“We don’t build trust by giving help. We build trust by asking for it.” ~Simon Sinek <\/strong><\/p>\n I have always been a strong sister, partner, and friend.<\/p>\n I did not make a conscious decision for a single day to be strong and stick to it. Who was she from a very young age, being the first daughter. I used to carry more responsibility than my siblings. Being a strong and responsible person was rewarded by my parents, and it is what makes people close to each other.<\/p>\n I am the friend who calls you when you are not thinking clearly. I am the friend who celebrates your win. A healing companion. The inspiration is a friend. The one who will stay with you for six hours, pour everything he has into that conversation, then go home and need three days of silence to replenish himself. Then I will send you a text to enter. Because that’s what I do.<\/p>\n I have never thought about whether I am a great friend or what I want in my friendship.<\/p>\n Simon Sinek has a workout he calls Friends Exercise<\/em>. He suggests calling your closest friends and asking them one simple question: Why my friend?<\/em><\/p>\n Simon says the first answers you’ll get may be obvious things like you’re honest, fun, and a good listener. But he wants answers in more depth. What really listens, Sinek explains, is what comes after, when your friend stops explaining and starts explaining how they feel. to hear<\/em> if they are near you. That change is where your real impact resides.<\/p>\n So I called. Send me a message. All four of them are my best friends.<\/p>\n Here it is back: a best friend, always ready to listen, a heart of gold, someone to bounce ideas off of, insightful, fun, smart, true, inspiring, encouraging. I love the good things my friends say. I felt proud to hear it.<\/p>\n And then, almost immediately, I heard something else.<\/p>\n Why are my friendships emotionless?<\/p>\n I started thinking about how vulnerable I am with my closest friends. Do I feel comfortable asking for help? How vulnerable can my friends be with me? Do they feel comfortable asking me for help? My friends’ response was positive, but I wondered what else they thought of me. So I thought about the question of how my friends came to me.<\/p>\n That was information I was not ready for.<\/p>\n Here is what I know about myself now that I had no words for at the time.<\/p>\n Other than anger and frustration, I don’t put my emotions into my friendships. Not really. When something difficult comes up, we quickly smooth it over. We tap directly into troubleshooting mode. We say it will be fine<\/em> before the other person has even finished his sentence.<\/p>\n My friendships looked like my romantic relationships. We are all, in our own ways, emotionally unavailable. Or at least I was. And I built a circle that matched that frequency without realizing it.<\/p>\n After reading a friendship book recently, I realized that I was delaying platonic intimacy rather than creating it. I was someone who always showed up, always had an answer, took up space, but I wasn’t creating intimacy. I created a role. And a role is not the same as a relationship.<\/p>\n My friendships began to revolve around who I am and what I have to offer. I wasn’t in danger, showing a frustrated, angry, or sad side to some of my friends, even though we have years of friendship under our belts. I have been appearing and doing the role. That difference dawned on me slowly, and then it happened all at once.<\/p>\n I was the girl who had no friends when I was growing up. Not the way the other girls seemed to act. Not sleepovers, trips to the mall, and someone who is always someone’s person. I spent a lot of time alone in my youth. So I learned early to be independent about communication. So you don’t need too much. To be valuable enough to stick around without needing to be cared for.<\/p>\n This is why I believe that emotional intimacy did not occur to me. It felt unfamiliar. Like a language I understood intellectually but had never spoken aloud.<\/p>\n When I grew up, I became a person that people depended on. A person who gave freely and received carefully. And I told myself that’s exactly what I was, that not everyone needs to be emotionally open to have good friendships.<\/p>\n I also made the choice, somewhere in between, that I didn’t want a best friend who was traveling alone. One person who was everything to me felt a lot of weight on both sides. I didn’t want to carry it. I didn’t want someone to bring it to me.<\/p>\n What I didn’t see was that that decision was quietly shaping everything else. I never asked for help. I kept my vulnerability out of my reach. The version of me that only came when I cleaned myself up a bit.<\/p>\n As I thought about what really makes a friendship close, three things stood out to me: support, balance, and trust. Support is there for each other when life gets messy. Symmetry is the idea that a relationship flows both ways\u2014not just one person giving and the other receiving. And trust in the quiet understanding that other conversations live safely between you.<\/p>\n I had a piece of support. I had a secret episode. Symmetry was the one I had been quietly avoiding. Because real moderation means you need things too. You have to allow yourself to be the one who calls at 2 am instead of the only one who answers. You have to bring your real, unpolished self to the friendship\u2014not just the prepackaged version of you.<\/p>\n My two best friends from the area. Two live far away. In all four, the answer was the same: I encourage. I encourage. I am safe to arrive.<\/p>\n What was missing from that? One time I showed that I needed something.<\/p>\n And that was data.<\/p>\n Simon Sinek said something that stopped me cold.<\/p>\n “We don’t build trust by giving help. We build trust by asking for it.”<\/em><\/p>\n I was completely set back. I thought that being a strong friend\u2014who didn’t need anything\u2014was what made me loyal. What made me eligible for retention? What makes a true friendship?<\/p>\n But Sinek points to something deeper. When you never ask for help, you deny people who love you the honor of showing up for you. You make relationships one-way without meaning to them. And a one-way relationship, no matter how loving, eventually creates distance.<\/p>\n Asking for help is not weakness. It is not a burden. In fact, it’s one of the most profound things you can give someone\u2014the trust that they can keep you.<\/p>\n I started slowly.<\/p>\n Instead of “How are you?”<\/em> I started asking my friends, “How do you feel in the air?<\/em>?\u201d Direct, targeted, small at first. Our friendship was always on the bright side of things. Naming the emotional layer out loud was strange for all of us.<\/p>\n But I kept doing it. And I started to allow myself even when things were not going well for me. When I feel down. When I struggle. Not as labor, not as oversharing\u2014but as an act of leading by example. The more I was willing to be vulnerable, the safer it was for them to be vulnerable as well.<\/p>\n It worked. Little by little, in small ways the real things change.<\/p>\n A friend of over twenty years told me recently, quietly, during a casual conversation, that I’ve been too hard on myself. I agreed. I said I needed to show myself more kindness.<\/p>\n It was only a moment. It was nothing short of amazing. But I lived with it for days.<\/p>\n Because it meant that he was paying attention. It meant that he was finally saying this instead of blurting it out. It meant that, after all this time, we were finally choosing each other over the easier, smoother version of friendship.<\/p>\n If you are a strong friend, a medical friend, the one everyone depends on, this is for you.<\/p>\n Try Simon Sinek’s work. Call the most important people and ask them why they are your friends. Then live with what the answer tells you\u2014and what it doesn’t tell you.<\/p>\n Notice that your strength has become a wall in silence. Be aware of whether the people around you are aware of your parts that are still being put together. Be careful if you ever let someone carry something for you.<\/p>\n Asking for help is not the end of being strong. In fact it may be where your strength comes to an end.<\/p>\n And a friendship that can hold that? Those are the ones worth building.<\/p>\nThe Question No One Was Asking…<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The Pattern Behind the Power<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Where He Really Came From<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What the study revealed<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Something by asking<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What has changed for me<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Now It’s Your Turn…<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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