Date: 8th Dec 2022
Hello my dearest reader, asking for help is super hard for me at the best of times. There's so many reasons behind this, specially when tutors are involved and I wanted to take the time to reflect on some ways I have started to combat my triggers and fears around asking for help with my two lecturers on the MASc course I am currently on.
I've mentioned them both in other blogs before, they're incredibly lovely humans who are also tutors and who also terrify me for many a reason! I might go into that a little within this blog but they terrify me in a nice way. Over the past couple of weeks I have been attempting (with Luna in particular) to trust my tutors and actually ask questions, admit I don't know things and generally ask for help. I wanted to take time to reflect on the things I am having to unlearn/learn in order to do this and how I also try to detrigger the minefield of triggers asking tutors for help involves navigating. So, lets get into it shall we?
The first thing that pings into my head is learning how to sit with two people being supportive towards me with no ulterior motives being attached to their support and care. I know that that sentence sounds weird, but I have never before had a tutor (or in this case tutors) be so invested in my well-being and success both as a human being but also as a student under their watchful gaze and not have a "we will do this but only if you do..." tone to it . It's really disconcerting (and at times really triggering) for me to not have to unpick the expected undertones of manipulation/gaslighting from these tutors emails/messages. I'm used to being gaslit/manipulated by tutors and come to expect that now as a default setting for them. So I genuinely don't know how to react when these two people keep being nice and offering support even when I am falling apart and flapping. Luna has literally stopped my panic attacks in the last week, without even asking, she knew I wasn't ok and stepped in and helped me. And I really appreciated that but while she can read my physical body language in a way even I can't, she is not inside my head and (annoyingly!) can't tell when I need to ask for help in a more academic way - say with assessments etc.
Having my tutors be so nice, also makes these new relationships seem more real to me somehow, which then scares the heck out of me because what do I do if/when these people leave me? I tend to avoid getting too attached to people because I expect them to leave/run once they realise who I am and this expectation is especially bad with tutors. But man are these two new ones making it really damn hard to not get attached when they keep being so supportive. I like them as humans as well, which also makes the fear of them going/turning on me more paralysing. The reason I say all this is because asking for help involves navigating the dreaded boundaries of said action. It involves knowing who to go to for help, how they will react, what you need, whether you can say XYZ to them or not and a bunch of other things for me. As someone who has been taught her entire life that she is too much and sucks at boundaries 24/7 and who has also had many people she got attached to, run away and blame everything on her for not understanding some unspoken boundary, it's hard not to panic over everything. Add to this the concept that having two people who are nice and supportive means I have no reference for their potential reactions and being expected to navigate the boundaries (and the potential for screwing this all up if I misstep) is massive. It's really incredibly stressful and anxiety inducing and sets off every trigger response possible at times.
The next thing I am having to relearn is to not be perfect and to know it's ok to mess up. I have always put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect, to be able to do the things people say I will never manage to do and to show the world that I'm enough as I am. Relationships have always been something I felt I failed at and have had enough "proof" of this theory that my anxiety has cemented it as a core belief. I will end up being alone because I am too much for people to handle. I've spent so much of my life masking my autistic traits, masking the core parts of who I am and preventing myself from speaking my mind, reaching out or being honest with people, that going against that is hard and frustrating. I want desperately to not fret, panic and freak out when one of my tutors messages me. I want to trust my initial response will be ok as it is, without hours of editing and rewriting everything. I want to just reply and not immediately panic because I spelled a word wrong or they might have misinterpreted something I said. But I know that when dealing with anxiety triggers and trauma based triggers, my brain does things I cannot control as a reaction to being triggered. And if it needs to rethink things and edit things heavily before sending them to anyone, then I will let it for the time being.
The final thing I am having to realearn is how to trust someone. The last tutor I trusted in a university context ended up gaslighting me and using me as her scape goat for a lot of things. She manipulated me and when I was of no use to her, abandoned me, lashed out and tried to wipe all contacts and friends I had met through her, out of my life (she didn't succeed on that last point though!). This is all really fresh in my mind and I am terrified beyond belief that this will happen again with Luna or Jack. That one day in the future, they will turn around and laugh at me as they leave me, cut ties and tell me I failed. While again, logically I know they will not do this to me while I am under their care, it doesn't stop my trigger response of genuine fear and anxiety over everything I do with them, from rearing its head every so often. In order to ask Luna/Jack for advice/help with anything, I first need to trust them and trust them enough that even when I am triggered by either my actions or something they do, that I won't fold in on myself and run from them. And this is really hard. REALLY hard.
So how do I combat all this? Well for the first point, there is not much I can do, other than sit with the realisation that they are nice people and realise that I can relax when reading their messages/emails and not be hyper alert for any potential red flags.
For the second point, Luna is actually helping a lot with that. We had a long conversation the other week about asking for help and how she can help make it less scary for me. I'm starting to ask her questions in person that aren't super important (like "how do I get to this room?" or "what are you knitting"). They are not pressure filled personal requests for help and I feel comfortable asking them. With more personal questions, I ask them online. I take a little more time to draft them out and once I feel ok with how they are phrased, I tend to message them to her on teams. I like messaging her on teams because it takes out the stress of having to think of answers to her responses in person. It allows me time to think and feel like I am in control and not trapped in a room/space with her. And if I feel comfortable at any point, I do ask her for advice/help in person. But that one is a lot more work in progress.
And for the third point? It's a long process and not one that will fix itself quickly. But I volunteered for the role of student rep, a position that puts me in a place of responsibility and needing to have an open line of communication with the tutors on the course. Being in this role means I need to trust them and they need to trust me. Also repetition for me is a helpful thing, I make mental notes of their reactions to things I say/do/ask about and when they keep staying the same, it clicks in my mind that "these people are safe". I think I can say at this point I trust Luna enough to be able to accept her help when she offers it. I'm yet to be in a place with Jack where he's offered help or pulled me from panic attacks etc, but I guess if/when that happens, we shall see if I feel ok to accept it and stay ok about accepting/needing help afterwards like I did with Luna.
It's a long, hard, anxiety inducing process detriggering situations and finding "safe" people but I'm trying to listen to and trust my gut instinct with people. With the last two tutors who hurt me, I ignored my gut when it said something was wrong. And while yes, my gut does get it wrong and is likely due to triggers/trauma responses, it doesn't hurt to listen to it and check in with Luna/Jack when I feel like I am worried I did something wrong/overstepped with them. Honesty for me, I think is the key to unlocking things and accepting myself and my flaws, is needed if I am to live a life where I don't end up alone. I have to love who I am, trust I am enough for people and that not everyone will run away. Some will, but those who stay around, are true friends/good people. I want to get better at asking for help and I will. It's just going to take time.
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