Why “Just Ask for Help” Isn’t Actually That Simple (& how to practice asking for help)
Why “Just Ask for Help” Isn’t Actually That Simple (& how to practice asking for help)
Sometimes being stuck asking for help isn’t just about fear or shame—it’s about not knowing what to ask, who to ask, or how to ask for help. That uncertainty can leave you paralyzed, frustrated, and overwhelmed.
In this episode of From Stuck to Started, I dive into the skills side of asking for help. Because it’s not just about the emotions (though those definitely matter). It’s also about the executive functioning skills that go into planning, organizing, prioritizing, and following through.
When you understand what’s happening behind the scenes, you can start to build this skill one step at a time.
Why Asking for Help is So Hard
In addition to the emotional barriers of asking for help (check out Blog #46). Asking for help requires all of your executive functioning skills:
Planning: What do you actually need help with? What’s your clear ask?
Prioritizing: Which parts of the project matter most, and what can someone else take on?
Time management: When should you ask? Waiting too long can limit the help you receive, but asking too early might mean you don’t yet know what you need.
Organization: You’re not just organizing your space—you’re organizing your thoughts so you can communicate clearly.
Task initiation: This might be the hardest one. Writing the email, making the call, or asking the question is often the hardest part.
Each of these skills plays a role, which means asking for help is complex—not just emotionally, but cognitively.
A Simple Real-Life Example of Asking for Help
I experienced this myself recently at the gym.
I signed up for a class but couldn’t remember what room it was in. There’s no cell service in the building, so I couldn’t check the app. I felt silly asking the front desk, but I didn’t want to waste time wandering around.
So I took a deep breath, walked up, and said, “Hi, I signed up for a 9 a.m. class, but I don’t know where it’s located.”
The staff member didn’t bat an eye—she looked it up and told me exactly where to go.
It was a small moment, but it reminded me: asking for help gets easier the more you practice it.
Applying This to Everyday Life
Let’s say you have a big presentation coming up. You know you need help—but where do you start?
Here’s how those executive function skills show up:
Plan: What do you need help with? Gathering data, organizing visuals, or proofreading your slides?
Prioritize: What’s most important to get done first?
Manage your time: When do you need to ask for help to get it in time?
Organize your thoughts: How can you explain what you need clearly?
Initiate: Actually reach out—send the message, make the ask, or schedule the meeting.
Each step builds clarity and momentum.
When You Don’t Know What to Ask
Sometimes you know you need help but can’t name what kind of help. That’s normal.
Here’s a simple way to start the conversation:
“I’m feeling stuck and I’m not sure what specifically I need help on, but I’d like some guidance.”
That simple phrase can get things moving. It’s honest, collaborative, and takes the pressure off of having to know everything before you ask.
The Time Management Trap
If you’ve ever realized at the last minute that you need help, you’re not alone. Many of us wait too long, then feel embarrassed that we didn’t ask sooner.
Even if it’s late, it’s still worth asking. You can acknowledge the timing:
“I realize I should have asked for help earlier, but I’d really appreciate your perspective now. If it’s not a fit, that’s okay.”
You don’t have to carry the entire burden alone—just own where you are and give the other person space to set boundaries if they need to.
Give Yourself More Credit
Asking for help is a skill you build. It takes practice, repetition, and a lot of patience with yourself.
Every time you:
Notice that you’re stuck
Clarify what you need
Reach out for support
—you’re strengthening your executive functioning skills.
And because your brain might be “shoulding” you the whole way (“I should have done this earlier,” “I should be able to figure this out myself”), it’s especially important to give yourself credit for every step.
Executive Function Coaching Can Help Build These Skills
If asking for help—or any of the steps leading up to it—feels impossible, that’s exactly where executive function coaching can make a difference.
As a coach, I help adults with ADHD and executive functioning challenges learn to:
Get clear on what they need and how to ask for it
Break big goals into realistic, step-by-step plans
Manage time and follow through without burning out
Build confidence around communication, boundaries, and self-advocacy
Coaching gives you a structured, supportive space to practice these skills with someone who understands how your brain works—and how to help you work with it.
If you’re ready to get unstuck and build these skills with support, apply to work with a coach today.
You don’t have to figure it out alone. Asking for help can start right here.
-
Sarah Lovell (00:01.912)
Sometimes being stuck asking for help isn't just about fear or shame. It's about not knowing what to ask, who to ask, or how to ask for help. That uncertainty can leave you feeling paralyzed, frustrated, and overwhelmed. Today we're diving into the practical barriers that make asking for help tricky, and I'm going to share strategies you can use to get support without overthinking it. Did you know that executive
functioning.
Did you know that asking for help requires all of your executive function skills? It totally does, which is why it can be so hard. By the end of today's episode, you'll have concrete tools you can add to your toolbox to help you ask for help.
Sarah Lovell (01:00.376)
So last episode, episode 46, I talked about why asking for help feels so hard and the emotions and self-talk that's basically an iceberg underneath asking for help. And if you haven't listened to that one, highly recommend checking it out at some point. But today I'm talking about kind of the skills side of asking for help. Sometimes it's not just about the feelings, although feelings and our self-talk.
truly is the foundation, right, of our executive functioning. Sometimes like you work through that or you're feeling really confident, but you're like, I still don't know how to ask for help. And this has been a theme that has been popping up in different areas of my life recently, in my business, in my personal life, with my clients. And I'm in a business coaching membership for women business owners called Rise. And I love being part of that community. Shout out to that community.
And each Tuesday, my coach hosts a Q &A day. And she posted this week, remember, even if you don't know exactly what to ask, sharing what you're working on or where you're feeling stuck is a perfect place to start. And that really resonates because I feel like it's really common for people to be like, I know I need help. I'm ready to ask for help, but I don't know how.
And what in this situation, there's a lack of clarity. And when there's a lack of clarity that leads to inaction, that keeps us stuck and inaction creates a snowball effect of frustration, stress. The thing that you need help on is building up, right? There's more and more being added to your plate. That means maybe there's more and more avoidance. The snowball is getting bigger and bigger. And so if you don't have clarity,
on basically the executive functioning side of asking for help. Who, what, where, when, how, it's really hard. And this happened to me the other day at the gym. But before I tell that story, I wanted to just let you know what we're going to talk about this episode. I have so many stories. So I'm going to share, this episode is all about the executive functioning piece of asking for help and how to build that skill of asking for help.
Sarah Lovell (03:28.686)
So I'll give a little snippet of my life. So I went to the gym and I had signed up for a group exercise class and there is no cell service at my gym, which I know, but it's always surprising to me. And so I knew my class was at 9 a.m. but I couldn't remember, my gym is huge. It's a very big gym and I couldn't remember what room it was in. And so when I went to open it on the app,
to tell me and there was no cell phone service. So like, couldn't look it up. So I went in and I'm someone who avoids asking for help. I'm someone who feels like I should be able to figure it on my own. Like I could have walked around the entire gym to see the signs. I'm like, no, I'm like, I don't wanna waste my time like that. So I walked up to the front desk and asked what felt like the silliest question ever. I was like, hi, I signed up for a 9 a.m. class. I don't know.
who's teaching it or where it is. Like, I only know what time it is. And she was like, no problem. And she looked it up for me on the computer and told me what studio it was in. And so I basically asked help by saying, I know I need help, but I like hear all these like, know, bits and pieces of my story, right? And so asking for help is a skill that the more you do it, the more comfortable it becomes.
because it requires all of your executive functioning skills. So let me give you a more real world, maybe applicable example. Let's say you have a huge presentation that you need to do, whether that's if you're a college student, a presentation for a class, a group project, or if you're a professional or you're self-employed, most of us are doing some sort of presentation at some point in our lives. So let's say you have to pull together some data.
And so, but you know you're going to need help on this. Like this is a bigger project and you know working with a team, your team is going to be helpful. So first it's the planning. You have to figure out what do you actually need help on? Is it gathering the data? Is it organizing the visuals? Is it proofreading your talking points? If you don't have a clear ask, it's really hard for someone else to jump in effectively. And then
Sarah Lovell (05:53.942)
Asking for help also requires you to prioritize. You need to decide which parts are most important to delegate or which parts you're gonna handle yourself. And that can feel really tricky if everything or nothing feels urgent or everything feels overwhelming. Asking for help also requires a ton of time management skills. So you have to know that this is something that you are gonna ask for help on.
prior to a deadline. And so you have to choose when to ask for help. If you wait until the last minute, that limits that other person's ability to offer help. But if you ask too early, which I think is less likely to happen for most people, but if you're asking for help too early, maybe you're not sure what you need help on yet. So if time blindness is a challenge for you, if your relationship with time is complicated,
Asking for help can be impacted by that. And it can feel really frustrating to know, like to realize at the last second, like, I need someone's help with this in order to move it forward. But then by the time you ask them, it's they're like, I don't have time to do that right now, or it's not a fit. And then it's past due or late, right? And that increases the stress and overwhelm.
And then I think an executive function skill that people often don't think about is organizing thoughts. Organizing isn't just about organizing your physical space or your digital clutter. You're constantly organizing the thoughts in your head for communicating. And so if you're going to ask for help, you need to have an idea of what you're communicating, how to communicate it clearly, and
how to get that message out. So whether it's sending an email, setting up a call, swinging by somebody's desk, how are you going to talk with them about it? And how are you gonna get the thoughts in your head? Maybe it feels like a jumble out to them in a way that they can understand, follow, and offer the help that you're looking for. And then the hardest executive function skill, I think, in this situation is, well, they're all hard. I wanna validate that.
Sarah Lovell (08:17.016)
But I think for many people, the hardest skill is task initiation. So actually starting, actually asking for help. So whether that's writing the email, making the call, walking over to that person's desk, starting anything is most often times the hardest part. Starting is really hard. And so...
wanted to share that just to highlight that it's not just ask for help it's not it's asking for help requires so much mental gymnastics of planning prioritizing time management organizing and then getting yourself to start and then underneath that is the iceberg that we talked about in episode 46 the emotions that come up the shoulds
the shame, the guilt, the burden, right? Whatever those mix of emotions is underneath being like, don't do it. Those two things taken together make asking for help really challenging. So I just wanna validate that if you're someone that you're like, why is it so hard? That might be part of the mix going on there of why it's so challenging.
So then the other piece that I said we were gonna talk about today is kind of the like who, what and how for asking for help. So this ties in with all the executive functioning stuff I just talked about. So maybe you have clarity, you've gotten to a point where you're like, okay, I I need help, but who do I ask for help? And like I said, uncertainty leads to inaction. So if you're like, okay, I'm ready to ask for help, but now what, who?
So this could be like sometimes avoiding because you feel like you should be able to figure it out on your own or you want to get to a certain point before you ask for help. This came up with a college student I was working with. They were working on a writing assignment and feeling really stuck, had no idea how to start the assignment. And they've gotten some feedback from their professor on it, but they didn't know how to like.
Sarah Lovell (10:38.734)
take action on what their professor had said. And so they identified, we looked at who could you ask for help? Well, you could go back to the professor again. You could go to the writing center. You could go to the, there's like a learning center, like a study center at their school, right? There were lots of different paths that they could have gone. And so they were like, I don't wanna go back to my professor again because I've already gotten some feedback, but I'm not really sure.
And I was like, okay, that's valid. Like, is there someone else that you want to ask? And so they decided to go to the writing center. And so we took the steps to sign up for an appointment, get it on the calendar, make sure it fit their schedule. But then I was like, okay, so what are you going to ask? How are you going to ask for help? And that was also a sticking point for them because they were like, I've already gotten some feedback, but I just don't know.
what to do with it. And so we came up with a phrase that I use, and you can adapt to fit for you. But basically like, I'm feeling stuck and I'm not sure what specifically I need help on, but I would like some help and guidance on this. Right? And so that was, that was what we came up with that they felt comfortable asking. Basically saying like, I know I need help, but I'm not sure what kind of help.
Sarah Lovell (12:26.05)
And I think that can be a really helpful starting point to be like, I'm not sure what my starting point is. Can you help me figure out that starting point? And like I talked about last episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, that's okay. Last episode I talked about like most people want to offer help. They want to offer assistance. So if you'll go in and say like, my goal is to get some clarity on this, like, can you help me?
They're going to work with you collaboratively to figure out where do we get started.
Sarah Lovell (13:00.854)
The other piece of this that we've talked about a little bit is the time management piece. So feeling like it's too late to ask for help. So this can come up in different ways. You might feel embarrassed or like you missed the right time to ask for help or that if you keep pushing it off, that snowball happens where it feels bigger and more intense and the emotions are more present.
And so waiting too long increases that stress or can make the problem feel bigger. And can then sometimes be like, well, I'm not going to ask for help at all. I will just figure this out on my own. But I think for a lot of people, one way to navigate this is to still ask for help, but acknowledge the time situation. So maybe you're asking for help at the 11th hour.
and feeling bad about it. And so owning that and saying, realize I should have asked for help earlier, but I'd really appreciate your perspective on this right now. Or would this be a fit for you? If not, that's OK. The other person can set the boundary if they need to.
Sarah Lovell (14:28.184)
But figuring out the who, the what, the how, the when requires all of your executive functioning skills. And so that is what I hope is the main takeaway of this chat that I'm having, is that asking for help is a skill that you can build and practice. And with anything that you're practicing, it's going to take time.
it's going to require you to navigate the discomfort of learning something new, right? If asking for help has been a chronic challenge for you, you're not alone. It's something that I talk about all the time with clients. But it requires all of these puzzle pieces, the time management, the prioritizing, the organizing, the task initiation. And so it's taking it
one step at a time, breaking it down, giving yourself credit for each step of the way. Because if you wait until you get to the finish line of, you know, asking for help or finishing the project, right, even if your brain jumps ahead, then you've waited too long to give yourself credit. And I think it's really important to talk about this briefly because your brain is shoulding you.
the whole way. You should have done this. You should have done that. Right. There can be some guilt and shame that pops up when you're navigating doing something new and building a new skill. And so that's the autopilot for your brain. It's really it's a skill to practice to be able to give yourself credit for doing hard things and for taking it one step at a time. And so each time you ask for help, whether it's, you know, household chore,
asking for support from a boss, reaching out to a professional or an expert in their field for guidance and support, any time that you're asking for help, give yourself credit. And that's a really important part of the process. So the next time you feel stuck asking for help, notice those emotions that might be popping up. Listen to episode 46 if you're looking for more support and resources on that.
Sarah Lovell (16:50.926)
You can listen to episodes multiple times. I was talking to a client about this today that our brains need repetition. So just because you heard something once doesn't mean that it's in there. We need to hear things lots of times, especially if it's new or challenging. So if you have episodes of my podcast or other resources where you're learning from, bookmark them, save them so that you can revisit them when it's
especially related to what's going on in your life. So step one, noticing and naming the emotions that might be popping up. And then taking yourself through this process of asking who, what, how, and the timing for asking for help. And that might be doing a brain dump. It might be sitting down to talk with somebody through the process, right?
but really let yourself break it down into a step-by-step problem solving situation to ask for help. Next episode, I am going to be talking about delegating, which is a variation of asking for help. Basically, it's telling people that they need to do something. So whether you're delegating at your workplace, delegating with your family,
We are talking about how to delegate and we're talking about why it's so challenging. And you can guess it, it's because of the time management, the planning and the task initiation that is required to delegate. So come back next week and we will chat all about delegating. Thank you so much for being part of my community. I know that some of my podcast topics can be really heavy. So give yourself lots of credit for listening, learning, reflecting.
and practicing all of the things that we talk about here. As always, there's no one size fits all strategy. So whenever I'm chatting with you, take what's helpful, adjust it to fit your life. And if I say anything that isn't helpful, leave it behind. So keep being kind to yourself as you navigate tough things. And I will talk with you again soon.
