Upon finding yourself on a college campus, you may be at first exhilarated by the promise of freedom. It feels empowering to be completely in control of making your own decisions, but when the decision-making gets hard, those happy feelings can soon dissipate. Last year, I found myself conflicted in finding a balance between friends vs. work, sleep vs. work, and self-care vs. work—all pretty usual for a college freshman. As my second year begins, I find myself struggling in the same ways, as finding a peaceful balance between work and sleep, for example, is a continued task. However, this year as I attempt to become more skillful and aware of creating these essential life balances, I feel myself struggling to keep a balance between something new entirely: asking for help vs. going it alone.
At some point, we have probably all worried or even felt just slightly guilty about asking for help from friends, classmates, or even significant others. Naturally, people always encourage you to ask for help when you need. Sure, this sounds great, but the line is fuzzy when you’re down in the gutter going through something hard and you potentially need help more often. If you’re at this place in your life, it is hard to answer questions like: “How often should I ask for help?” and “Where do I draw the line?” and “How do I know I’m not just needy?”
Here’s what I’ve discovered. To begin, the biggest key to understanding how you rely on other people, either negatively or positively, is being willing to evaluate your own “personal boundaries.” This is an idea from the author, blogger, and entrepreneur Mark Manson, who literally wrote the book on it (Models: Attract Women Through Honesty). He discusses, in this Guide to Personal Boundaries, that essentially poor personal boundaries are usually found on both sides of an unhealthy, co-dependent relationship, with one counterpart taking little to no responsibility for their emotions and actions, while the other counterpart takes almost too much ownership of their own emotions/actions and then those of their partners. This victim/savior complex arises out of both people in an attempt to attain love.
From Manson, I understood that sacrifices, so long as they are perceived by both parties as a sacrifice rather than an obligation, are okay. It is normal for a friend to lend an ear; it is normal for your boyfriend to talk with you after you have a long day. However, it is unhealthy to walk home after a long day and task your SO with fixing your annoyance at work, or rather task your SO with, in general, making you feel better. As the owner of your emotions, it should not be the “drop-everything” task of your counterpart/friend/parent/etc. to fix your problem while you whine. One can be supportive, without falling down the rabbit hole of being obligated to drop personal affairs to stitch up someone else’s hard day—hence, personal boundaries. Another person should not revolve around your emotional well-being. That’s your job.
However, this may seem rather callous and unclear. The conclusion I came to was the following. Be in charge of your own emotions and actions. If you need support, make that decision and ask someone who loves you to provide that. If your friends, significant others, parents, etc. have strong personal boundaries too, then asking each other for what you need shouldn’t be complicated.
 In the same vein, if you are an agent of your own emotions and actions, then you should not expect others to pull you out of your pity without telling them that that is what you need. I’ll explain: Say you have a hard week. It would be nice if your SO spent the afternoon with you to decompress and relax (an example of a sacrifice). However, instead of arranging this for your well-being, you stay silent, perhaps dropping passive-aggressive hints, or just lying to them when they ask if you are okay by half-heartedly saying “No I’m fine don’t worry about it.”
No one is a mind reader, and expecting that your friend or SO or parent will drop everything and fix things for you is unfair. Sure, maybe they will. However, it isn’t fair of you to get angry at someone’s inability to anticipate your needs. Since they are your needs, take ownership and communicate them! You alone are responsible for ensuring their fulfillment.
Just like all things worth balancing, finding a line between relying on the people in your life too much or not enough is constant work. Beyond this research, the best information you can be armed with is your friends’ opinion. Assuming they have strong enough personal boundaries to be honest about what is best for their well-being, they can make the call about what may overwhelm them or when they are going through too much to support you as well. Ask your friends, genuinely seeking their answer, as ultimately the decision to support should come from them. Otherwise, supporting turns into an obligation, which turns into resentment. It will never be easy, but I truly believe there is something to be said for a person who claims their actions and emotions as their own.
Image Credit: Lexi Bollis, Giphy