Episode Description:
In this episode, Claire dives into a pattern she knows all too well — the belief that she has to solve everything on her own. Sound familiar? If you’ve ever curled up in bed overwhelmed by the weight of being a one-person problem-solving machine, this episode is for you.
Claire explores the roots of this pattern, tracing it back to childhood perceptions and our culture’s celebration of rugged individualism. She talks through the moment she realized that not only could she ask for help, but she might actually want to — even if it feels wildly uncomfortable at first.
Using her signature blend of coaching insight, author empathy, and a bit of humor, Claire breaks down:
What gets in the way of asking for help
How fear narrows our options
Why it’s so hard for authors (and humans) to even imagine what help might look like
The different types of help we might need — physical, emotional, intellectual
The critical difference between interdependence and codependence
Whether you're burning out from doing it all yourself, feeling emotionally isolated, or simply wondering if there’s an easier way, this episode offers clarity, compassion, and a gentle nudge toward a more sustainable, connected writing life.
Key Takeaways:
Naming your self-reliance pattern is the first step toward choosing something different.
Help can be practical or emotional — both are valid, needed, and deeply human.
Interdependence is healthy and necessary; it’s not a weakness, it’s a strength.
You don’t have to wait until you can’t to say I won’t.
Support the Show:
If you found this episode thought-provoking and helpful, please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform and share it with fellow authors. Every review helps more writers discover this resource.
What’s Next?:
If this episode hit home, take a few minutes to sit with the question: “What kind of help would I want, even if I don’t technically need it?” Then, try something wild… ask for it.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If For Authors. I'm glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. My latest book, sustain Your Author Career is all about how to root ope on sustainable practices in our writing life and how to spot the right opportunities for us when they come along.
Check it out by going to FFS Media slash Sustain.
I gotta say, I'm still getting used to this once monthly episode thing. I feel like every time I start, I'm kind of out of practice because I haven't done it. In a month or so. Um, but we'll see how it goes. It's allergy season over here. We'll see how long my voice holds out. But I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be chatting with you all today.
And, uh, today's episode is one that's really close to my heart. So I'm gonna start by telling you about a pattern I observed in myself and doing my own inner work and how simple but profound. Noticing that so I can make a different decision about it [00:01:00] has been for me.
So there's this thing that happens to most indie authors, most authors, most humans. All humans maybe. And it's this thing where things don't go according to plan. Sometimes things go very poorly and we're like, oh shit, this is bad. I'm in trouble here. If something doesn't change when this happens to me.
And. If it happens more frequently that I'm cool with the pattern that I've brought with me throughout my life, it goes something like this. So things don't go according to plan. I recognize that I might be screwed if this doesn't change, I assume that it's totally up to me to solve this problem, create a new plan, and then execute it.
I fall apart for like a day or maybe an afternoon or so under the weight of this thought of, I don't know how I'm gonna do this. This is. The thing that will finally crush me, that I won't ever recover from. So while I'm in my cave, AKA in bed, with the covers pulled over my [00:02:00] head, I at some point sort of return to myself, get my feet under me, do a little bit of a self-talk I've learned for resilience, and then start to see a glimmer of hope if only I can somehow magically muster a shit ton of energy.
I usually can, but it comes in the form of adrenaline because it's very fear-based. So then I lock myself in my office and spend the next five to 12 hours creating a plan, breaking it down into small pieces and charging headfirst into it until I can no longer open my eyes and keep them open. So the result of this pattern is that I usually claw my way out of whatever hole I was in and get back to surface level.
That's good, and that's why I keep doing it. But I'm tired y'all. I'm, I'm more tired than I was even just five years ago when the game of I gotta fix this all on my own, was admittedly a [00:03:00] little bit more fun in its own way, and that it made me feel super smart and competent and a hard worker when I would get back out of whatever hole I was in.
But as we age and our priorities change, our energy changes, our focus changes these patterns that worked and maybe even gave us some kind of. They really lose their appeal and the result is that we get sick of them and start to wonder about what life beyond them might feel like. So that's what happened to me.
I was at the step where I was in bed with the covers over my head, and it occurred to me thanks to a book I'd been reading recently that I was following a pattern. I'd learned very early in childhood. The pattern was based around this belief that the adults around me. Weren't on my team. I couldn't rely on them for help.
So when I had a problem, if I wanted it fixed, I needed to do it myself. As a young child who didn't even understand how the world worked, I was trying to solve all of my own [00:04:00] problems. And now that's sad, right? Part of childhood is that the adults around you are modeling help and community and not requiring you to navigate problems.
You're unprepared for all on your own. At least that's what we hope right now. This whole being on my own thing, it was just my perception. By the way, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was reality because. Children are not super great at reality, but it was my perception and those, the perception that we have is what starts to shape our beliefs.
So anyway, it was something that I learned. That doesn't mean that no adults around me were actually willing to help at any point later on, like especially towards the end of my school years, I had a ton of teachers who would show up for me. But looking back on it, I think it was already too late for me to think about asking them for help with things.
Like the belief was already deep in there that if I wanted something solved, I had to solve it myself
anyway. Once I [00:05:00] saw that I had this belief and that it wasn't so much a reflection of reality as it was something I picked up at a young age, I was then able to become curious about it, and what I wondered was what would help look like for me here
y'all, when I tell you I was fucking stumped? Did I need help? Not technically. I felt pretty sure that I could claw my way out of this particular situation like I always did, but I didn't really wanna do it all on my own. And yet when I paused to think about what help would look like. It was like my brain waves just flatlined, like, what help would I want to have now?
My ego shouted, none. You don't want help. But then I was like, no, it might actually be pretty nice. Like I help people all the time and it makes me feel good about myself. It gives me a sense of purpose. I bet there are people who would also be interested in helping me. And [00:06:00] instantly I knew there would be, because I know enough about humans to understand that much people like feeling useful to other people.
So what was my hangup? The hangup was actually pretty simple. I didn't have a whole lot of practice with asking what help would look like for me. It wasn't a thing I stopped to consider, and when I did stop to consider it, it was usually in the form of can I afford to pay someone to help me with this?
Does any of this sound familiar to you? If there's one thing I've learned about authors, it's that we tend to try to solve our own problems all on our own. First, I have this theory that most of us felt lonely as children, hence making up worlds where we had company and control. And I suspect part of that loneliness resulted in developing the belief that it was up to us to take complete care of ourselves and our problems.
This includes our emotions. I think that, you know, asking [00:07:00] for help from other people, we learned to believe that it was rude, selfish, or a sign of failure. Now, that's not true, of course, and I hope you'll see that by the end of this episode where we ask the question, what if I need help? When we talk about help.
A lot of y'all will immediately think of the Enneagram type two, the helper. And while helpers are notorious for not asking for help outright, they're by no means the only type who struggles with this issue. Every type struggles with it for different reasons, and if you were raised in the US or probably a few other British influence countries, you've no doubt had individualism thrust upon you as a virtue.
But individualism is only one end of a spectrum that runs from collectivism to individualism. In my opinion, the world went a little too far towards individualism, I'm afraid. And so now the pendulum is due to swing the [00:08:00] other way, and I think we're starting to see that, and I think that's why we're in such a strange time.
So we swing more toward collectivism by looking inward and doing work around our ego's refusal to ask for help.
It's really common that. The people I work with assume that if you need help all the time or you ask for help when you don't absolutely need it, you're in some sort of codependent relationship. But it's really important to remember that interdependence is a thing so that codependence, it's interdependence.
And if you're not really sure the difference between those two, looking that up might be a really interesting inquiry for you. So to finish my earlier story, it took an hour of quiet thought on my meditation map before I could start to consider what help might look like for me. In that situation. I had a lot of emotions to feel before I could get to the [00:09:00] answers, which ew necessary still.
And they offered me up all kinds of useful information, these motions. So I do appreciate that. Next came the painful part of actually asking for help, which I'm sure you can already guess went smoothly. I mean, it was painful, but the people I asked for help were eager to jump in, just like I'd be if a competent person that I liked ask me for some help that I was, you know, well equipped to offer
feeling useful. Is a pathway to a purposeful life. So it's important that we always allow others the opportunity to be of some use to those they care about. Otherwise, we're depriving them of something essential.
Still, it blows to have to ask. I get it, but I did it anyway and it was fine. My dilemma was solved much more easily and more enjoyably than if I just done it all [00:10:00] myself, like I usually do. I refrained somehow from doing my fear-based pattern of lock in Taylor that I usually try, and I took an easier route in many ways that delivered better results.
So now that's what I try to do When I feel stressed, I stop myself and I ask what help I need and what help do I want.
There are all kinds of barriers that you might run into in this process though, and there are all types of help that you might need. So let's break that down. As far as barriers, we have the basic barrier of fear. When our core fear is triggered, our field of vision narrows, we become more individualistic, not more collectivistic.
Now, that's not to say that fear doesn't lead some people to clinging to others because that does happen, but it's not necessarily in a collectivist sense. It's usually in an us versus them sense.
Or in the way one may clinging to a [00:11:00] charismatic dictator who promises to solve all of your problems so long as you give up a few things to them, like autonomy and so forth. Both of those things have us moving toward people, but not in a collectivist mindset, not in a healthy way of needing help is natural, and there's a free flowing energy that runs through humanity. So while I might need help today, I'll be the person to help someone else tomorrow. Not necessarily in that sense.
So if you have a pattern of I have to solve this myself for whatever reason, when you become afraid or stressed out, your field of vision for what options you have is likely to narrow down to that one thing, solve it yourself. That is a major barrier that can block you from trying other things for decades, if not your whole life.
Until someone like me comes along and says, Hey, when you look back on your life, is this a pattern you have? So just naming it and owning it makes you a hundred times more likely to spot that it's a pattern you're falling into the next time you fall into it. And once you spot [00:12:00] that, you will remember this podcast and go, oh wait, I could try something different and see if I like that better.
The next bit of important work to do, and this is easy for authors 'cause we're storytellers, is to ask yourself what story you tell yourself about yourself if you ask for help. So does the story sound like I'm weak or I'm a failure, or maybe I'm all alone now this part is likely gonna hurt. I promise it's a temporary thing, and if you let it hurt and don't shy away, you'll get to the other side of it and it will become tolerable.
Whatever story you're telling yourself about yourself in regards to asking for help, use that author brain of yours to look into your backstory. Where did you learn that thing? With everything you know about the world now, is it actually true? Do you wanna continue feeling that way, or are you ready to let it [00:13:00] go now?
You might not be ready to let it go right now, and if that's the case, check back in a couple years when you're more tired. I bet you'll be ready. Then you might also get stuck on the idea of needing help. You like me and many of the people I speak with about this sort of thing, don't technically need help. If your history is any indicator, you could do it all on your, like you always have done. So maybe don't let yourself get too caught up on that. Instead, ask yourself. It might feel like to not have to do everything on your own. Wouldn't that be nice? Don't you wanna do something nice for yourself like that?
I think you've earned it. Additionally, I bet the people who love you think you've earned it too. I know that I worry about my friends who are too individualistic for their own good. That story ends at the hospital eventually.
As one of the wisest people I know once told me, learn to say I won't before. You have to [00:14:00] say I can't. That's just one of the basic tricks to wellbeing. No one is giving out gold stars for working yourself to the bone. And oftentimes the reasons our careers stall out is because we're able to get ourselves out of holes on our own, but it takes the skill of asking for help before our careers can reach the new heights that we're hoping for.
So let's talk about the different types of help we may wanna seek out. A lot of us think what we need is help doing things right. If you believe that simply doing more is the key to success and to everything, then that's gonna be where your head goes first.
That's not the only kind of help though. Sure. I would love someone to show up at my house and fold my laundry. Uh, they would have to sign an NDA of course, with the laundry, the way the laundry builds up with me. But I would love that. Now, realistically, I could probably call up a few of my friends and say, Hey, I have so much laundry to fold that it's overwhelming me and I can't even get [00:15:00] started.
This has become a big thing for me. Would you be up for coming over and helping me fold some clothes we can put on a movie and we can open a bottle of wine? My friends would show up for that and Hey, maybe I'll do that sometime. But that's not the only kind of help most of us could use. So there's physical help where people do tasks for you, but there's also emotional help You can ask for emotional help too, and that may be the place where you're struggling.
So asking for emotional help may look like saying, Hey. I'm not really great at sitting with my feelings. So when you ask me about something and I don't address emotions, would you mind prodding me a little bit for how I'm feeling? It may also look like expressing to your spouse. When I ask you how your day was and you spend 15 minutes telling me about it, could you also remember to ask me how my day was and stay present while I spend 15 minutes telling you about it?
Emotional help is difficult to ask for, [00:16:00] partially because we've probably learned that we should be entirely self-regulating when it comes to emotions. Well, it's certainly a nice thing for an adult to be able to regulate their emotions, and it's a skill that a lot of fully grown adults do not have in the least bit.
It also doesn't mean that we should always be able to regulate completely on our own or that regulation is the end all, be all of emotional health. Also, some of us confuse regulation with suppression. Now, I do this myself sometimes, especially when the emotion I'm feeling is calling for me to be really vulnerable with someone.
Uh, no thanks. I'll suppress that. I'll call it regulation if I have to. Emotions are made to be expressed, not suppressed, and part of the regulation process includes this expression, so it can help to remember that humans evolved to co-regulate emotions. We have actual biological mechanisms that help us sync with the emotions of other people.[00:17:00]
So when you're upset, you can ask for a hug from someone who cares about you and that will help. You don't have to just get over the feelings all on your own. We've evolved for hugs. To be important. Contact for emotional life. Um, you know, even venting. So maybe that's the emotional help you could use.
Maybe it's as simple as becoming more of a hugger and some of you're going, okay, Claire, if you push that, I'm gonna turn off this podcast. I get it, I get it. But just consider something that simple. There's also intellectual help that we can ask for. For authors, this may look like brainstorming strategies, launch plans, budgets, you name it.
We tend to take this on all on our own, but I know that I've been lucky enough to work on projects with others from time to time where we get to bounce these strategic decisions off one another, and it feels like such a huge load lifted to not have to think about it and make the decision all in isolation.
Asking [00:18:00] for intellectual help often looks like creating or joining a mastermind group. Now, I recommend one that you don't pay for. Some people run those and charge people an arm and a leg to be in them, and the whole structure of it kind of ends up looking more like a cult or an MLM than anything else but to each their own.
I guess. If that works for you, that's fine, but you can also create some that don't cost money. It's totally possible to grab a couple people, you know and say, wanna meet once a month to help each other. Think through business decisions, or once a week or quarterly, whatever. You can pull together a brain trust where everyone can get the intellectual help they need on a schedule to spare the pain of having to ask over and over again.
One other benefit of this arrangement is that you'll start to recognize how pleasurable it can be to help someone else think through their business problems. It's not exhausting necessarily. It can be really energizing. And so in doing that, you'll start to really grasp how little you're asking of your friends [00:19:00] to help you in this way.
So there's physical help doing tasks, emotional help, supporting your emotional growth and co-regulation and intellectual help, brainstorming, planning, strategizing, or otherwise discussing ideas until the world makes a little more sense. There's also spiritual help. So this is usually where we turn to a religion, but it does not have to be that books can help with spiritual conundrums, uh, friends too.
So this is the existential pain. We could use some help confronting and solving. Maybe this is where you could use some help and this spiritual side of things. A lot of folks I work with are in need of spiritual help after a religious community. They're a part of, starts to split from whatever they believe is the righteous path.
This looks like your leaders are not living up to their teachings. Toxicity among the people you've been told, they're more spiritually pure than others, , is starting to form within the community, whatever it is. Trying to solve [00:20:00] all of this on your own is possible, right? We can all go seek individually, but you can also turn to friends who seem to meet your idea of a spiritually healthy person and ask them for guidance.
Or just ask them to listen to your problems without judging.
The next type of help I'll mention is not necessarily its own category, but I think it can be helpful to frame it that way, and that is asking for social help. For authors, this may look like asking for an introduction to potential readers, agents, other authors, or whoever else someone you know might know.
This is by far my least favorite help to ask for, but it's the help that has always taken my career the farthest when I do ask for it. I don't think that's a coincidence. Making connections, networking, building a community around me has never been a strong suit of mind. It just hasn't. Maybe you're surprised to hear that, 'cause I have this podcast and email lists and blah, blah, [00:21:00] blah.
But maybe you're not, maybe you hear me say that and you're like, yeah, hard agree, Claire. You're not really someone people wanna build a community around. That's fine. That's, I'm not offended. Um, from my vantage point, the social stuff is like, it's a real challenge for me.
I have been practicing this over the years and it does come more easily now, but it's still probably the place where, uh, it just takes the most outta me. At the same time, and this is the crazy part, when I meet someone and say they write paranormal romcoms, I'm always like the first to be like, oh, my other friend writes those and is having a lot of success with it.
Let me introduce you two. So I love making those kinds of connections, and I even get annoyed at how infrequently the two people end up actually talking because one or both of them have hangups about accepting this kind of help. Almost all of my success in this industry. Can be attributed to people I've been introduced to by other people.
Now, for [00:22:00] me, I really have to vibe with someone on a deep personality level before I'll work closely with them. But that just means it's a numbers game. I have to be introduced to a lot of people to find a few people who I would want to work with, and that means asking for introductions where I think they'll be useful.
Now, not everyone you get an introduction to will wanna work with you or you can respond to your initial communication. So don't harbor that expectation if you're asking for social help, but you don't get anywhere without trying. So practice not taking it personally, imagining all the reasons they might not have responded to you that have nothing to do with you.
Practice that. And then move on. Deep breaths. Uh, maybe you'll run into them later and hit it off only to find out that your assumptions were true and that it was their personal situation that kept them from responding and they maybe feel bad about it. And the final type of help a lot of folks could use, especially right now, [00:23:00] is simple financial help.
Asking for that can be difficult. In our business, it's called marketing., That's kind of a joke. 'cause there are other ways to, to get financial help. It can help to remember that there is more money in circulation than your brain can reasonably imagine. So as long as you don't have patterns that lead you to hoard or be a black hole of spending, sometimes you'll be needing money and sometimes you'll have money to spare.
Most other people are the same way.
I tell y'all there are a lot of folks out here trying to manifest money to avoid having to ask for it.
Obviously I get that. I get that reluctance to ask for it. You don't have to ask directly for money. You can ask people to figure out. How you can make more money. Ask your friends, tell them how much you need, even though that giving that exact amount may feel shameful to you. Shame is just a made up control [00:24:00] emotion.
So now if you tell them, you know, I need, uh, 200 grand, uh, they may judge you for that, in which case those aren't the people to ask. Ask other people. You'll notice that people in this industry love talking about how much money they make, but few are willing to talk about how much they're in the hole from time to time, and a lot of authors are in the hole.
So there's this shame that keeps us from asking for help on that, and it's just too bad. I've had friends come to me with massive amounts of debt racked up, and only when they tell me how much they owe do I have the information I need to help them strategize a way out. Now I'm by no means a financial whiz, but I love knowing that my friends don't feel lonely, isolated, and ashamed.
On top of being in financial debt. And hey, full disclosure, I've been in this game for a while. Sometimes you end up in a hole. Sometimes you take a risk on something and it doesn't work out.
Now sometimes there's no one [00:25:00] coming to save us from our financial problems. The economy isn't structured so that every smart, ethical, hardworking person will win. So when we're looking for financial help, it'll often take the form of emotional and intellectual help. Even spiritual or social help. And that may be just what we need to be able to keep on keeping on until the tide possibly turns for us financially.
But also sometimes you can ask for a no interest loan from someone close to you and you're just not doing it because of pride or shame. I've seen that more times than you would believe. So just think about that. There may be financial resources and people who love you, who they're not just gonna give you a gift, but they may give you something like a no interest loan that could really help you out.
So if you're wondering what if I need help, I'll just say, yeah, you probably do need it. And at the very least, you might consider asking for it simply [00:26:00] because you want it. But the first step and often the most difficult is learning to identify what kind of help you actually need If you keep coming back to one type of help, and maybe that that's simply the easiest for you to ask for.
So you're trying to solve all your problems with the tool you know best rather than the best tool for the particular job. Run through the different types of help I talked about in this episode and notice which one is the most eye twitching for you to ask for. That's probably where you'd benefit from, help the most.
Once you can start to see the help you would like to have. Start small. Not everyone will be able or willing to help you to meet your request, and if you come out of the blue with a massive request, you're likely to be turned down, which will only reinforce your belief that you have to solve everything on your own.
Much of this work is simply reprogramming our belief patterns from childhood. So we need to make sure that we have positive [00:27:00] experiences when we step into something new or else we might just reaffirm that faulty belief instead of successfully challenging it. So ask for something small to start or even practice talking about what you need to someone else without the expectation that they will help.
Let them know you don't expect them to fill the need, but that all the help you need from them is just to listen to you express how much help you hope to someday have.
Every human needs help. We have help to give and we have places where we need help, but more than that, we all deserve to have it and are able to offer it to others. It's really not a zero sum game with tally marks that keep track of every time we help someone and every time they help us. When we let go of keeping track is when the good part really begins, because then we start to see the success of others as our own success and they begin to do the same.[00:28:00]
We start to understand that there don't have to be losers, just so that there can be winners. There is enough to go around.
So here's my challenge to you once you finish this podcast. Spend 10 minutes writing down all the help you would like to have or dictate into your phone, or whatever's easiest. Be sure to touch on all the categories I mentioned, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, social, and financial. Notice which of those is the biggest pain point for you, and then dig into why that might be 10 minutes.
You might be surprised how much help you'd like to have, but don't let it overwhelm you or dishearten you. Once you have it all down, you can then start to ask who might be able to help you out with what and practice asking for it. In small doses, what you might find happening is that once you begin receiving help in small ways, you don't feel so desperate for it.
And if you really want a gold star. Gather together some of your author [00:29:00] friends to do this exercise. Have everyone list out what help they need. Then take turns reading it off to each other. Now let the person finish reading all of their needs. Then ask if they're open for sub suggestions, if you have any. Only then do you start offering. So go around until everyone in the group has read off what they need help with, and if they're open to offers of help or suggestions, then you can go with that.
What you're gonna find is that many of the solutions exist in that group. You don't have to go far. They exist in that group within the span of an hour. A small group of people can go from exhausted and hopeless to energized and hopeful just by asking for help.
So that's it for this episode of What If for Authors. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter where I offer all kinds of help for authors and sometimes even ask for it myself sometimes. Go to liberated [00:30:00] writer.com to sign up for the newsletter. Thanks for listening to this episode, y'all. I'm Claire Taylor and I hope you'll join me next time.
Happy writing.