Don’t Come Inside Until the Streetlights Are On
I grew up in the ’80s, where parenting often sounded like, “Don’t come home until the sun goes down,” or “Go drink from the hose.” You didn’t interrupt your parents unless something was actually on fire, and even then, you paused to consider if it could wait. You stayed outside. You stayed out of the way. You handled things on your own, because the expectation was: don’t be a problem.
And I think a lot of us carried that lesson into adulthood, especially at work.
I like to think of myself as low maintenance. I don’t ask for a lot of favors. I don’t need constant check-ins. I’m extremely competent, I figure things out on my own, and when systems or structures are broken, I’ll absolutely complain about them. I don’t suffer in silence, but I do try hard not to make my needs someone else’s problem.
In other words, I rarely ask for help.
And people who know me well know this. I talk a lot about trust and collaboration, and I mean it, but when it comes to my own needs, I almost always try to tough it out first. Even when I shouldn’t. Even when help is right there. I default to handling it alone.
So sometimes I wonder if what I call “low maintenance” is actually just a survival mechanism dressed up as a personality trait. Because I’ve burned energy trying to solve things solo when what I really needed was a quick gut check or a bit of backup. I’ve held back, not because I didn’t trust the people around me, but because I didn’t want to become someone else’s burden. I didn’t want to take up too much space.
And underneath that, there’s a deeper belief I’m still unlearning: that being invisible is safe.
As someone who works with high-performing teams, I see this pattern in the people around me too. So I’m not just writing this for myself. I’m writing it for anyone who’s ever equated being easy to manage with being valuable. For anyone who’s ever thought, “If I just stay small and capable, I’ll be safe.”
The Math We Do in Our Heads
The decision to ask for help is rarely just logistical. It’s emotional. It’s a whole internal negotiation that starts before you’ve even spoken. Will this make me look like I don’t know what I’m doing? Am I supposed to already have this figured out? Will they think I’m over my head? And the one that always creeps in for me: if they help me now, will I owe them later?
That last one gets to me. I have this quiet equation I run in the background: if someone helps me, I need to be able to return the favor. And if I can’t see a clear way to do that in the near future, I’ll often keep the ask to myself. Not because I don’t trust the other person, but because the idea of being in someone’s debt, even unofficially, makes me deeply uncomfortable.
I know that’s not how most people operate. I know they’re not keeping score. But that kind of logic doesn’t undo the feeling. And the feeling is old. It says: don’t inconvenience anyone. Don’t show your cards. Stay competent. Stay contained. Stay small.
What makes this even more complicated is that it’s not just about personal wiring, it’s cultural. For folks from marginalized backgrounds, women, people of color, disabled folks, asking for help hasn’t always been received neutrally. Sometimes it’s met with warmth. Sometimes it’s met with judgment. You risk being labeled: needy, difficult, not ready, too much. You risk being misunderstood.
And that divide is gendered too. In a lot of workplaces, I’ve noticed that men can ask for help without it counting against them. They’re seen as collaborative, strategic, even smart for delegating. But when women ask, it’s often framed differently. We’re expected to do it all, often quietly. At work and at home. We’re the ones who carry the invisible labor, so when we ask for something, it can look like we’re slipping. Like we can’t handle it. That double standard lingers, even in the most supportive teams. Even when everyone has good intentions.
So even when you’re surrounded by people who genuinely want to help, the hesitation lingers. The fear of being seen a certain way. The shame that flares up before you’ve even finished your sentence. The story that says your value is tied to how little you need, not how clearly you communicate.
And that’s why I think so many of us suffer longer than we have to. Not because we’re trying to be heroes, but because we’ve internalized the idea that needing help means you’ve already failed.
What I Look For When You Ask Me for Help
When someone asks me for help, I’m not evaluating whether they’re capable. I’m looking for signs of effort, honesty, and curiosity. I don’t need a perfect solution, I just want to know they tried. That they engaged with the problem before bringing it to my desk. Because trying, even imperfectly, tells me that they care. It tells me they respect their own growth, and mine.
When someone skips that part, when they don’t take a first pass, don’t lay any groundwork, it’s not that I get frustrated. But I’ll usually pause and ask, What have you already tried? Where are you stuck? Not to quiz them. Not to gatekeep support. But to remind them that help works better when it’s collaborative, not transactional. You don’t need to show up with a full plan. But come with something. A rough sketch. A first draft. An attempt.
And I get it, asking isn’t always easy. There’s often shame in the mix. The fear of looking underprepared or over-reliant. The worry that asking too soon or too often means you’re falling short. That’s why I try to create a culture where asking doesn’t feel like a red flag. I don’t always model it directly, but I create space for it. I ask reflective questions. I make sure people know that being stuck is part of the process and naming it out loud is actually a strength, not a weakness.
What I never want is someone quietly drowning. Quiet doesn’t always mean confident. Sometimes it means stuck. Sometimes it means someone doesn’t feel safe enough to raise their hand. So I check in, even when things look fine on the surface. I don’t just ask about status. I ask how things feel. If the weight is getting heavy. If the shape of the problem has changed.
Because help isn’t always about the ask. Sometimes it’s about being seen before the ask even happens. Sometimes it’s about knowing someone will meet you halfway, not with judgment, but with care.
When Low Maintenance Becomes High Risk
There’s a version of “low maintenance” that reads as noble. Quiet. Capable. Efficient. You’re the person people can count on. You handle things without a fuss. You get the job done and don’t take up much space doing it. And in the short term, that can feel like a win, for you, for your team, even for your manager. But over time, it starts to bend.
Because if you’re always fine, people stop checking. If you never ask for help, people stop offering. And when something finally is wrong, it takes everyone by surprise, sometimes including you. I’ve watched this happen to other high performers, and I’ve lived it myself: quietly accumulating weight until you’re at capacity, but no one knows to look for the signs. You’ve trained them to think you’re unshakeable.
It becomes a kind of trap. You get praised for pushing through, so you keep doing it. You build a reputation for being resilient, and that reputation becomes something you feel like you have to protect. Even when you’re struggling. Even when you’re tired. Even when you need someone to step in and say, “Hey, are you okay?”
The research backs this up. High-performing, low-asking individuals are more likely to burn out, not because they’re weak, but because they’re invisible in their discomfort. Because somewhere along the way, silence became synonymous with strength, and asking became something to avoid unless it was urgent.
But the real risk? It’s not just to your wellbeing. It’s to your relationships, your influence, your longevity. If you’ve built your value on needing nothing, it becomes harder to show up authentically when you finally need something. It feels like a rupture. Like you’re breaking your own brand. And that makes it harder to ask for support even when it matters most.
That’s why I think the whole “low maintenance” label needs a rethink. Being steady is great. Being capable is great. But not at the cost of being known. Not at the cost of suffering quietly while everyone assumes you’re fine. The real flex isn’t being low maintenance. It’s being honest, about what’s working, what’s not, and where you need someone to stand beside you.
When Not Asking for Help Makes It Worse
A while back, I had to cancel a team meeting, again. It was the third one in a row, and I felt a deep pang of guilt. Those meetings matter to me. They’re where we hold the culture, reinforce priorities, and check in beyond the work itself. Canceling felt like letting something meaningful slip through the cracks.
Later, while talking to one of my leads, I shared how bad I felt about it. He paused for a moment and said, “You know, I actually feel worse when you don’t ask me to run it. I think I do a good job leading those meetings. Why don’t you just ask me?”
It floored me a bit. Because of course I trust him. Of course he could handle it. But I hadn’t even considered asking, not because I doubted his ability, but because somewhere in my head, I felt like that responsibility had my name on it. It was mine to carry, even when I was clearly stretched thin.
And that’s the trap we fall into, isn’t it? We confuse accountability with ownership. We think, This is my job, so I have to hold all of it, even when there are people beside us who are more than willing to share the weight.
What he said next made sense: “You’re accountable for the meeting, but that doesn’t mean you have to lead every single one.” He even suggested a simple fix, a rotation across the team, so the responsibility could be shared. A solution that made perfect sense. A solution I should have thought of.
But I hadn’t. Because guilt and pride are sneaky. Because I didn’t want to burden him. Because I didn’t want to feel like I was dropping the ball. And in trying to shield him from something I assumed was mine to carry, I accidentally sent the message that I didn’t trust him with it.
That’s what not asking for help does. It limits us, but it also limits the people who genuinely want to show up for the work, and for us. It says I’ve got it when what we really mean is I don’t know how to let this go.
I’m still learning that lesson. Still reminding myself that leadership isn’t about holding everything. It’s about knowing what to hold, and what to hand off, and trusting the people around you to catch it.
The Hidden Cost of Asking
By the time I ask for help, I’ve usually done the math a dozen times. Not formally, there’s no spreadsheet, but it’s always there in the background. Will this put them out? Will it change how they see me? Will I owe them something later? And if the answer feels too murky, I’ll usually just do it myself.
The irony? I don’t think this way when the roles are reversed. If someone asks me for help, I don’t keep score. I don’t expect repayment. I show up. Gladly. But I don’t always assume others feel the same. I worry that my ask will change the balance of the relationship. That it will make things transactional, even when I know, logically, that’s not true.
That fear grows when power enters the room. I’ll ask for help from people I trust deeply, who know me well enough not to misread it. But that list is short by design. And even then, I hesitate. I want my requests to feel thoughtful, not like pressure. I want them to feel earned.
The truth is, most people I work with want to help. They want to be trusted with things that matter. They want to know their contributions count. But when I talk myself out of asking, I don’t just keep the burden on my own shoulders, I also close a door. I rob them of the opportunity to step up, to show care, to be part of something important.
That’s the hidden cost of low-maintenance tendencies. They feel like self-sufficiency, but they can create imbalance. They send a quiet message: I’ll be there for you, but I won’t let you do the same for me. And that’s not trust. That’s control.
Sometimes, the hardest thing isn’t offering help. It’s receiving it, without apology, without fear, and without assuming it comes at a cost.
When the Ask Is the Hard Part
People often say to me, “Just let me know how I can help.” And I appreciate it. I really do. But most of the time, I don’t have an answer. Not because I don’t need help, but because the help I need is buried under layers of complexity I don’t have the energy to untangle.
My brain isn’t a tidy checklist. It’s an overflowing whiteboard, half-finished thoughts, half-built plans, loops that haven’t closed yet. The idea of pausing to sort through that chaos, isolate a task, explain the context, and hand it off in a way that doesn’t cause more confusion than clarity? It feels impossible. So I don’t delegate. I just push through. And then people assume I don’t need anything.
But I do. I just don’t always know how to package it.
That’s the cost of being seen as competent. People forget that competence doesn’t equal capacity. That just because I can get something done doesn’t mean I’m doing it easily. And the longer I go without asking for help, the harder it becomes to start. Because by then, it’s not just one ask, it’s a backlog. It’s a dam that’s been sealed too long, and cracking it open feels risky.
There’s research that explains this, especially for neurodivergent folks. It’s part of the help-seeking paradox: the people who most need support are often the least able to ask for it, because the executive function required to externalize the problem is part of the problem. It’s not resistance, it’s overload.
Recently, I came across a suggestion that I’ve been implementing: instead of asking, “How can you help me?” flip the script. Ask, “What are you good at? What do you want to take off my plate?” I haven’t implemented this consistently yet, but I think it has potential. It reduces the decision load. It starts with their strengths. It gives me a foothold when the mess in my head feels too big to navigate alone. And most importantly, it reminds me that delegation isn’t about offloading, it’s about designing better ways to work together.
The Goal Isn’t Low Maintenance, It’s Honest Support
For a long time, I thought being low maintenance was a virtue. It meant I was dependable, independent, easy to work with. I didn’t need a lot. I could take on hard things without needing hand-holding. I was the kind of person you could trust to get it done, quietly and well.
And some of that’s still true. I am reliable. I do know how to manage complexity. But over time, I’ve realized that low maintenance isn’t always the flex I thought it was, especially when it means hiding what I need. Especially when it creates the illusion that I’m fine, even when I’m not. Especially when it makes it harder for the people around me to know how to support me.
The truth is, most people do want to help. Genuinely. Especially when they trust that you’ve tried. Especially when the ask is clear. But shame and fear don’t come out of nowhere. They’re shaped by culture, by upbringing, by the way many of us have been rewarded for our self-sufficiency and penalized for our needs.
I’m not interested in performing strength anymore. I’m interested in building environments where people don’t have to pretend they’re okay. Where asking for help isn’t rare, it’s normal. Where quiet isn’t mistaken for okay. Where competence and care aren’t mutually exclusive.
Because the most impactful people I know aren’t the ones who power through everything alone. They’re the ones who try, who ask, who support generously and receive support without shame. They know when to push and when to pause. When to lead and when to lean.
So if you’ve ever worn “low maintenance” like a badge of honor, maybe it’s time to ask: who does that badge protect? And what might change if you gave yourself permission to need something?
You might just get it.