Just Count Me In is a podcast designed to help us navigate and flow with our lives through conscious awareness. When we live with less resistance and more receptivity it is easier to express who we came here to be and enjoy life. We are all walking each other home.
Why asking for help is so hard—and why sometimes the first step isn't getting better. It's being met where you are.
What happens when you're doing everything you're supposed to do—and you still don't feel better?
This summer, I worked with a 12-year-old boy I'll call Max.
He started making changes almost immediately: drinking more water, exercising, improving his sleep, reducing screen time, changing his morning routine, and paying attention to his self-talk and beliefs.
And at first, it worked.
He felt better.
Then he crashed.
And eventually he said:
“None of this is working.”
That moment taught me something important.
Getting better isn't always a straight line.
And sometimes, when we become so focused on feeling better, we accidentally start believing that having a bad day means we're failing.
Max needed something different.
He needed to be met where he actually was.
Not told to “think positive.”
Not given another list of things he was doing wrong.
Not pushed to pretend he was okay.
He needed someone to acknowledge where he was and hold out a hand.
And that's where this episode begins.
Because asking for help is hard.
For children.
For teenagers.
For parents.
For successful adults.
For people in the workplace.
For people who are used to being the ones everyone else depends on.
Sometimes we're afraid we'll look weak.
Sometimes we're embarrassed.
Sometimes we don't even know what kind of help we need.
Sometimes we're afraid we'll be misunderstood.
And sometimes we've asked for help before—and received advice instead.
But what if we changed the way we think about help?
What if asking for help wasn't failure?
What if knowing when you need another person was actually a form of strength, self-awareness and problem-solving?
And what if we focused not only on becoming better at asking for help—but on becoming people who are safe to ask?
In this episode, we explore:
Why asking for help can feel like failure
Why children and teenagers may hide what they're experiencing
The role of stigma, embarrassment and self-reliance
Why people may fear being misunderstood
Why “help” and “advice” aren't always the same thing
How parents can make it safer for children to speak honestly
Why getting better isn't always linear
Why adults often hide workplace stress until they're burned out
How loneliness and connection affect our well-being
How to ask for help earlier
How to become someone other people feel safe asking
The connection between human interaction, synchronization and the energy we bring to one another
Five practical ways to notice, ask, listen and connect
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, making this an especially important time to have conversations about connection, support and asking for help.
But this episode isn't about sitting in the problem.
It's about what we can do.
Notice.
Ask.
Listen.
Connect.
Reach out.
And remember:
You don't have to climb out of the well before someone is allowed to reach a hand down.
If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress, having suicidal thoughts, or you're worried about someone else, call or text 988 in the United States for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.
RESOURCE NOTE FOR THE EPISODE
If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress, having suicidal thoughts, or you're worried about someone else, in the United States you can call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You do not have to wait until a situation becomes an emergency to reach out.
If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.
Research referenced: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; World Health Organization; peer-reviewed research on adolescent help-seeking and interpersonal synchrony.
Thank you for joining me!
If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!
Welcome. Welcome back to Just Count Me In. I'm Sari and I'm your host. I want to share this story with you because I think it would benefit anyone who's ever struggled with or knows someone who's struggling with asking for help. This summer, a 12-year-old boy taught me something about asking for help, and it was huge. Honestly, I think what he taught me is something that a lot of us adults need to hear too. I'm gonna call him Max, and that's not his real name, and I'm gonna keep his story anonymous because this isn't his story to tell. When I first started working with Max, he was really struggling. We started with really practical things. We talked about drinking more water, getting some exercise. We worked on environment and external factors like sleep, reducing screen time. We talked about self-talk, a little bit about beliefs. This is all in the first hour. We started paying attention to what he was telling himself about who he was, what his identity was, and we got in touch with possibilities instead of probabilities. And something really awesome, I thought, at the time happened. He started doing tons better, huge improvement, monumental, like exponential growth. He was doing so many of the things that we talked about, and initially he was feeling a lot better. We even met a couple times that week, and I remember thinking, okay, we've got it, we're moving in the right direction. He's picking up momentum, and then he crashed. And because there was so much momentum going, he actually went lower than he had been before. When we talked about it, he said, This is not working. None of this is working, and that sentence became one of the most important lessons of our work together because the next thing he said was, I need help. The things we were doing were all good things. Sleep does matter, getting exercise, getting staying hydrated, reducing screen time, all that can help. Self-talk totally matters, and so do our beliefs. But I realized that something else had happened, and this is huge. He started to believe that if he was doing all these things correctly, he was supposed to feel better all the time. And when he didn't feel better all the time, he then came to the conclusion that he was failing. He was trying to convince himself that everything was okay. He didn't want anything to be wrong, so he lied. And he said he felt better when he really didn't. He was pushing the feelings away and pushing them down because he didn't want to be that kid who wasn't getting better. And I think adults do this all the time. We're just better at hiding it. We say, I'm fine, I'm good, I'm just tired, it's just been a week, I've got this. And underneath, we're thinking, I actually don't know what to do. And that's what I want to talk about today. Not just
feeling better and not positive thinking, not about resilience. I want to talk about something that we don't teach nearly enough. Exactly how to ask for help, and maybe even more importantly, how to become someone who other people feel safe asking for help. I'm Sari Stone. This is Transform Your Life. Just count me in. And because September is National Suicide Prevention Month with World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th, this conversation feels particularly important to me right now. This is not going to be a dark episode. It's going to be a hopeful episode, a very practical episode, an episode about connection, because we are going to be talking about what we can do. So you can't heal what you won't acknowledge. You have to feel it to heal it. It's a common practice to pay attention to thoughts, yet, our emotions are actually the indicators that we need to pay attention to. So let's go back to Max. There was something really important happening when he kept saying he was okay. At the time he wasn't lying and he was not trying to manipulate anybody. He wanted to be okay. He wanted the things we were doing to work. He wanted to wake up and feel better. And when he didn't, I think part of him interpreted that as something is wrong with me. And that is such an important distinction because sometimes we turn healthy behaviors into another test we're supposed to pass. Like I exercise, I slept, I drank my water, I stay off my phone as much as I can. I did everything I'm supposed to do, so why don't I feel better? And as adults, we have that conversation all the time with each other. I'm doing all these things, why does this still hurt? I'm doing all these things, why do I not feel better mentally? And if we're not careful, we can turn self-improvement into just another form of self-judgment. I don't want that. I believe in doing the things that support us, but I also believe we have to be honest about where we are because there's a big difference between hope and false positivity. Hope says, I'm doing okay right now, and I believe things can change. False positivity says I am just not allowed to feel this way. I'm fine. Hope is more like this is where I am today, and it's not permanent, it's not forever. What's the next step? And that's where I started using an image with Max. We talked about being a person feeling like he was at the bottom of a well. And if you're at the bottom of the well, I can't stand at the top yelling, hey, come on, get out. I can tell you how beautiful the sunshine is, I can tell you how strong you are, I can tell you how many steps you've already taken. Maybe you'll be ready to hear those things eventually, but first I have to acknowledge where you are. I have to just hold up my hand, and maybe we take one step, then another, then another, we make small changes heading in the right direction. Like if you're at a fork in the road, Esther Hicks calls this forking in the right direction, because getting better is not always in a straight line. We also know that something happens with us called entrainment, and it happens with our hearts, and our hearts actually pick up on the energy of the other hearts in the room. So a lot of times we feel better after we're around somebody who's in a state of heart coherence. It's helpful to remember that when you're working with somebody, and it's helpful to try to identify the people in your life who feel most heart coherent when you're having a hard time. We have to remember that getting better is not linear. I remember when I had back surgery years ago and it was hard, it was a fusion, and they're nothing to joke around about. And I was getting better, and then I wasn't. I had a whole week of not being better, and I thought, oh my gosh, what did I do? Did I do something wrong? What's going on? Am I ever going to get better? And my surgeon said, you know what? It's not always bad goes to better, goes to good, goes to great. It's very often not linear. It's very often a little bit messy when you're recovering. So what we can do is try just for the next best emotion. But real life doesn't always work that way. You can have a great week and a terrible day. You can make tremendous progress and still have some moments when you feel like you did before. That doesn't erase the progress. That doesn't mean nothing worked. You don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. It just means you're human. Sometimes the most important thing that we can do is stop making the feeling itself the scorecard. So I feel terrible today doesn't automatically mean that I'm failing. And this is a super important lesson for kids and for us as adults. Sometimes we don't need another thing to accomplish. We just need permission to tell the truth. Today's a hard day. And then ask, what do I need? Or do I need to just lean in and am I okay just having a hard day? So there
was a point in our work when I asked Max a really hard question. It's a question I do not like to have to ask people, to be honest with you, but I do as a coach ask. I asked him if he ever felt like he wanted to disappear. And he said yes. He also said that he was beginning to not feel that way anymore since we started to talk more honestly. But because he was 12 and because I was turned about his safety, I immediately made sure his parents knew that's important. Because whenever a child expresses thoughts that even could remotely relate to suicide or not wanting to be here, that is not something that adults should hold alone. It needs to be brought to the appropriate adults and professionals. I did that immediately. But then what stayed with me wasn't that conversation, it was what came after. Because once we could stop pretending everything was fine, it was like the clouds parted and the sun came out. We actually started working on what was real, what the patterns were in his behavior, and then what asking for help allows us to do. And I asked Max, what advice would you have for people who feel depressed or who feel sad? And he said, first make sure they know what it is, because at his age he didn't know what depressed was. He didn't know the signs of depression. So I think that's a starting point, you know, when you feel hopeless, when you feel like you can't get out of bed, when food doesn't hold the same fun for you, when you feel like you just can't push yourself to do anything, yeah, that's definitely depression. So why don't we just ask? Why is asking for help so difficult? And I asked him that. In his case, it was because he wanted to not be feeling that way, and asking for help acknowledged that he felt like that. Researchers really studied this pretty extensively, especially in young people. And there was a study of 53 students, and they identified barriers at different levels. There's individual, there's social, there's relational, and there's structural. And when we're young, a lot of times we don't have boundaries, we don't have the reasoning set up. So we kind of take everything in in our environment. And when we misinterpret an experience that we have when we're asking for help, that misinterpretation becomes part of our beliefs, and that hurt actually stays in our hearts, even until we bring it into the light to heal it. And it could be something, somebody could just be having an off day when you're asking for help, and maybe they just can't give it to you at that moment, but you take it the wrong way. Or you could have grown up in a house where it wasn't safe to ask for help. All these things are things that come up when we coach. And those types of things include things like not recognizing that you need help, stigma about asking for help, feeling stupid if you need help, embarrassment, concerns about trust and confidentiality, and just barriers to getting the right care when you need help. Across all the studies, these barriers were pretty common. There was another review that found that younger people identified stigma, embarrassment, and difficulty in recognizing symptoms, and a preference of self-reliance as barriers to seeking help, though I can do it myself, and I am sure that I was guilty of that because I really liked and was very proud of the fact that I was very self-reliant and could do it myself, and it was very hard for me to ask for help for a long time. More recent research with US teenagers found another really interesting barrier, and they are worried about being misunderstood. Even the people that I work with, they have fantastic parents, and I honestly think their parents would understand them. Many of them said no, not necessarily. They were worried about being misunderstood. Some of them were worried about being judged, and they describe discomfort with difficult emotions and concern that people would not understand exactly what they were experiencing. So, what if one reason we don't ask for help is that they're not sure of what will happen when they do? Maybe they're afraid they're going to be judged, maybe they'll be corrected, maybe they'll be told they're overreacting, maybe they'll be told what to do, maybe they'll be compared with somebody else or become somebody else's project. So
let's talk about that. Sometimes, and I was guilty of this as a parent, and I do apologize, I wish I knew then what I know now, because a lot of times when people, my kids, asked me for help, I gave them advice. I tried to fix. And this happens all the time. You finally say I'm struggling, and somebody says, You should fill in the blank. Hey, have you tried? Well, when I was your age, or you need to, my favorite words, you need to, and I say that with a joke because they're not my favorite words, or here's what I would do, or look at the bright side, which that evokes a lot of anger if you're feeling down and somebody tells you that. And sometimes advice might be what we need, but sometimes we don't need advice. We need connection first. Imagine if instead of just responding with a solution, we asked, Do you want me to listen? Do you want me to help you think through it or help you find a solution? Do you just need to vent? That is a different conversation. Because now we're not assuming anymore, we're asking, we're respecting the person, we're meeting them from where they are. And sometimes the answer will be, well, just listen. Sometimes maybe a friend or a child needs you to just help them figure it out. And sometimes you can just say, I need you to help me find somebody who knows what they're doing. Some people don't know what they need, and that is also okay. So, why kids need this and why I would like to be this to be part of curriculum in school. We do tell children be independent and try it again and figure it out. We want to build perseverance, we want to build persistence, we want to say, don't give up, try it yourself. Those are good messages. We are all about building self-reliance, but also we need to add another one. Knowing when you need help is actually part of being independent. Asking for help does not mean you've failed. It means you recognize that you need another resource. That's self-awareness, that's problem solving, and that's resilience. And I think adults can make a huge difference here. They can also lead by example. So instead of only saying, you can always come to me, teach your child the words. I don't know what to do. I feel overwhelmed. I need help. I don't want advice right now. I just need you to listen. I think I need someone to talk to. And then when they actually say those words, be quiet and listen. Don't punish their vulnerability. Don't rush into a lecture. Don't turn it into see, this is what happens when you don't listen. Or what were you expecting, even though you might be thinking those things. Because if a child learns that telling you the truth results in shame, they're not going to tell you the truth. And that is exactly the opposite of what we want. Then there are the adults. This is so not just a kid problem. I mean, there's the stereotypical driver that will not ask for help when they're lost. They won't ask for directions. There are people that absolutely are horrified walking around a store, they really need something, and they would be horrified to ask somebody where it is or to locate it. Adults do this too. Especially, I've noticed successful adults. Yes, that is right. Successful adults because we're used to being capable, because we're used to solving problems and we're used to having people count on us because we are the people who are responsible for the other people. They can be the hardest people to help because our identities might be built around, hey, I've got this. So they don't ask. They work harder, they sleep less, they stop exercising, they withdraw, they go home and drink every night, they numb themselves with their phones or shopping. They tell themselves, hey, this is just a busy season, I'll deal with it later, until one day they quit or they burn out, or they have a nervous breakdown, or they have a heart attack, or their relationship suffers, or their health suffers. And I want to say, you didn't have to wait that long. Please ask for help before everything falls apart.
So what can we do? Because this is really where I want my focus. I don't want to spend this episode focusing on how bad the problem is. I want to give you tools. So number one, and this came from Max, his advice. So here's out of the mouth of somebody who just pulled out of a depression. Ask earlier. Don't wait until you're at the bottom of the well. If something's been bothering you, say something. If you're overwhelmed, start saying something. If you don't know what to do, say something. And then number two, he said, instead of just saying I need help, I needed to be able to tell you what kind of help I needed. So, like, I need you to listen, or I need help in making this decision, I need someone to sit with me, I need help finding a therapist or a coach. I need help figuring out what to do next. I need some advice because you've lived longer than me, or maybe you've been through this. And then number three, give people permission to help you differently and just tell them, hey, I don't need you to fix this. My husband and I have this conversation. I just would like your advice, or I would just like to vent about this, I would just like another opinion. And for some of us, that's really hard because we want to fix, we want to jump in, we want everybody to be okay. And sometimes the person having the problem just isn't seeing something that's obvious, but it doesn't work unless you meet them where they are. Another rule that actually Max came up with: if one person doesn't respond well, try someone else. If you go to a counselor and it's not the right counselor, they're not your counselor. If you go to a friend and you ask them for help and you don't get the response you need, that's not the right friend for this. It does not mean that you shouldn't be asking. It means that person just isn't the right source. So try someone else. A parent, a teacher, a counselor, a doctor, just somebody. Number five, most importantly for all of us, and this is what he's learned, he now feels safer to ask for help. He now understands why he wasn't asking for help, and he wants to become someone, because he's a very altruistic young man, he wants to become someone who is safe to ask in case anybody around him is going through this. So think about it. Think about what it means to be the person that somebody can come to. It doesn't mean you have to have all the answers because you don't. And it doesn't mean you have to fix them because you can't. It doesn't mean you get responsible for their lives because you're not. It's more like, thank you for telling me. I'm so glad you told me. Can you tell me more? What do you need right now? And it if it's beyond what you can handle, I don't know how to deal with this, but I will help you find somebody who can. That's support. That's what we're looking for. So
this is where the conversation gets really interesting because I talk a lot about energy and about frequency, and I absolutely believe that what we bring into the room matters, but I also want to distinguish between my philosophical language around energy and what science actually has demonstrated because this is important. Science has not established a human vibrational frequency that rises because we think positively, but it has found something fascinating. Humans begin to synchronize, and this is research based. I have all the research linked. Researchers studied intrapersonal synchrony. That's the way we get in sync with somebody. Our behaviors, our physiology, in some circumstances, our heart rates or neural activities, they can become coordinated with. The people we're interacting with. And relationships are no exception. So when I talk about the energy of a room, here's what I know for sure: we do affect each other. Your attention affects another person. Your presence affects another person. Your compassion affects another person. So does your judgment. Your willingness to be vulnerable can make it safer for somebody else to be vulnerable. Maybe elevating the energy of a room is not pretending everything is wonderful. Maybe it's just making sure that everything is safe. Maybe it's listening and just being curious. Maybe it's just sitting beside someone. Maybe it's making a phone call or making somebody a dinner. Maybe it's just saying, I've got you. This
matters particularly because September starts next week and it's actually National Suicide Prevention Month. And I am sad to say that I have very few clients in the last seven years that don't know of someone, and these are mostly younger people. They all know someone who has killed themselves, teenagers. And September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and the 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day. The 2026 global theme is changing the narrative on suicide. And that will call to action start the conversation. And that's exactly what we're talking about. So, like Max said, start the conversation before the crisis. Right now, the CDC statistics are 48,824 people died by suicide in the United States in 2024. And the Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that nearly four in 10 U.S. high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, while one in five seriously considered attempting suicide. One-fifth of the young people in high school in our country are considering attempting suicide as we listen to this episode. So these numbers are staggering, but I don't want to leave you with a bunch of numbers. I want to leave you with something we can do. So supporting relationships and feeling connected to family, friends, school, and community, feeling like you have a purpose in this world, those are all protective factors. Connection matters, belonging matters, support matters, and sometimes prevention begins with something as simple as, hey, how are you really doing? You seem a little down to me. Here's five questions that I want you to take with you this week. Number one, what am I actually struggling with that I haven't told anybody about? Two, who could I trust enough to tell? Three, what kind of help do I actually need? Do I need somebody to listen? Do I need advice? Do I need practical help? Professional help? Four, who in my life might need a little help but hasn't asked? And finally, five, am I someone that people feel safe asking? That's the only one. That's the big one I want us to all think about. Because we can't control whether somebody asks us, but we can control whether we are approachable or not. I don't think the lesson this summer was here are all the things you have to do to make yourself better with Max. I think the lesson was you don't have to pretend you're okay when you're not. You don't have to turn every bad day into evidence that you're actually failing. And you don't have to climb out of the well by yourself. Someone is allowed to help you. You don't have to do it alone. Sometimes it's just taking the next step that feels a little bit better by saying, I need help. So here's what I want you to do after you finish listening. Don't just think about the person who needs help, please. Think about you. Is there something you've been carrying alone? Is there something you've been pretending isn't bothering you? Is there something you've told yourself you should be able to handle? Maybe this is the day you tell somebody. Not because you failed, just because you're human. And then look around you. Who might need you? Who has been quieter than usual? Who keeps saying they're fine, but maybe they don't feel fine to you? Who might be sitting at the bottom of their own well? You don't have to fix them. You don't have to have the perfect words. You don't have to become their therapist, but maybe just look somebody in the eye and care and ask them how they're really doing and then listen. Because sometimes people don't need us to pull them out of the well. They need us to just meet them where they are and sit beside them and hold out a hand and say, I see you. You're not alone. Let's take the next step together. And if you are the person who feels like you're at the bottom of the well right now, please hear this. Needing help doesn't mean you're weak. Having a hard day does not mean you're a failure. And getting better isn't always a straight line. You don't have to earn the right to ask for help by getting worse. So reach out, tell somebody, because we're not meant to do this alone. And here's what I love about that. When we learn how to do it ourselves, we can lift somebody else up. And when somebody helps us, we learn how to help the next person. Turn around, it was in a song, turn around and help the next one in line. When we create enough of these moments in our families, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, we can change the energy of the whole. One conversation, one hand, one human being at a time. So this week, ask for help if you need it, offer help when you notice it, and most importantly, be someone who's safe to ask. I'm Sari Stone, and this is Transform Your Life. Just Count Me In. Until the next time, flow, evolve, transform. I will see you next week. If this episode touched you or if there's someone you think of that might benefit from hearing it, please forward it to them. And remember to download because that supports the podcast. Have a great week!
