Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

By Barby Ingle, PNN Columnist

We all have lives to lead and sometimes we must focus on ourselves before we can help others. There's nothing wrong with that.

But what if your health (or lack thereof) prevents you from accomplishing something good for yourself and others? What can we do to become more independent and productive while living with a chronic pain condition or disease? 

Here are three things to consider:

1. Social isolation is not healthy

2. Independence can be healthy

3. It's okay to ask for help  

One of the people in my life is the most independent person I know. “Em” only asks for help when she needs it, but often fails to recognize when the need arises. If Em asked for help more often, things might have gone differently in her life and been much easier.

I've been thinking about this recently. I've been balancing my need for independence as a person in pain with my desire to be more open with people. We all want to feel more independent from our caregivers, family and friends. But we also want to stay connected. Seeing some of the challenges in Em’s life reminds me to ask for help more often.

In my books and columns, I have freely shared my life experiences, tips, tools and resources to help others. That helps me feel open and transparent, but it's usually about things I have been through and already found solutions for. When faced with a new challenge, I recognize that I isolate more than I should.

Like my friend Em, I need to find more ways to connect and ask for help when needed. We all need support from others, even if it's just someone listening or offering advice on handling a situation.

When I’ve asked for help, it didn't always go how I envisioned. I may have asked the wrong person for support or had expectations I put on that person that they could not live up to. I had to learn to be okay with the service they offered, rather than be upset and sad when they could not provide what I expected.

The more I learned about their strengths and what they could do, the better I felt asking for their assistance. Asking for help shows that I trust them enough to let them into my world. When you ask for help, you are not weak. You are human.

Asking is not always easy. You have to stop pretending that you can handle everything yourself and that everything is fine. You need to accept the support of your friends and family without feeling like you’re burdening them or making them feel bad about themselves. Asking shows them how much they mean to you.

Here is an excellent example of a recent conversation I had with Em about a friend who wanted to be more social and live life more fully. Em recognized her own limitations. 

"She asked me to meet with her more regularly. Saying she needs people in her life at this difficult time. I am unable to 'be there' for people. I am okay with hanging out occasionally, but I barely have the energy to do basic things each day," Em told me.

My response to Em was this:

"I get it. Explain that you are a chronically ill patient and enjoy connecting when you are up to it, but physically hanging out or texting, talking and engaging cognitively takes a toll on your energy and health. You understand her desire to remain social and the life challenges it takes to follow through. You do best by text, when you have the flexibility and health to answer. You understand her need to be flexible too. She will be in your prayers. Tell her not to be upset if you have to turn down an invite. It doesn't mean you don't want to connect, just that you will participate when you can." 

We must learn how to manage our emotions better so that they don't rule our lives. That means taking a step back so that we don't make decisions while in the middle of a panic attack or depressive episode. And sometimes we just need to hear the answer and decide what to do with it.

Asking for help is complex and we won’t always get what we want. At the same time, we have to step out of our discomfort to make social connections, take down our protective walls, and connect with humanity. Being your best advocate, having others in your life, and maintaining boundaries will help you live life to the fullest. 

Barby Ingle is a reality TV personality living with multiple rare and chronic diseases. She is a chronic pain educator, patient advocate, motivational speaker, and best-selling author on pain topics. Barby has received over 25 awards for her advocacy efforts. You can follow her at www.barbyingle.com.   

Staying Socially Connected Can Help With Chronic Pain

By Jill Suttie, Greater Good Science Center

Many people live with chronic pain. Whether it’s from injury or illness, chronic pain can affect a person’s mood, relationships, work productivity, and more, making it difficult to enjoy daily life.

Unfortunately, getting pain relief can be a complex process. One reason is that it involves both physiological and social-psychological factors — meaning, pain doesn’t just come from having a fever or breaking your arm, but other things happening in your brain, body, and environment. For example, your experience of pain can be lessened by things like distraction, listening to music, or practicing mindfulness meditation.

As researcher Laura Case of the University of California, San Diego, explains, “There’s no one-to-one relationship between activation of sensory nerves and your experience of pain or touch… Though there’s debate about which brain areas correspond to our final pain experience, all of the main players are interconnected with cognitive and emotional brain areas.”

Now a new study that she coauthored with Jennifer Baumgartner suggests another potential influence on pain: feeling socially connected.

A Sense of Belonging Helps

This new study reanalyzed measures collected in an earlier study, in which a group of chronic pain sufferers had been randomly assigned to an intervention shown to reduce pain (sleeping with a heavily weighted blanket) or to a control condition (sleeping with a slightly weighted blanket, which is considered non-therapeutic). After sleeping with their assigned blanket for a week, changes in people’s pain levels were assessed, and the two groups were compared to each other.

In the earlier study, the pain sufferers had also reported on their anxiety and depression symptoms, levels of loneliness, and sense of social connectedness—not how many social connections they had currently, but how generally close they were to other people and how strongly they experienced a sense of belonging. But these had not all been analyzed to see how they related to pain and pain relief from the blankets. That’s where the new study came in.

The new findings showed that people who were more socially connected experienced less pain than those who were less socially connected. After taking into account differences in expectations for pain relief and people’s initial pain levels, those who were socially disconnected felt more pain relief from the weighted blanket than from the lighter blanket, while more socially connected people received equal pain relief from both blankets.

For Baumgartner, these findings suggest that having a sense of belonging provides some level of protection against pain, regardless of any blanket intervention.

“Social support is really important for things that could potentially be threatening, such as stress or pain,” she says. “Having an internalized feeling of being connected with people has an effect on our physical sensations.”

Why would a sense of belonging help with pain? Neither Case nor Baumgartner is sure why.

However, in their study, people who were more socially connected had less anxiety, which could be a factor. Socially connected people probably feel safer and less anxious, says Baumgartner, because they know they can lean on others for support when they’re hurting. Less anxiety means less vigilance around unpleasant bodily sensations, which could decrease their experience of pain.

“Anxiety is strongly coupled with pain, exacerbating people’s surveillance of pain within their body,” she says. “So, having less anxiety is protective—no matter what intervention you receive.”

Case, who studies tactile sensations, says that positive social touch — like receiving a friendly hug or massage — has been shown to reduce pain sensation, and people who are more socially connected likely experience more of those types of touch. Someone who doesn’t have that in their lives much may crave soothing tactile pressure, which is why the weighted blankets can help somewhat.

“If you have difficulty feeling close to others, maybe there are some sensory ways to get around that and help your pain,” she says. “Deep pressure is calming, because it’s associated with the safety of being close to someone else, of being held and protected.”

The Power of a Big Hug

Surprisingly, feelings of depression didn’t seem to affect the relationship between social connection and pain, even though depression has been tied to pain in other research. While this study’s finding might prove to be an outlier, it could also suggest that the hyper vigilance accompanying anxiety is more impactful on pain than feeling down.

Either way, it appears that social connection matters when it comes to pain. However, that can’t be manipulated in an experiment. Baumgartner explains that this trait tends to develop early in childhood and may be tied to general attachment styles (secure, anxious, or avoidant). Since these are not easily changed, it’s good to have a useful, non-pharmacological treatment for pain relief in those without good social connectivity, like the weighted blanket.

“The weighted blanket doesn’t involve any sort of social situation at all, but it still seems to have the ability to help people, to some extent,” says Baumgartner. “Though there haven’t been enough rigorous studies done yet, I’m pretty optimistic that a weighted blanket could serve as an alternative or an adjunct to pain treatment—or maybe even a strategy to prevent people from getting chronic pain in the first place.”

Case says that it could substitute in some ways for what’s missing for people when they tend to be avoidant of others.

“Just anecdotally, people [in the study] found a weighted blanket tended to make them feel like they’re getting a big hug, and it’s relaxing and calming,” she says. “A weighted blanket isn’t a cure for chronic pain, and it’s not going to help everyone. But some people in our study did find it valuable.”

Case and Baumgartner’s study adds to a growing body of research showing how important social connectedness and social touch are for our health and well-being — something that’s been getting more attention in recent years. In fact, in a recent advisory report, the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, argued that our country is facing a “loneliness epidemic” that is affecting our health and longevity and that we need to create more opportunities for people to connect and build a sense of belonging in their lives.

Now, we know that social connection may also help those who suffer from chronic pain.

“Psychosocial factors are not peripheral to someone’s sense of chronic pain; they are central,” Baumgartner says. “Connecting with people and seeking out positive, healthy connections within your social environment is critical.”

This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.