Asking for help is so hard for me that I usually get stomach cramps and the accompanying malady before I do ask.....I'll kill myself before I ask someone else to assist me!!! And I know that some of that came about in my marriages....horse kicked me and knocked me out cold in a 5' snowdrift...when I came to, big wound on head, bleeding, dizzy, I called husband and he just couldn't leave office to come help me....it was always that way. He put children and I second to work....first husband "let" me take care of his parents and everything else that needed to be done. So, the words "would you?", "could you", etc. are almost impossible for me to say. Zen knows how hard it is for me to ask for anything....she calls me "miss stoic"....AND I use descriptive words like "self-sufficient", "independent" to describe myself all the time.That way I don't have to use the other words.. And those aren't nice terms for the way I feel about myself and the people around me.

I'm so glad you started this thread. We all needed this. Pat