This is the sad reality:
From the outside, this can look irrational. People may even say something like, “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” That question does not always help because the survivor may not know how to answer it, or they know exactly how to answer it and also know the answer will bring its own set of issues. Many trauma survivors do not avoid help because they are proud, stubborn, dramatic, or irresponsible. They avoid help because help itself carries its own history.
The link above gives several reasons, and many of them boil down to this idea: the history of what asking for help means. That can be:
- Help that didn’t exist
- Help that wasn’t – but was targeted abuse on a vulnerable person
- Requests that were ridiculed or dismissed.
- Stigma associated with needing help in the first place.
- Help that meant losing control.
It’s one thing to encourage trauma survivors to ask for help. It’s quite another to make sure the help available to them won’t make things worse. There are too many unsafe people in this world who would mock, dismiss, or retraumatize survivors. So long as those experiences keep repeating themselves, there is no wonder that survivors don’t ask for help until it’s the absolute last resort. That’s exactly what happened to me, too. I didn’t ask for help; I just kept getting worse until I had no choice but to get help.
That shouldn’t have been necessary.