When you finally asked for help and got something else

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Last week I was having a moment.

The moment was actually the compression of 10 days worth of losses, shifting family dynamics, and efforts in advocacy, layered with being a full-time working parent. I was emotionally taxed, out of minutes in my day, and in need of an answer or expedited pathway to finding one. I had a general question for those in tune with medical cannabis research, specifically THC, and if there were any known side effects of concern for dementia patients. At my urging, my grandma had recently transitioned from traditional pharmaceuticals to edibles and her new regimen coincided with some undesirable symptoms. I was fully aware of the neuro-protective properties of cannabis derived therapeutics and that the onset of her accelerated confusion was likely nothing more than a coincidence. In that moment, however, I knew she would benefit from swift and accurate information, as would the rest of the family.

Thus, I did not go through my typical, mental inventory of the risks associated with asking for help, a process that plagues me despite my best efforts to thwart it. For those of you that find this type of self-assessment strange, I think you are brave and lucky. Here’s a snapshot of the reasons I typically generate when discouraging myself to ask for help:

1. Does this question make me look uninformed?
2. Will people assume I am lazy because I haven’t figured it out on my own?
3. Does this confirm that I don’t deserve to be here? (i.e., I feel like such an imposter!)
4. I can work on this problem a little longer before reaching out (i.e., I’ll suffer in silence a little longer).
5. People will assume I don’t value their time if I don’t offer to pay them for their help or advice.
6. If I work hard on this long enough, I’ll figure it out eventually.
7. There are other people that deserve help more than I do.

I know most of these concerns are rooted in the fear and anxiety about what others might think of me; I also know that’s a waste of time and energy. While I’ve made progress in this department as I age, it’s something that still holds me back. I am overly cautious not to squander a “golden opportunity” in case I am not 100% ready for the pitch or the conversation; I never publish the post because it’s not quite good enough; I don’t start the project because I need more prep time; and the list goes on. The same is true when I am struggling to problem solve and would benefit from some outside help. As I’ve spent the better part of a decade trying to solve problems in areas where I did not have relevant experience, it can make for a perpetually frustrating and lonely existence, so as an act of self-compassion, I’ve prioritized asking for more help.

I decided to act on my priority, let my guard down, and reach out to a group of people who are unequivocally better informed, more experienced, and literally charting the course of the advent of cannabis research, legalization, and technology. By all measures of success, the majority of these individuals are wildly successful within and outside of the cannabis industry and it is a genuine privilege to meet with, learn from, and do business with them. With that, I’d prefer to impress where I can, provide support, or at the very least generate insightful questions that can help us build a more resilient and inclusive industry. Yet, in need of support, I went for it.

It didn’t take long for a response to appear on my phone in our group chat that has been built over several years. This is a space where genuine and lasting relationships are nurtured, deals are done, and scientific breakthroughs are shared. To my dismay, I received a tactful assertion of one person’s superior knowledge and moral compass over my own in front of the entire community. In a few sentences I felt completely written off. I was called presumptuous (twice) and told to just trust the plant. This person did not provide any science or pending research studies, just his two cents about why something (and someone) was better than the other.

What this person didn’t know was that in this moment, my aging grandmother was wailing in the background due to pain and confusion; her adult children were looking at me concerned, with the question “do you think the edibles are making her more confused?”; that I was reeling from the death of my college roommate’s newborn while silently grieving my own pregnancy loss just days before. It all became a little too much so instead of attempting a literature review of the medical research on potential side effects of THC in dementia patients, I asked for help.

Perhaps I should have asserted all the benefits I already knew to be true in order to prove I was not demonizing the plant; perhaps, had I not just had a miscarriage, I could have provided more background and well-formed questions; perhaps, had I not been the one in my family providing the edibles (with doctor approval), I wouldn’t have felt the pressure to get answers in that moment; perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

I was embarrassed, upset, and emotionally raw from all the life things happening outside this exchange. Graciously, a few others offered a kinder version of the same message. They also provided some science that I could point my family members to. I am thankful for their kindness at a time when I had finally arrived at a place where I didn’t even have the bandwidth to try.

This experience is a blip in time but one that radiates beyond its moment. It’s the sort of thing that reinforces the negative thought patterns that can make it so difficult to ask for help in the first place. It’s also a great moment to reflect and learn. While I cannot conjure up a time when I purposefully made someone feel stupid or lesser than, I’m sure I’ve passed judgement in ways that were unwelcome because I failed to consider the feelings of another. Empathy can be hard to find these days and when we operate in a world of digital connectedness and physical detachment, we have even less insight into the lives of those we are interacting with on the other side of a device. Digital networks provide so many benefits, but if you participate in one, remember that what you say is broadcast to all that reside within in it. Most likely, individuals are peripherally aware of each others’ lives within the specific context of the network, but it is not likely they have a robust understanding of the whole person. In the absence of traditional social capital there is room for more damage to be done with far less effort.

In the moments directly after asking for help, I felt my fears of looking like a fool amongst a group of superstars were confirmed and that’s not a great place to land when you are already depleted. Yet, it turns out that I’ve not been kicked out or laughed at; no one has sent me some secret letter telling me that I don’t belong; our business hasn’t suffered some horrible reputational blow. In fact, this exchange reinforces how important it is to foster and provide compassion for others — and ourselves — no matter the context in which we find our lives unfolding.