Do You Have to Deserve Help?

(Summary) For survivors of complex childhood trauma, accepting help can be surprisingly difficult—even when they’re quick to offer help to others. Childhood experiences may have taught them that help must be earned, that independence is expected, or that their needs aren’t important enough to warrant assistance. These lessons can become unwritten rules that continue shaping their behavior long after childhood. But are those rules actually true? Understanding where these beliefs came from can open the door to thinking differently about accepting help.

Many survivors of complex childhood trauma are far more likely to extend help to others than they are to receive help. Often, there are many conditions that have to be met before help is even considered. Before you can consider accepting help, do you have to:

• try everything yourself first?
• be struggling “enough”?
• make sure nobody else needs the help more?
• be able to repay the help?
• avoid asking too often?

While you may generally believe that others deserve help, my guess is that the standards you apply to yourself for deserving help are much tougher.

Where does the idea that help must be deserved come from?

Many survivors of complex childhood trauma learned from how they were treated that they didn’t deserve help. This happens when help is truly conditional. In these situations, needing something is not enough reason to receive it. Instead, you have to do something first in order to earn that help.

You can also learn that you must earn help through the expectations such as your caregivers expected you to be unusually independent. That is, they expected you to not need help except in extraordinary circumstances.

Do you actually have to earn help?

When you were growing up, did you know another family where children seemed more able to ask for and receive help? Or perhaps you saw families like this on TV. If you had grown up in that family instead, do you think you would have learned exactly the same rules about needing to deserve help? Probably not!

It might feel strange to imagine, but not everybody learned the rules you did about receiving help. For instance, many people learned that:

• being able to do something yourself doesn’t mean you HAVE to do it yourself.
• help doesn’t have to be absolutely necessary before it can or will be given.

And there’s a lesson you might have learned that others did not: that accepting help is the same thing as being entitled to help. Many of the people I work with learned another lesson related to this: they weren’t entitled to anything. People who grew up in different environments may have learned that they didn’t have to be entitled to help, or deserve it, in order to accept it.

When help is offered

When others offer to help you, it may not come with the same expectations or the same strings attached that you grew up with. People may be offering to help because even though they believe you can do it, they want to make something a little easier for you. It’s a way of demonstrating that they value you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it hard to accept help after childhood trauma?

People who experienced complex childhood trauma may have learned that asking for help was discouraged, that assistance came with conditions, or that they were expected to manage difficulties independently. These experiences can create lasting beliefs about when help is acceptable and whether they deserve to receive it.

Why do I help others but feel uncomfortable receiving help?

You may have learned different rules about giving and receiving help. Helping others might feel natural or even obligatory, while accepting help may trigger guilt, discomfort, or concerns about being a burden. This double standard can develop when childhood experiences teach someone that their own needs are less important than those of others.

Do I have to try everything myself before accepting help?

No. Being capable of doing something independently doesn’t mean you’re obligated to do it without assistance. People may offer help simply because they care about you or want to make something easier for you. Help doesn’t have to be reserved for situations in which you have exhausted every other option.

Why do I feel guilty when someone offers to help me?

Guilt about accepting help may reflect childhood expectations that emphasized self-sufficiency, discouraged expressing needs, or treated assistance as something that had to be earned or repaid. Even when someone offers help freely, those earlier lessons can make receiving it uncomfortable.

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