- Nov 16, 2022
- 7 min read

Become Open to Receiving

Hello my beautiful souls!

Welcome back to the Modern Manifestation blog. Feel free to listen in to today's topic in the podcast.

Today I wanna talk about something that’s come across my feed a few times on my Instagram lately. It is this idea that talks about hyper-independence and not asking for help.

This is something I'm super guilty of doing within my relationship, so I’m wondering if some of you may experience this too.

Hyper-independence is the idea that you don’t need anybody else. You must do everything yourself. Other people won’t show up for you or won’t do it right. I also joke around with Evan and say ‘I don’t need no man’.

This post is about THAT energy.

To be clear, I’m not talking about not being able to ask what aisle the ketchup is in at the grocery store, directions, or anything minor…. I’m also not talking about confidence self drive, or your ability to do things for yourself.

I’m talking about hyper independence which is what happens when you’re not open to receiving. When you do not feel safe receiving the big stuff.

Asking for Help

We can't manifest, when we're not open to receiving. We receive, when we ask for help.

Independence is great. Independence is adaptive. It’s how many of us are successful and self motivated. Hyper independence is maladaptive. Hyper independence is a trauma response that’s learned when you’ve been systemically let down and failed by those you were supposed to be able to trust. It’s when your trust in other people was broken by those who were supposed to be a safe space for you.

This might look like:

Not asking for help from your partner
Not delegating at work
Not feeling safe sharing your emotions with friends
Not reaching out for support when you’re depressed

Hyper-independence is like armor. It shelters you from disappointment and protects your from further pain. Basically, you’re holding it all in. The weight of the world is on your shoulders and your constantly bracing.

My hyper independence was created when I was a kid because I internalized that asking for help was weak. As the youngest sister, I often felt like a nuisance to everyone else. When I asked for help, my brothers were often annoyed or my parents were too busy.

I also watched my parents hold in their emotions and bite their tongues. They never asked for help. They just constantly complained, hoping someone would pick up on their hints. Never effectively communicating. Eventually, one of my parents would explode in a massive tantrum, punching the wall, slamming the door, leaving the house for hours…

Never knowing when these explosions would be set off had us walking on eggshells. It made me become self-reliant so I wasn’t another issue to be dealt with. I could take care of myself.

In times when I did ask for help and my family responded, I found my trust broken in most situations, so I finally stopped asking.

We might become hyper self sufficient, or self-reliant, because we don’t want to be another issue for our caregivers to deal with. I wanted to take control over my own circumstances and prove that I could take care of myself.

You know what they say... our childhood trauma will show up in our adult relationships if we don’t work on ourselves. I hadn't asked Evan for help, or my coworkers, or my friends, or committee members….I’ve tried to do it all, to my own detriment. This will only lead to a perpetual cycle of burnout.

I share this because maybe some of my story resonates and makes you think about your own hyper independence.

We can ask for help. We do not have to be in control.

I love being an independent woman. I love being self-reliant and self-motivated.

And, my biggest lesson this year has been learning to receive. Learning to ask for help, even if I don’t NEED it. Learning to ask for help simply because it would be nice. Because I want it. Because I don’t have to do it all on my own.

There is a certain vulnerability in asking for help. The other person could reject us, our needs may not get met again, or our trust is broken again.

When you were in survival mode, you may have had to solve a lot of life’s problems on your own. It’s safe to step into vulnerability and shed the survival mechanisms.

Practice being open to receiving. Receiving from other people, from your dog, from your spirit guides, from the Universe.

We can’t expect to manifest the things we want if we’re not open to receiving. If we’re not comfortable asking for help.

A Lesson From My Plant Medicine Journey

This year I’ve been working on my relationship with my guides. On this journey to connect with my guides in July…. I attended a plant medicine retreat. In this retreat’s opening ceremony, we were given the medicine... which I resisted for 3 hours after taking.

While everyone else was having their spiritual awakening, I sat on my mat meditating, waiting. I began getting frustrated because it was a spiritual retreat and I was the only one not having an experience with the medicine.

I’m getting madder. Angry. My face is red. I’m annoyed. I think about leaving, “This is stupid. Obviously this isn’t working. What am I doing here?”

And then I heard it.

A voice that was clear, direct, my own, but also not my own. This was one of my first few divine downloads. And it said, “Ask for help”.

At first, I resisted.

But it came again, “Ask for help”.

I finally looked up at the woman leading the retreat, and I teared up when I realized how hard this was for me, and I told her *it* was telling me to ask for help.

I was so uncomfortable asking for help, that even in this very safe container I had to let her know that *I* wasn’t asking…. It was the plant medicine asking…!

She came over and we meditated and chanted together. She performed reiki on me. Then she told me, “Say to yourself that ‘It’s safe to let it in’ if you want to experience her”. So I did. I told myself “It’s safe to ask for help. It’s safe to let the medicine in. It is safe to receive.”

Within 3 seconds, the medicine welcomed me with open arms and I experienced my first plant medicine journey.

My message for you is that it is safe to ask for help. It is safe to want help. It is safe to put your needs out there.

Your hyper independence protected you for a long time, but where we’re going in life... it’s just weighing you down. Drop the armor. Let people in.

Opening a Line of Communication with Your Guides

If you’re not ready to ask another person for help, or if you’re not ready to let another person in yet while you heal… then ask your spirit guides or your higher self for help! They’re usually waiting in the side lights begging us to notice them so they can help us.

Our higher self and our spirit guides are our besties. They only want what’s best for us and they want to help. We just have to ASK them for it.

More often than not, they’ve tried to communicate with you for years. Synchronicity‘s, coincidences, angel numbers (which are repeating numbers), these are all examples of our higher self and our spirit guides trying to get our attention, trying to point us in the right direction, trying to let us know what path to take. maybe we just haven’t been open to hearing them.

Ask your guides for help.

If you’ve never communicated with them before and you’re not sure how to listen to them, then you can ask for signs and decide on what language to use! Maybe 1234 means “head this way”, and a purple giraffe means “you’re on the right path”, and 777 means expansion is coming…. You can define the language you want them to use when they send you messages. They will love it and respond. I promise!

Sometimes we are trying to manifest on our own without asking our guides to help. This makes it so much harder!

We might also tell ourselves that we will charge a certain amount, or make a certain amount of money if we read one more book, take one more course, get 5 more years of experience…. We are the only people who apply these rules to ourselves. Our possibilities are limitless if we take off our own shackles that come from our “shoulds” and our limiting beliefs.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to allow our guides to bring things into our lives simply because they’re in alignment with us and serve our highest good? Not because of things we’ve achieved, things we’ve done, or any other criteria or limitation we put on ourselves.…

The idea that we need something else added to ourselves, or that we have to earn something, in order to manifest something else comes from scarcity—the idea that we are not enough as we are.

You don’t have to manifest alone, you don’t have to find romance alone. You don’t have to find success in your career alone.

Ask your guides for help and see what miracles they bring into your life! They want to help. Let them.

Thank you for hanging out with me today. I will catch you in the next post!

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