When did you last let someone help you?
Properly help you. Not "I'm fine, honestly". Not "I've got it". Not accepting the offer and then quietly redoing the whole thing yourself afterwards.
I asked a version of this question inside my new community last week, and the answers have been rattling around my head ever since.
Because it turns out I'd started a group full of people exactly like me. Brilliant at giving help. Hopeless at receiving it.
A bit of context.
Last week I opened the doors to Tired & Wired (a few of you are already inside... hello 👋). I expected the conversations to be about sleep, racing minds, 3am wake-ups, the usual suspects…
Instead, within a couple of days, the room started talking about a different subject entirely: how hard it is, when you're the capable one, to let anyone help you. With anything. Ever.
Someone offers to help, and we say no before we've even thought about it. Or we say yes, then feel uncomfortable until we've paid the favour back. Or we don't ask for help at all, because explaining what we need feels like more work than just doing the thing ourselves.
I read all of this nodding along, because I am, without question, one of these people. I'm 6ft7 (well.. 6ft7 and three-quarters, but 6ft8 sounds too much 😅), so people look at me and assume I can carry everything.
And I usually don’t show anything that convinces them otherwise, I’ve got a very good game face, some might call it wearing a mask!
Here's the bit I found interesting.
For a lot of us, this isn't stubbornness. It isn't even pride, not really.
Maybe being the capable one was how we earned our place. If life ever taught us that our needs were an inconvenience, or that love showed up when we were useful and went quiet when we weren't, then our nervous system drew a very sensible conclusion: being needed is safe. Needing is not.
So decades later, someone offers to help... and it doesn't land as kindness. It lands as evidence. A little flare of "I should have managed this myself".
That's not a character flaw. It's protection… And back then, it worked.
But here's the cost… If you're carrying everything for everyone, all day, your body never gets the signal that it's safe to put anything down. And a body that never gets that signal, has a habit of waking us up at 3am to run through the list again.
So, one small thing you might want to try this week. Not "ask for more help" - that's too big a leap, and you'd probably only redo it anyway (I say this with love, and from experience 😅).
Just this: the next time someone offers to help you, don't force a ‘yes’. Simply notice what happens in your body. The tightening. The reflex. The urge to wave them off. That's it. That's the whole practice. Noticing the ‘no’ as it happens is the first crack in a wall that took decades to build.
And if the 3am part sounded a little too familiar, I recorded something for you.
🌙 The 3am Cortisol Wake-Up | Guided Meditation to Get Back to Sleep
It came out this week. It's made for that exact moment: heart thumping, mind already at tomorrow, body flooded with a stress hormone that has no business being awake at that hour. Put it on, and I'll talk you back down 😊
▶ Watch: The 3am Cortisol Wake-Up | Guided Meditation to Get Back to Sleep
And if the rest of this email felt familiar too... the room where these conversations are happening is Tired & Wired. It's where we work on the days that wreck your nights. The first week is free, and there’s also a 30-day no-questions-asked money back guarantee, so you can come on in and see if it's your kind of place: https://skool.com/chibs
Much love,
Chibs 💙
