I’ve always had a hard time asking for help. That lovely trait comes from a variety of things. I’m the oldest, I’m hard-headed, I tend to dance to the beat of my own drummer, I’m internally driven, and I like to be in control.

I’m usually okay with saying I don’t know something (within reason). But I don’t love the sentence: Can you help me with X?

Meanwhile, I’m very happy to help other people. (Which may or may not be tied to my control gene. Or my competence gene. Or my “I can fix this” gene.) When I don’t ask for help, I often land in a Spinning position. Spinning is one of the five versions of Stuck I’ve defined. And it looks like this:

🔹You’re not avoiding the thing. You’re in it.

🔹You’re thinking. Researching. Reworking. Tweaking. Iterating.

🔹A lot of activity, but you’re not actually moving forward. You’re looping.

For better or worse, I’m not alone. In a survey reported by Mark Bolino and Phillip Thompson in Harvard Business Review (2018), nearly two-thirds said they prefer to finish work without their colleagues’ help.

Behavioral science has a name for part of what’s happening here: threat response + competence protection. When you’re high-performing (and/or high-control), asking for help can quietly register as a hit to identity:

🔹If I need help, maybe I’m not as capable as people think I am.

🔹If I ask, I’m exposing my soft underbelly.

🔹If I hand this over, I lose control of the outcome.

So, your brain does what brains do: it tries to keep you safe. It nudges you toward the option that preserves status and certainty: self-reliance. Even if that option is the least efficient and convenient..and potentially more costly.

Here’s how I trick my brain. Instead of framing it as “help” (which feels like a huge ask for me), I frame it as a small request:

🔹 “Can I run something by you for five minutes?”

🔹 “What am I not seeing here?”

🔹 “If you were me, what would you do first?”

🔹 “Can you sanity-check my thinking?”

Sometimes the way out of Spinning isn’t a new strategy. It’s one outside perspective that breaks the loop.

And yes, I’m aware of the irony 😅: I help people get unstuck for a living… and I still have to talk myself into asking for help.