236 | What If Asking for Help Was the Bravest Thing You Could Do? Healing Mindfully from Trauma and Building Resilience

Show Notes:

What if the strongest move you could make during recovery wasn’t pushing harder—but asking for help?

We’ve all been conditioned to see self-sufficiency as strength—especially during recovery from injury, illness, or trauma. But this outdated belief often isolates us and delays healing. In today’s episode, Michael shares a powerful mindset shift that redefines what it means to be strong.

Takeaways:

• Discover why asking for help is not weakness—it’s one of the most courageous actions you can take.
• Learn how reframing your internal dialogue can speed up your emotional and physical healing.
• Get a simple practice to identify where you need support—and how to ask for it in a way that feels empowering.

Take a deep breathe and unlock the mindset shift that could change how you heal—and how you see yourself—in just a few minutes.

Transcript:

 In this episode, you’ll discover the ultimate mindset shift to help you recover. Hey there, it’s Michael. Welcome to whole again. A show about helping survivors of physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kazuki on Fridays. I love sharing a microdose of wisdom with you to help you become whole again and step into the person you’re becoming if it’s Friday.

It’s time for another mindset shift to help us recover, and today you’ll discover the ultimate flex that can help you feel whole again. It’s something I discovered in my recovery. It’s all about rewriting the story, about asking for help. Now as the story goes, the original version of it, asking for help means that you’re weak, you’re failing, you’re not good enough, and this list can go on and on and on.

Am I right? But in reality, it really means that we’re honoring our limits and we’re choosing connection over isolation. We’re choosing to be with people. As opposed to believing that we can do it all on our own. It’s also a statement that you ain’t giving up, you’re not quitting. So many of us love to help other people, but when it comes to us, and especially when we’re going through something, we carry this silent guilt around needing support from other people.

So here’s the flex. Here’s the mindset shift. What if asking for help was really an act of bravery that we’re bad asses because we asked for help. Here’s the thing. We’ve been taught, especially here in America, that independence is everything. You gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps. It’s on you and only you.

Although we do know that together, we go far and people don’t do anything by themselves. No one’s a self-made fill in the blank. But we’ve been taught that being strong means that you’re self-sufficient. So when our bodies betray us as we go through illness, we go through injury or god forbid, trauma. It can feel like we’re weak or failing, and that’s the case.

Even when you choose to do an elective surgery, like a knee surgery, you have chosen to do it, but still you can feel weak or less than. But this belief is totally outdated. We humans, well, we’re wired for connectivity, for interdependence. This is why, and this is a bit off topic, that I never bought into the 100% virtual workplace because we need each other.

We’re social. So what’s really cool about being alive today is that we get to reframe old, outdated stories. So let’s reframe the story around asking for help. So what if. What if asking for help is the ultimate flex or the ultimate strength move? What if it’s a way of saying, I’m not quitting. I trust you and I’m honoring myself by asking for support.

I wanna keep going. I wanna keep pedaling as I would like to say, every time you ask, you’re not just surviving, you’re choosing a path forward that can help you step into who you’re becoming. You’re choosing a path towards connection, which speaks to our kazuki. So try saying this, I’m not weak for needing support.

I am wise enough to recognize my needs because I do believe everything comes down to the conversation you have with yourself. So how you speak about asking for help matters, and as I mentioned upfront, we love to help other people. So when we don’t ask for help, we deny other people from that feeling we get when we help them.

So asking for help can be very, a very kind thing to do. So this week I want to invite you to try something. Pick one area where you feel overwhelmed, where you think you need some type of support. It can be huge, it can be really small. And now ask yourself, who can support me in this particular area? So we start simple.

We have a little circle, those in our Peloton, as I like to say. Maybe it’s a friend who can pick up groceries or as I mentioned in Wednesday’s episode, someone who can mow your lawn or you can ask your partner, your husband or wife that you need some help. Cleaning up around the house, doing the dishes, if you will, and notice how you respond to that.

Notice if your nervous system comes down a bit, it deescalates, there’s less tension there for you. And this is made possible because when you ask someone you know for help, there’s a trust there, you feel safe. It’s a relief, which then can help promote. More recovery. And here’s one last thing I wanna stress in this episode.

You’re not doing your recovery or rehab wrong. If you need support, asking for help is a way to stay in the game and help you step into that person you’re becoming as you recover. You can do this. I think we all can.

In this episode, we reframed the story around asking for help, and I hope you enjoyed it. And if you know someone else that might need it, I hope you’ll share it with them. And as always, thank you for being here, and thank you for being part of our community and being a fellow survivor. Always remember to celebrate your scars as golden symbols of your strength and resilience.

And if you wish to further enhance your digital health, I’ll invite you to take my smartphone wellness check and you can access it through the link in the show notes. Or you can visit my website, which is Michael O’Brien shift.com and it’s absolutely free. And it will help you scroll less and live more.

And of course, I hope you’ll join us here on whole again every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and discover how to heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience. Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You’ve got this. And we’ve got you.