Frances Young, Life Coach & Personal Trainer on Cyno
Let’s Remove the Stigma from Asking for Help to Achieve our Dreams: A Personal Story
As a child I watched my father struggle with his mental health. It was not very obvious. My father was silent about his suffering. He did not take drugs or consume alcohol. He chose to purchase ‘self-help’ and spirituality books by the hundreds. In the farm house I grew up in, we had a library with walls filled floor to ceiling with Dr. Wayne Drye, the 14th Dalai Lama, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Robert H Schuller and many other famous doctors, writers and spiritual teachers. I was perplexed as to why he just kept purchasing them. From my viewpoint, if they were all designed to help someone “achieve what they wanted to achieve” or simply “help someone feel better”, then why was it taking so many books to accomplish either of those things?
Fast forward many years later, a mid-20 year old Frances began to question herself, her success and wonder why she was feeling a sinking feeling of fundamentally being unhappy. Why was my underlying mental health suffering? I lived in a beautiful apartment, had a loving partner, owned a small business, was clearly ‘achieving’ in life, but something was missing. My father had a wife, a daughter, a family, his own business, owned a home in the country, had multiple hobbies, but he was fundamentally unhappy; something was missing for him too. Back to me again, my ability to feel mentally well and stable was stretched thin when I was exhausted at age 27. The energy I would bring my community and family was subtly toxic and I was frustrated with why I felt like I was never “achieving what I thought I wanted”. So, something needed to change, but where to turn for some guidance…?
I had a stigma against self-help books, therapists and opening myself up to my own spiritual path because I watched my father read book after book and never come close to what he wanted to achieve. In his words, he wanted to “sign the million-dollar deal” for his company and my parents divorced after 19 years of marriage. My father suffered from early-onset dementia until his death earlier this summer at the age of 76.
Everyone needs help with something. We can be silently suffering with our own mental gymnastics and on the outside appear as though we have it all figured out. Our parents, family lineage and the world condition our thoughts and ego to believe the story of needing to always be strong through adversity and be thankful for what we have. “You can achieve anything if you work hard enough for it”. I believe this statement to be true, however, asking for help in order to achieve what you desire is a very important piece of the puzzle. If you ask for help continually in one way, like only reading ‘self-help’ literature, then maybe trying another avenue to receive support is what you need.
I am proud to say that I am living the life I have always dreamed of. Have I achieved everything I desire, no, not yet, but am I happy, yes. Do I still battle my own mental chatter and emotional experience, yes, I am only human. I grew into this life by using ‘self-help’ books, my community, talk and manual therapists, coaches, medicine healers, breathwork, cold exposure, meditation, journaling, travel and embracing my truths of living the way I am designed through experimenting with my human design energy type. In only 3 years I have unleashed the satisfaction in my essence and in my life that both myself and my father were searching for. Our world reflects what we believe is true. This is a result of both our unconscious and conscious minds producing pictures in our brains of what we think we want as opposed to listening to what our soul truly desires. If you need help with something, begin by releasing the internal stigma you may have around what person, place or thing might help you best. It may just lead you to achieving everything you’ve actually ever wanted.