If you can't ask for help without feeling like a burden, somewhere in your childhood you learned that your needs were an imposition on the people who were supposed to care for you - Silicon Canals

"Maybe it's emotional - you're grieving, you're overwhelmed, you haven't been okay in a while. The help is there. People have offered. All you have to do is say yes. And you can't. Not because you're proud. Not because you're stubborn. But because somewhere deep in your body - in a place that operates below language - asking for help feels like the most dangerous thing you could do. It feels like exposure."

"Attachment theory, developed by British psychiatrist John Bowlby and later expanded by developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth, describes a biological system that every human being is born with. Its function is straightforward: when a child feels threatened, distressed, or in need, the attachment system activates, motivating the child to seek proximity to a caregiver for comfort and protection. This isn't optional behavior. It's hardwired. Crying, reaching, clinging, following - these are not signs of weakness or manipulation in an infant. They are genetically encoded survival strategies, designed by evolution to keep vulnerable children close to the people who can keep them alive."

Many people cannot accept offered help because asking feels dangerous, exposing, and likely to label them a burden. That response often originates from early attachment experiences when caregivers failed to respond reliably to needs. Humans are born with an attachment system that motivates seeking proximity to caregivers when threatened, distressed, or in need. Reliable, sensitive caregiving teaches safety in depending on others, while unreliable or absent caregiving trains fear of reaching out and internal beliefs that needs will repel others. These internalized patterns shape adult help-seeking, emotional vulnerability, and perceptions of burden.

Read at Silicon Canals