Regular conversation can go a huge way to helping. Think about a child and how they learn? Parents and children don't have therapy, the child copies the parent's example. So, think about why you probably do not ask for help? You did not witness a parent asking for help, just "exploding" or you did ask but there was no reply, etc.

My therapist got the message home to me through a simple interaction between my stepmother and myself when I was about 20 years old. It was summer, I was home from college and working at the big company my father worked at as a clerk/secretary.

One afternoon I came into the kitchen where my stepmother was and asked, "What's for dinner?" and my stepmother immediately answered, "If you were in here helping, you'd know!" My T finally got me to understand that I had opened with a conversational gambit, a kind of "Hi, what's up?" and my stepmother had not heard/understood that and had returned with her own issues, "here I am doing all this for everyone by myself, no one to help me". We had "missed" connecting with each other. I (of course :-) got defensive and she stayed angry and now had me there to unload on (I had father and brothers, males not known for being helpful with household tasks back in the 1950's and 60's).

When I finally saw my therapist's point, that my stepmother and I kept missing each other conversationally, a lot of things made sense. When I was 5 and my father had just married my stepmother, one of the first things I remember was her teaching me to make my bed. She showed me how and then told me to do that every day. My therapist asked me what I would have liked and I realized that there was no "sharing" going on, no times when I was struggling and she helped, no times when she was smiling and asking me to help with chores and making them fun or an opportunity to talk, no indication she wanted to "be" with me so could we do these things together. No, I was, as a young child, shown what chores to do and then it was just expected I would do them. When I was 6 or 7 and she was angry I did not hang up my clothes right away; she pulled all my clothes out of my closet and chest of drawers and piled them in the middle of the floor, yelling the entire time. When my oldest brother got my room a year or two later and did not keep it neat enough for her, she took all his clothes and threw them out the window (split level, bedroom on second floor).

So, what would you like to happen before situations where you get in trouble? Is your head clamoring? I'd use a picture of a library in a collage to ask for "quiet"? Maybe that sort of thing?