When someone asks for financial help online, they always mention how bad they felt about asking. Especially when they need direct donations to help with basic necessities like bills, food and clothing. It’s not hard to understand why, either, especially if you open the comments and see how many people shame those who ask for help. Comments telling struggling people to get jobs and stop begging are a heavy deterrent from people asking for help even when they need it. That shame does a lot of work in stopping people from banding together and helping one another, which is the way we ensure our safety when everyone’s struggling.
The fact that everyone is struggling is part of why people don’t want to ask, but if we shift that mindset to a more positive one, some of that shame might decrease. If we treat people asking for help like students taking turns in a classroom, people might not be ashamed to ask and people may be more likely to give without caveats. Of course, scammers are always a genuine concern as there are people who will take advantage of the big hearts of others, but there are just as many genuine people struggling as there are people hoping to pull one over on someone. With an open mindset, especially on the internet where you essentially tell your algorithm what to show you, you attract the energy that you put out.
Decreasing the overall shame around needing help will help people come together and uplift those who are struggling, because we’re only as strong as our weakest links. Why would those in power have to beat us down when we’ll do that to each other without prompting? Once we let go of shame and allow people to struggle, fail, ask for help, and get back up, we’ll be in a better place overall.
