I was recently reading a forum, and in that forum many people were asking for help and the common thing that they were all saying was "This is really hard for me to do", and I began to wonder about it. It really does seem to be difficult for us to admit we need help. Does it really strike us as being such a bad thing? Does it signal that we are not responsible enough, not always capable of taking care of ourselves, and that truthfully we are not self-sufficient?

When we are first born, this is our first instinct. In order to meet our very first need, survival, we realize we need help to do this. We cry to have our needs met, however, aren't we really just saying "HELP, I NEED HELP! I CAN'T DO IT MYSELF!"

Why are we born this way? Is it because we really do have this ingrained in us, the need to be helped and to help? Is anyone truthfully self-sufficient? Don't we all have that need buried very deep and how do we go about getting that met? When we are children, we expect our needs to be met. We first expect it from our parents or whoever our primary caregiver might be. At what point do we then find them lacking? Were our caregivers nurturing enough to us? Did they meet our needs on demand?

For many of us, the question is "no". Our parents weren't good enough. Many of us found our parents "lacking". Oh they may have been very good at physically providing for us, but did they really understand how to love us, and accept us as we were or were they constantly trying to mould us? As a consequence, we started to fear. We started to develop a fear that our needs wouldn't be met and then started on the journey of trying to meet them for ourselves. Our parents did try to teach us what it was to be responsible adults, how to fit in, what the rules and regulations of the game were, and what we needed to develop to survive in this world.

For many of us, we still hold a very deep judgment against our parents, our caregivers, our teachers, and anyone else who couldn't seem to accept us as we were. The phrase is constantly being heard "let go of the past", and yet the past was painful to us. We knew our needs weren't being totally met. Didn't we all want a perfect parent who when we fell down and hurt ourselves could pick us up and quietly say "it doesn't matter, try again." Didn't we all want gentle nurturing, guidance, the warmth, the protection and yet what many of us discovered was the punishment. When we misbehaved, we were punished. Behaviour modification using this method was very standard. Even today, as spanking is being phased out, we still have methods such as sending the child to their room, a corner, a time-out. We banish the child from the room and our company. The child is being sent the message "behaviour bad, must do better."

In our subconscious, we have this buried. We love the times of the year when we see this brought out strongly. For many of us, this comes out through our religious holidays. We then feel the connection to others, we open our hearts a little more, we feel a little more compassion and we let the magic come in.

When we open our hearts, we can then connect to ourselves and to others. When we give our parents the compassionate understanding and truly understand the fear they lived in, we start opening ourselves to the compassion for ourselves and our fears.

Recently, in talking with my own mother, I realized what a difficult time it was for her. She was a product of two World Wars. She was born during World War I, and as a young woman, World War II was being fought. Survival of the world was being played out, and I can't imagine any human being not being aware of it. Loss, grief was very much the norm of the day. Friends, lovers, fiancés, husbands, fathers, brothers. Is it any wonder, as we were born, that they had a difficult time connecting to us emotionally? Weren't they just trying to survive the easiest, safest way they knew how? And weren't they just trying to teach that to us?

They also needed help, they just didn't know how to ask. For them, survival was showing courage, being strong, getting the physical needs met - survival was not about being vulnerable. Wouldn't our very essence of innocence have frightened them, and the very reminder of how vulnerable the human being is, wouldn't that have terrified them? They did the best they could.