Phobias: Asking for help

When I was in the seventh grade, I didn't understand trigonometry on the first day we learned it.  I was confused about how to start to solve a homework problem, and for the last few minutes of class, we had to complete two homework problems and show them to the teacher to leave. We were allowed to work in groups.  A kid named Nick showed me how to answer the question, and walked a few of us through it.  I wrote down the answer. Then the teacher wanted me to show my work.  So instead of asking him (the teacher) for help, I turned back to Nick, and to this day, I promise the words that came out of my mouth were, "Hey can you show me how to start the problem again?" while looking at his paper. I was asking a classmate for help, and the teacher thought I was cheating. The teacher flipped out.  I had to sign "The Book" three times, and I thought that meant detention (turns out five times=detention-graduated detention free). I was mortified and terrified and thought my life was over.

I associate that moment in my life with my fear of asking for help.  I don't know if it comes from before that, so that's why I didn't want to ask the teacher, or if it came from asking Nick for help and then having a grown man yell at me six inches from my face, but I HATE asking for help. It terrifies me.  I feel like a nuisance and like I am incompetent.  I know that this is foolish, and have been working on it for ages. Professors and employers of mine have heard the story above, and graciously and wonderfully helped me ask for help. But this is still a journey. 

And so, in Namibia, I find myself in a system where everything needs to go through committees and through management offices.  In my head, this plays out as asking for help, so this often turns into my worst nightmare! It means that to get things done, I have to go against my natural instinct to fend for myself all the time.  Problems get solved more slowly here, but by more people.  It works, but it is so different from everything I know in my own experience that it often seems impossible.

But I am here to learn how that works.  And I am trying.  So teachers and learners of RVS, thank you very much for bearing with me while I learn how to ask for help in the way expected here.  Thank you so much for your patience as I face one of my biggest fears every day with this. I love you all very, very much, and I appreciate you.