppins philosophy: she is after all, practically perfect in every way and why shouldn't I be to?!

What it boils down to, is the sense that if I admit that I need help, that I can't keep it altogther for myself, how in the world would any ever listen to me? So yeah, my ego is pretty raw right now and not much of my logical/reasoning brain is functioning.

I don't have a pat ending for this one, just the hunch that it's better out with these series of horrible feelings that keeping them bottled up. Thanks for listening.

Comments

[Melanie]

Hey Jazz - It takes courage to admit the need for and seek help, and you will come out an even stronger and braver and better Jazz for it on the other side. As for perfection, something I would love to attain and continually strive to "be", and often (sadly) beat myself up over the lack of, I will offer a couple quotes from other friends that sometime help with perspective: "if you knew any perfect people, would you REALLY want to hang out with them???" ; "perfect is really BORING!". We're human = imperfect = always learning. Much love and all the best!